Dr. Dobb's Journal April 2007
Employer: Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology
Job: Student
DDJ: Brant, we usually ask developers what their job is. As a student, what would you say your job is?
BG: To learn. I am currently pursuing a Bachelor of Science degree in computer science at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. I have worked as a student system administrator for the computer science department and in various development and testing internships at Microsoft Corporation, Rose-Hulman Ventures, Powerway, and Omega Design Studio.
DDJ: What do you like about being a student?
BG: I definitely enjoy learning, especially when information from different courses starts to come together and make sense at a deeper level.
DDJ: What do you find challenging about being a student?
BG: To do the homework. I would rather learn from experience in open-source software or reading Dr. Dobb's Journal than do homework that isn't challenging me. There have been some challenging courses—such as Fundamentals of Software Development III—where the focus is on algorithms and data structures.
DDJ: What have you found that makes doing the homework easier?
BG: Using the calendaring features of Outlook helps me to get homework tasks done. I also find that using beta software helps, because the homework is getting done as I am testing the software. I exercised many of the math-equation editing features in Word 2007 in the course of writing math homework and found and reported issues along the way. Sometime though, it isn't the dog that eats the homework, but the beta software.
Employer: Seapine Software
Job: Senior Architect
DDJ: Todd, what's your job at Seapine Software?
TS: I am the Senior Architect on Seapine's QA Wizard product.
DDJ: What do you like about your job?
TS: I love taking a concept from its initial inception all the way to final code. There is just nothing like seeing the code work the first time after long hours of designing and coding.
DDJ: What do you find challenging about your job?
TS: As architect, time management is my biggest challenge. We have several developers on the team and a good portion of my day is spent in technical discussions with them on different aspects of the overall system. This is on top of my own coding assignments on the project.
DDJ: What have you found that makes your job easier?
TS: This year, I began introducing the concept of doing continuous builds and unit tests to our daily process. This has had a dramatic effect on the overall quality of the code being produced.
Employer: Anexinet
Job: Principal Architect
DDJ: Where do you work?
FT: I am a Principal Architect with Anexinet Corp., a consulting firm located in King of Prussia, PA. I am currently an architect on a project at Independence Blue Cross in Philadelphia, a major healthcare insurance provider.
DDJ: What's your job there?
FT: We have designed and custom developed a J2EE application that routes and queues open claims, adjustments in progress, and claims adjustment requests to examiners and adjusters and their respective claims management systems.
DDJ: What do you like about your job?
FT: I like getting feedback directly from a user, because they are directly in contact with the constituency, rather than from executives.
DDJ: What do you find challenging about your job?
FT: Working on a complex system that handles hundreds of thousands of transactions per day.
DDJ: What have you found that makes your job easier?
FT: The Internet makes finding information and even technology components easier and is definitely a productivity tool. We have added open source to our application, such as POI from Apache Jakarta for Microsoft Excel spreadsheet parsing and AJAX for real-time data retrieval. Components or application constructs for these features were readily available on the Internet.