My Summer Intership Experience at DBDS

My name is Ishmael Smyrnow, and I’m an intern here at Data Based Development Systems. I attend the University of Connecticut, and will graduate in December of this year with a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science.

My goal for the summer was this: find full-time employment at a small sized web development company, and either learn about new technologies, or deepen my knowledge of ones I’ve already worked with. After a handful of interviews, and a few weeks of nail-biting, I was fortunate enough to find myself here at Data Based Development Systems, an established IT consulting company in Manchester, Connecticut.

Being a consulting firm, DBDS employees have a lot of experience with a wide range of technologies. That flexibility alows them to adapt to customer requirements, while also leveraging different tools to get a job done. I found a wealth of knowledge in my fellow employees, and I was able to learn from them while being tasked on different projects. Working alongside smart, motivated people has a big impact on how you develop your own skills.

Another way DBDS helped me was by bridging the gap between my academic education, and the practical uses of that knowledge. I seen this most prominently in the area of design patterns.

Now, you can only learn so much about design patterns through reading. Here, I actually used them in practice (on some well architected applications, too). Although I spent a semester in school building a multiplayer Checkers game client using the MVC pattern (or trying to), it wasn’t until this summer that I really began to grasp the concept, and how such an architecture can help ease the development process. From TOs to DAOs, Builders to Factories, I saw these patterns implemented and best-practices adhered to, which is exactly the sort of thing I wanted to expose myself to as a student, since it complemented my academic education quite well.

I was also exposed to some new technologies, like Struts (1 and 2), YUI, and Oracle RDBMS. Granted, these widely used tools aren’t “new,” but they will be new to my resume, which is a very good thing.

So what has this summer meant for me? A chance to extend my Java experience? A shorter commute? Free pens? Yes, yes, and yes, but more importantly, it meant that my goal was reached. As a student seeking temporary employment, my biggest fear was that I wouldn’t be challenged intellectually, and thus wouldn’t excel in my profession. I’ve heard fellow students speak of easy, laid-back jobs they’ve had, and they sound like a total waste of time. I was pleasantly surprised that DBDS had no intention of putting me to easy work, or under utilizing my skills. The work I’ve done this summer has helped equip me for my fast approaching entrance into the job market.

I love what I do, and DBDS has made me better at it.

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Tags: connecticut, ct it staffing, Developers, intern, j2ee, java, java software developer, jsp, netbeans, sql, struts