The Quixotic Engineer

As of last Monday, I have officially begun my career in programming… as an intern (or stagiaire as we say in La Belle Province). As part of Concordia’s co-op program, I’ll be spending my fall semester working full time as a programmer at a Montreal company called 123 Certification. The job involves working with a small team on their largest product, the Arc Simulator, which is designed to teach welding in a way that is safe and cost-effective. It is quite literally virtual reality; the student wears a sort of VR helmet and uses motion-sensing tools.

Needless to say, it’s been a dramatic learning experience so far. I’ve spent a good part of the last week reading code and documentation, and have just recently had a chance to get my hands metaphorically dirty with some code debugging. I’m hoping to learn a great deal about handling 3D objects, working on a large scale project and coding professionally!