My name is Sean Duffy, and I’m an intern at ScraperWiki! I’ve just finished sixth form and in around a month’s time I’ll be starting my degree in Computer Systems and Software Engineering at the University of York. As well as programming, in my spare time I also enjoy electronics, reading and building/flying quadcopters.

When I heard about ScraperWiki on a Hacker News post earlier in the summer, I knew I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to inquire about an internship and now, in my fourth week, I’m glad that I did! In the past I’ve struggled to find relevant work placements close enough to where I live, so it was great to find such an interesting company only a short train journey away.

In my time here I’ve been coding in Python and JavaScript and learnt a lot more than I previously knew about Git, JQuery and regular expressions, and like Matthew I have adopted Vim as my go-to text-editor. I’ve also enjoyed participating in things like pair programming and retrospectives, which form part of the Extreme Programming methodology utilised at ScraperWiki. Aside from that, I’ve met some great people and all of the team have been welcoming and friendly from day one. Another bonus is that the choice of eateries at lunch is always top-quality!

I’m very happy to have been given the privilege of an opportunity as good as this and I know I’ve already taken away a great deal of useful knowledge, skills and experience. I’m sure that the things I’ve learnt at ScraperWiki will serve me well during my degree and the rest of my career. I’ve enjoyed it here so much that it’s made me even more optimistic and excited about a career in software!

That just about concludes my introductory blog post, but if you’d like to read about what I’ve been up to you can visit my blog, and if you’d like to contact me then feel free to email me!