I would like to start off by saying that all of the staff at Viva IT were all incredibly friendly and would help answer any question I had to the best of their ability.
Going into the work experience I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. I did however know what I wanted to get from it - which was to see actual software development on a professional level.
Within the first day I already started to learn more about the career that I had chosen for myself, I learnt parts of the agile development method (I have been told I’ve only hit the tip of the iceberg.) which has taught me that software development isn’t about a bunch of individuals working separately but pooling all of their knowledge together to help one another.
This brings me on to the next thing I learnt which is it’s okay to admit that you don’t know something, but also if you think you might have a better method it’s also okay to question a more experienced team member.
By this point I was more certain about wanting to become a software developer, I began to ask more specific questions such as what a framework is, why do you write a test for a feature and why write them before you have even written the feature itself, I also asked about starting a project and understood the the importance of planning out a minimum viable product and making sure that everyone understands what the product is supposed to do before you even start. They also told me about the best way to go about joining onto an existing project and the best way to familiarise yourself with it.
On the 3rd day I started to get into the swing of how thing would work for the rest of the week which mostly consisted of watching the software developers work and occasionally asking questions or providing input on my solution to a problem, at the end of the day, we went through an agile development process called user story mapping which is used to help figure out what features a user wants and work out from that which are the key features and can be implemented into a minimum viable product.
The penultimate day, I learnt about the key difference between Test Driven Development and Behaviour Driven Development, TDD is building the thing right where as BDD is building the right thing, this is best elaborated on with an analogy that with TDD, you build a bridge to get across and it’s made to comply with all current building codes and can support a truck, while using BDD you build a boat because in this case the customer wanted a method to cross a stream.
The final day, I delved into about issues with security, by using x number of login attempts system you provide the ability to deny people access to their accounts (denial of service), give the user as little information as possible, i.e. don’t tell them what they got wrong, just that you cannot log them on and ideally don't even tell them they are locked out because all of the information can make it easier for accounts to be exploited
To conclude I found my time at Viva IT to be both useful and enjoyable, useful in that it taught me a lot about software development and helped me make a better decision on which university course to take, the time was enjoyable as everybody at Viva IT was really friendly and would answer any question I had.
