From working at Splurgy over summer, I experienced how programming in a working environment has a completely different atmosphere compared to that of college. In college, you would first learn the necessary material before starting a code and the projects done are usually centered on the subject that the class is currently covering. That wasn’t the case when I started to program at Splurgy. Instead, I was given a goal first. From there, I had figure out what I needed to learn in order to achieve that goal. This process led to me to understand unexpected pieces of knowledge such as MySQL, something I hadn’t originally thought was needed for a Magento Extension.

Compared to what I learned during my freshman year during college, I felt as if I had learned more in the workplace. It was probably because, in the work atmosphere, the code you write is a significant contribution that affects the company. It’s a pretty big motivation to learn. I would savor every moment of my projects, spending more time on slowly thinking through each of the steps I went through. So far, I haven’t really gotten the same feeling of excitement when I’m working on a school project. Of course, I still try my best in every code I write, but when I think about how my peers are working on the same assignment and doing the same things as I am… it just doesn’t feel as special as it should be.

I feel fortunate to have experienced what it’s like to code in a work environment. Doing it this early is the best practice I could’ve possibly had. What I was taught is that I should aim exceed the expectations that has been set by the class and code as if what I’m doing is going to be looked at and used by someone else in the future. Working at Splurgy was valuable in showing me how my code is processed and used by others, which is a really rewarding feeling.