Yesterday, Friday the thirteenth, was my last day of work this summer. I have purposely not written much about what I was working on not because it was particularly secret or confidential, but because I feel I probably wrote a bit too much about my projects last summer. I don't think the company would mind that I wrote about the work I was doing, but you can't be .
For those who don't know, I interned at the software development subsidiary of a reasonably large local credit union. It was my third summer there, which is funny because that means I had been there longer than many of the new full time workers.
The big thing this summer was a complete rewrite of the company's main product. The frontend and database were mostly complete by the time I started, so I did a bunch of work on the middle layer. I did all sorts things with XML (, , , and ) and made a few quick forays into exploratory project planning. I also got a chance to fine-tune my skills on some GUI testing tools. That was a new experience for two reasons: first, I had never done any serious GUI work— Purdue's CS classes focus solely on command-line programming— and second, I never before had the need to make my own tools to help develop a project.
The best part of the summer, though, may be yet to come. It may open up an opportunity to get an internship next summer at doing what my boss calls "skunkworks projects". That would be unbelievably awesome, but it's still too early to say what might happen. I will write more about that as the situation unfolds.
Update: As a going away gift, my boss and the CIO of the credit union gave me a very cool silver . Now I can truly call myself a geek: I have a portable MP3 player.