It may be cliche, but I felt that it was appropriate to start my first blog post with the introductory phrase "Hello World." Just as the first thing I learned to program was how to print the phrase "Hello world" on a computer screen, I feel that the month I've spent interning at Pivotal Labs has been an introduction into the world of software engineering.
Before I begin reflecting about my time at Pivotal in ernest, I feel that I should give some background about me so that my posts can be understood in the proper context. I am a Computer Science major at Berkeley going into my Senior Year. My first job in the field of software engineering was last summer, where I worked for a small company that did technology strategy campaigns for grassroot political movements. The first language I programmed in was Java, followed by Scheme, more Java, C, a little Python, and Groovy on Grails for my job last summer. Also, the only version control system I had really used prior to Pivotal was Subversion, and only when my professors had forced me to. Given all that, just about everything at Pivotal has been new to me, from Ruby and Rails to Git to Pair Programming, I feel like I've learned at least one new thing a day since I've started, and I will attempt to reflect on all of it going forward from today.