Placement Year at Intergral GmbH
For my placement year, I was offered the opportunity to work for Intergral GmbH out in Germany as a Java Developer of server analysis and debugging software. Living south of Stuttgart in Herrenberg, I learned a lot, such as:
- How to be a professional,
- How to write better software,
- New technologies and development strategies,
- How to snowboard,
- and I even learned to speak a little German.
This was one of my most seminal experiences. It did, however, remind me why I got into programming to begin with. I do not program solely for the joy of problem solving, I enjoy programming in part for the same reason I got into animation - the satisfaction of bringing things to life and being an entertainer from behind the scenes. While I loved working at Intergral and I made some wonderful friends, returning to continue working on enterprise software is not something I can see myself doing currently. Out of self interests, I'd personally rather be contributing to the development of an emotional experience over ensuring a bank or scientific institution remains performative. But looking back at the experiences gained and had, choosing to work at Intergral will remain one of the best decisions I've ever made.
