So I'm wrapping up my two year college course in April, I'll be doing two months internship at one of our partners, and then transition into a full-time job unless I hate the place or they hate me ( o.o )
We'll all be going through a slew of interviews soon and I personally feel quite confident that I can pick and choose where I'd like to go (though this may be my downfall, I'd rather remain confident in my abilities).

My choices are the following:
- C++ game developer for a well established gaming company (Has offices almost everywhere in the world).
- Consulting company where I'd work in multiple languages but mostly web-based.
- A QA firm that, obviously, specializes in testing.
- An insurance company that revolves around JavaEE.
- Another consulting firm that does "bigger" contracts than the aforementioned, like governments, telecoms, etc.

Personally, I despise working with Java. My reasons include it being slow, bulky, slow, bulky, and almost every answer on stackoverflow is deprecated and you need to run down the list for a CHANCE at a good answer. Not too sure how Java feels in a work environment though, I can imagine you have time for a very long coffee break when you finally hit "run". Please enlighten me if I'm all wrong about Java, this is my experience with it. JavaEE looks kinda neat, but the alternatives just seem... better?

I feel as though I'll be very limited in what I can do if I go in with the game developing company, but at the same time, probably guaranteed a job for life. My question is do I really want to just make games all my life? And if not, what will I be able to do with a few years of coding C++ from an already established gaming engine.

QA interests me quite a bit in that I love picking out details, scanning code, and just hunting for solutions. Still need a bit of work on innovatively thinking about how to break programs though, not the best hacker out there I'll admit.

And what I'm mostly looking at now, is either of the consulting firms. I figure this will allow me a broader scope of knowledge in IT in general and give me a chance to touch on a bunch of different technologies. One firm being smaller than the other, the big differences being in how I manage myself. The small firm I'll answer straight to the big guy, and no bullshitting. Professionalism to the max! And the bigger firm has a much more complex hierarchy where problems are dealt in a... well you know how big companies manage problems.

If you made it this far, thank you for reading! Sincerely! If you have some experience in the field and can offer any advice, short or long, I would greatly appreciate it!
You're welcome to share your own experiences, I'll be happy to read them ^^

you have done 0 interning up until now?

That is correct. Though not new to the workforce, just not in the field. Though aiming to make a career out of this as it's is BY FAR better than anything else I've done in my life in terms of work. Not to mention it's fun and a never-ending journey of learning.

Hopefully you interview better for the internship than you do asking this question of us. You sound arrogant. I wouldn't hire you to be one of my interns.

And you seem to have a disdain for Java, but your disdain is just parroting what typical C programmers say about the language without actually using it. There is a reason Google selected it for their Android development.


Furthermore, you seem to be disillusioned as to what an internship means for a software company. They don't just bring you in, give you access to trunk, and have you start coding new features for their products. No. Teams will compile lists of Technical Debt items. Things that need refactored, patched, etc and task it out as little pet projects to give to interns so they have something to put on their resume. If you prove yourself to them, a full time job may be in line. But just because you take an internship at some cool video game company it doesn't mean you will be helping them build a game.

This post was edited by Minkomonster on Feb 10 2014 06:45pm

Thanks for taking time to respond.

Yes I'm a little arrogant, but more on the side of confident, and very outspoken when comfortable in an environment. I don't feel like I'll be that genius coder that everyone talks about, nor is that my goal. Please don't assume my opinion on Java is based off Google searches, I've been working with it for 2 years now, in a few of it's technologies, as homework or personal projects. I never said it was a bad language. It's a great language. But as I said, alternatives just seem better and it's FUCKING SLOW (in my experience), I'll have to look into why Google would make such a decision.

I have a background in a number of things and by no means was brought up as a coder or ever considered it before the summer before starting the course tbh. We all need to get through life one way or another, and I'm really loving this field, minus all the arrogant pricks who can't give you a straight answer. (The sad reality of working with smart people I guess, everyone assumes they're smarter than the next guy.)

As much as I appreciate your response and took what I could from it, you need to assume less, and ask more. I'm aware of what I'm being thrown into, they didn't make me change a clutch on my first day as a "mechanic". And to close it off, I wouldn't work for you even if you overpaid me just from the little conversation we've exchanged.

Cheers

As a Java programmer who has been working for the past 6 years on a high data volume statistics app:

It's not Java, it's you. You are a bad programmer, just like every single other undergrad with little or no work experience. I don't even know Minkomonster from a hole in the wall and I have to agree with him because he is 100% right when it comes the industry and what it's like for fresh grads.

People who complain about Java being slow are normally grabbing their data from 10 years ago.




That is precisely your problem. You AREN'T comfortable in the environment because you have never BEEN in the environment. School projects are nothing like work projects. You are bashing Java without ever using it in a professional environment. You are way to arrogant about something you know nothing about. Humble yourself, kid. Or you are going to bomb every single one of those interviews.

This post was edited by Minkomonster on Feb 10 2014 07:17pm

Probably even older than that. The HotSpot JIT compiler was added in as a standard feature in 1.3 in 2000, which really sped up Java and started bringing it to performance parity with C++. No modern language should ever be "slow" in it's native state and if it is you can guarantee the thing that caused it is sitting in the chair in front of the keyboard.

*sigh* I should've left the Java rant out the window. I've heard great things about the language, don't get me wrong. I didn't want this topic to become a Java hate thread, I simply stated my perception and experience, it's definitely not set in stone and I have a pretty open mind to things said to me in a non-"you're a retard" manner. That being said, thanks for saying what any Java developer I've ranted to has told me. If it was SO bad, it wouldn't be so prominent, I'm not ignorant. Sorry if I'm answering a bit crudely but I'm only sharing the atmosphere you guys are giving me.

You seem to have very little sense of how you present yourself to others so let me break it down for you:

I never wanted to be hostile. You started this thread puffing your chest up about how awesome you are and how you have all these interviews for internships and in the same breath posted some really misinformed rant about a language you know dick about. It made you look like a retard, not us. Be a little bit more humble, especially when you are talking to people with getting on a decade of industry experience.

You are just like every other recent grad I've run into regardless of how good a student they were or how smart they were. They were shitty programmers that became better with experience. I'm not knocking you personally I'm stating objective fact about having a lack of experience. Also if you appear to be *too* arrogant in an interview for an intern position (the lowest of the low rungs of development) you will get your resume shitcanned for another one of the billion recent grads who was less grating and self-congratulating than you.

Now do you have some more questions about the industry?

This post was edited by rockonkenshin on Feb 10 2014 07:25pm