A fresh perspective on old problems [software industry]

The author documents the lessons he learned while working as an intern at a growing telecommunications company. Though his conclusions are not surprising, they can serve as reminders of how common certain problems are in the software industry and how important basic practices can be. Initially he spent his time debugging, extending and updating the company´s in-house billing/provisioning system, and dealt primarily with code, code-level quality, and program documentation issues. Soon, however, opportunities arose for him to contribute ideas that ultimately affected the entire department. These opportunities in turn provided him with valuable lessons about essential yet often overlooked software development issues, from programming practices to team organization