Internship at Javlin from an American Perspective

As the second intern for Javlin, I wanted to share my wonderful experience so far working as a developer here. I am a senior attending Georgia Institute of Technology and I have been abroad to Europe many times before on vacation, and two years ago to travel throughout Europe with a study abroad group. I have to admit, I had my doubts as to how the summer with the internship would turn, but it truly is shaping out to be amazing.

First, the company. Javlin is composed of a group of great people and awesome developers. The development team has been very helping, all speak english quite well, and are eagar to talk java. We go out to lunch together everyday where we explore the various restaurants around Prague.

Prague is an exciting city. I think the best way to describe it is as a perfect blend of Western European and Eastern European culture. It has all the comforts and modern elements of countries such as Germany and Italy, while still having the prices and natural elements of Slavik countries to the east. The streets are filled with people from all over the world, some enjoying the nightlife while others are exploring the extrodinary architechture and learning about the city’s rich history. I think its this atmosphere that makes my walk through the city’s center on my way to the office so enjoyable.

The programming has been a great experience as well. I was nervous at first, because when I came in I had little knowledge about data warehousing or ETL. After learning how CloverETL works, I had my first task on editing the program’s GUI. I was told the internship will be challenging, which I was hoping for, and it turned out to be just that. I dove into a sea of code that makes up the program, referencing multiple APIs and reading developer guides as I started to figure out how things worked. My supervisor was very helping, explaining anything I had questions about which was great for those concepts that are hard to grasp from a manual. After completing this task, I was assigned another task which involved understanding serveral different database systems which I am still working on. The internship has been able to remain challenging and educational while still providing the satisfaction of making a difference.

Looking ahead, my supervisor has told me about future assignments which include working on the installer and shell scripts for the installation process. I have already started reading about NSIS, the installer system Javlin uses, and am excited about experimenting with it. The shell scripts will finally fulfill my longtime to-do task of learning and using Linux. I truly feel this experience will more than prepare me for any challenging entry position I may attain when I graduate in December.