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A reflection

Posted by Rob. Mon, October 19th, 2009 in General, Tech Zone.
So here I am, the last of my 12 weeks as a Flash programming intern at Mind Candy. I’d like to think I’ve brought a lot to the company. I programmed the Underground Disco for Moshi Monsters which went live recently, as well as a few small things that will hopefully pop up in future, but aside from that I’ve tried my best to take an active role in meetings and discussions, possibly to the frustration of my more experienced (but very patient!) colleages.
My main reason for coming here was to learn, to become more experienced in doing what I do in a working environment and as part of a team. I’m happy to say that I learnt a lot more than I expected to! I’m programming in a much more professional way, in a much more complicated but rewarding development environment (FDT in Eclipse). I’ve previously been quite uncomfortable having other people work with my code but here I was introduced to the joys of using an SVN repository which has been pretty painless and very useful for recovering old work. I’ve taken part in pair-programming too which was surprisingly productive and again something I’ve never been exposed to before.
I’ve been involved in all stages of a product cycle, from the wide-eyed aspiration of the initial design meetings to the gut-wrenching final moments before release. Working with designers, artists, animators, testers, and coders of various disciplines really highlights the importance of communication between disciplines, and that going that extra mile, or even inch, to make things easier for other people helps a lot in bringing a whole product together.
In two weeks I’ll be heading back to do the final year of my degree, where I will immediatly get myself an SVN repository set up and write better code than ever before. And hopefully will keep in touch with some of the great people that I’ve worked with. :)

So here I am, the last of my 12 weeks as a Flash programming intern at Mind Candy. I’d like to think I’ve brought a lot to the company. I programmed the Underground Disco for Moshi Monsters which went live recently, as well as a few small things that will hopefully pop up in the future, but aside from that I’ve tried my best to take an active role in meetings and discussions, possibly to the frustration of my more experienced (but very patient!) colleages.

My main reason for coming here was to learn, to become more experienced in doing what I do in a working environment and as part of a team. I’m happy to say that I learnt a lot more than I expected to! I’m programming in a much more professional way, in a much more complicated but rewarding development environment (FDT in Eclipse). I’ve previously been quite uncomfortable having other people work with my code but here I was introduced to the joys of using an SVN repository which has been pretty painless and very useful for recovering old work. I’ve taken part in pair-programming too which was surprisingly productive and again something I’ve never been exposed to before.

I’ve been involved in all stages of a product cycle, from the wide-eyed aspiration of the initial design meetings to the gut-wrenching final moments before release. Working with designers, artists, animators, testers, and coders of various disciplines really highlights the importance of communication between disciplines, and that going that extra mile, or even inch, to make things easier for other people helps a lot in bringing a whole product together.

In two weeks I’ll be heading back to do the final year of my degree, where I will immediatly get myself an SVN repository set up and write better code than ever before; and hopefully will keep in touch with some of the great people that I’ve worked with. :)

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