From business administration studies to an internship as a software developer
In the sixth semester, students at the university have to complete a 20-week mandatory internship. I completed this at digatus in the software development department from October 1, 2021 to February 17, 2022.
The decision may seem a little surprising as soon as you know that after three semesters of business administration studies and during my ongoing business informatics studies, I am taking an almost completely new path through the internship as a software developer. However, a kind of transition can be seen here. From pure economics to an intermediate step to pure computer science.
Until the end of the fourth semester, my strengths and interests unexpectedly lay in the computer science-oriented courses, especially in programming. In view of this distribution of interests, I quickly realized that I wanted to continue my education in this area and thus complete my internship in computer science. Appropriately, digatus assured me in the job interview of responsibility, the chance to develop in the team and a high level of helpfulness from everyone, and I was not promised too much. In the following, I will explain my impressions and experiences during the internship in more detail.
My first steps as a software developer
My expectations were initially associated with a lot of respect. “Will there be too much input?”, “Will I ever be able to help the company?”, “Can I even do it as a business informatics specialist with my previous knowledge?”.
The internship logically started with a lot of input. After all, our programming courses only teach the absolute basics. Contrary to expectations, I was able to quickly acquire the necessary knowledge through helpful tutorials and very helpful colleagues.
At the beginning of the internship, I familiarized myself with topics such as Angular, JavaScript and ES6. This was completely new territory, as there had been no points of contact before. For the topics, the colleagues found me tutorials that I did during working hours for the first few weeks and repeated at home. By repeating, I was able to process and anchor the mass of input.
The start of project work
Then I got a kind of practice project to be able to apply what I had learned directly. For this purpose, an employee drew a layout on a piece of paper and gave me some additional specifications. Through the tutorials, my level of knowledge had increased so much that I was able to solve the task without any major problems.
After that, I was allowed to work on my first real project. Of course, despite the training, I was still dependent on the help of colleagues, which was no problem for them at all. Cohesion and teamwork are never neglected here. This not only made a major contribution to the steep learning curve, but also to my well-being. After all, you are in a new office, with new people and a previously unknown field of activity. As a result, I was increasingly able to process tickets independently and contribute my own ideas.
In my second project, backend programming with C# was necessary for the first time in addition to the frontend with Angular. So that required some training again, as I had never programmed with C# before. For this, digatus paid for a Udemy course, which I was able to complete within a week. In the meantime, I realized that object-oriented programming languages have similarities to each other and that learning new programming languages is therefore getting faster and faster over time.
The React framework was used for the third project. The learning process also took place here through a tutorial. I was able to increase my knowledge spectrum in the field of software development many times over within the 20 weeks.
My conclusion on the internship in software development at digatus
Overall, I have implemented two of my own projects and joined an existing one. For me, it was remarkable that an intern is given such trust, considering that the activities in other internships are limited to printing and making phone calls. In my opinion, the high level of responsibility allows you to achieve the maximum learning success and is optimally prepared for starting your career.
In this way, I was initially able to accompany projects from start to finish and gain valuable experience. By joining an ongoing project, I learned to understand, comprehend, question and possibly even improve existing code.
I am happy to have found an employer with digatus who invests time and money in me in order to shape my future prospects together with me. That’s why it was the next logical step for me to continue the path with digatus as a working student.
In conclusion, it can be said that a business informatics specialist can undoubtedly get off to a flying start in pure computer science with a little diligence and discipline. Digatus makes a major contribution to this. On the one hand, through helpful colleagues who will not leave you alone in any situation. On the other hand, through the opportunity to take on responsibility in order to get the most out of the internship.
