I learned an important lesson this week: Never navigate away from your blog page while your adding an entry! I learned that lesson the hard way last Thursday. Anyway, I had an interesting 2 days at my internship. I was "snooping" around and found the UDDI directory for the company. I did not have a chance to explore too much, but I am hoping to look around more tomorrow. I am very curious to see how these services are being utilized in the development process.
Speaking of my internship, I am still learning the system and getting more familiar with the development architecture, but I am finding that I have one real frustration. Although (surprise, surprise!!) I have actually been able to contribute to the programming projects I have been involved with I think that I've figured out why things have been so difficult.
In the academic setting projects are worked on from the ground up. That is planning, implementing, etc. is done from beginning to the end by the student. Now I am faced with a rather extensive application that has already been in production for years. The projects I have worked on have really only been small modifications to existing applications. The frustration comes from me not really knowing what the project I am working on is ultimately supposed to do. In the end I have to realize that my understanding of the "big picture" probably doesn't matter a whole lot. All I have to do is make my little piece work, so the project manager can fit it into place.
Just an observation I had. At any rate, I am just happy to be working with the knowledge that I have gained through school!