Asidua

Niall

I am currently working towards a BEng in Computer Science at Queens University Belfast, which I commenced in September 2008. 

I attained 3 A’s at A level in Maths, Economics and ICT.  I chose to do a degree in Computer Science as computers have always fascinated me.  They are used in every aspect of our lives and this is why I am eager to find out as much as I can in this area of study.  I feel a career path in Software Engineering has excellent prospects and its ever changing nature really excites me.  I applied for this Scholarship opportunity with Asidua as I feel it would give me excellent experience in a field I am very much looking forward to entering. 

If you want to learn more about my experiences in Asidua, please read my regular blog updates below….

 

27th May 2011
I’m now coming to the end of my time at Asidua, only another 2 months left.  The project I was working on for the majority of my placement is now complete and I am onto a new one now.  The latest project is a similar idea, where I am on a team which is writing a set of automated tests which will run on a daily build to gage the state of the build.  Our tests exercise the APIs used on the product and so, if our test run completes with a high pass rate then it’s clear that the build is in good working order.  If not, we have to investigate why the tests are failing and either fix a problem if it’s in the test code or raise a bug against it which ultimately improves the quality of the product if these are picked up early.  

On this project I’m working with JavaScript like before, but also some HTML.  Another thing which has started up recently is 5 aside football, once a week amongst a group of us in the company.  It’s been great craic and going into my final few weeks I’m hoping my team can maintain their position at the top of the league!

 

25th February 2011
I’m now nearly eight months into my placement and everything is going well.  The project I started on is taking shape and should be coming to an end soon. 

During my time here, I have learned a lot through working on my project, though I have also been given the opportunity to attend an ASP .net master class course which was very useful.  This has given me an insight into another language which could prove valuable to me further down the line in my career.

 

26th July 2010
When I returned to Asidua,I was happy to hear I’d be working in Unit 10 along with the other Queen’s scholar Andrew.  During my first week I was given the task of familiarising myself with the project I’d be working on.  I also shadowed some people on the team, taking notes on how to complete the tasks they were doing.  On this first week I was also introduced to Unix and JavaScript which are two languages used regularly on the project and I am picking them up well.

 

12th March 2010
I am into the second semester of second year now and things are going well.  My modules this semester are all compulsory; Data Structures and Algorithms, Multimedia and Software Engineering.  These are progressing well and hopefully I can achieve good results in these ahead of my summer placement. 

As I’ve said before, I am delighted to have my placement already in place with Asidua as many on the course are struggling to obtain one in the current climate.  I am looking forward to further developing my programming skills over the coming year and with the weeks passing by so fast this semester, I’ll be on my placement in no time.


16th November 2009
After my work experience with Asidua over the summer, I started back to University in late September.  The three modules I’m completing in my first semester are Networks and Communications, Database Systems and Games Programming.  Although I had hoped they were trying to scare me, it is true what I was told by the other placement students at Asidua; the second year on the Computer Science degree is much harder than the first.  However, I am still enjoying it and some of the work I did over my summer placement is starting to come in handy. 

Our games programming module uses Visual Studio which I was introduced to during my time spent with the company over the summer and so I’m glad to have had some knowledge of this before beginning the course.  As the weeks pass by, I’m looking forward to my placement year with Asidua, and glad I don’t have to stress about interviews for theirs, like others on my course!


14th August 2009
This week was spent learning a bit more code, both from textbooks and the internet, and then doing other things like my exit interview.  On the second last day Sean and I got buns for our unit from a local bakery.  Although we did this to thank everyone in the building for their help over the 8 weeks, I had the underlying motive of sweetening up my team before my presentation the next day!  This was basically a 20 minute presentation during which I showed them what I had done for the actual team project.  This turned out to be very good fun and although nervous at the start, I enjoyed it.


7th August 2009
During the course of this week I put the finishing touches to the report, formatting it to look as close to what they wanted as possible.  I was impressed by the report builder software.  It simplifies what would take the end user weeks to produce using their current paper based system.  It also offers the ability to make the report interactive i.e. drilldowns, something I included in my work.


31st July 2009
This week, I began another new job.  This time I was going to be using Reporting services.  I was making a report from one of the tables used in the team database.  It had to be programmed so the user feeds in 4 parameters and this is what sorts the search.  They also had to be able to specify the dates between which they wanted to see the report.  I also gave the report a drill down function; where the user can click on parts of the graph to get a more detailed view of this particular day.


24th July 2009
It took me the majority of this week to finish my second sprint and test it.  Then I had a meeting with my line manager and I explained the system to him.  As we went through it, he made some suggestions, about layout etc, and then I made these changes to the file.  Also during week 5, two students began their year out in our building.  They tried to scare us as to what’s in store for us next year at University but other than that, good fun.


17th July 2009
Over the first half of this week I put the finishing touches to my first job and tested it.  I was really surprised how easy Visual Studio made things with its drag and drop feature.  On Thursday I was given my next sprint.  Again it was a web front end, but this time linking 2 tables, using a filter to filter the results of both, both tables had to be fully editable and this time, the user had to be able to delete and insert new data into the tables.


10th July 2009
I was given an overview of what I was going to do in a meeting with my line manager and then he made out a sprint backlog for me to follow, which broke the job into steps and allowed me to view the estimated time for each section and then edit how long it really took me!  Again, this was something I was impressed with-using this time scale, of where you ‘should’ be and where you are in your assignment, a burn down chart is produced showing your progress against where you should be.  My job was to build a web front end on Visual Studio for one of the database tables used in my teams project, allowing the user to filter the results of their search through a drop down list, which displayed the available options.  I also had to provide the user with an edit feature so they could edit the results.


3rd July 2009
During this week I was doing asp tutorials, both online and from a book, and I also went to my first team meeting.  This gave me a better insight into the project and what my team was working towards.  I was impressed with how organised it was; in that there were various issues we worked through which had been raised on the team site by team members and these were discussed and then either removed if the issue was solved, or left at ‘in progress’ if more work was required on it.  Also, as this week went on I got to know Sean (the other scholar) better and the craic improved as well!


26th June 2009
Over this first week I went through all sorts of inductions, from meeting the bosses to being told of the free drinks Asidua offers on the first Friday of the month!  In between this I met my team from the project I was going to be working on and began to learn my way around the building.  Then I started my tutorials, beginning with C#.  I had never used C# but with the help of those in my team I realised it was very similar to Java and began to grasp the idea.