Thought i'd add my story, just started my first 'grown-up' programming job as well recently, three months ago.
I manage my company's internal management software, it allows the sales, support, development, testing, HR and contracts departments to operate as a 'paperless office'.
The first week, one of the first tasks I was given was to spend some time developing a simple plugin that displayed all the employees. From that, I had to research how the Entity Framework data models map to the object models within the software, how these models C/R/U/D and then how the 'snap-in' (the software uses a plugin based system, allowing different plugins to be updated specifically over updating the entire client) works with the host 'shell',
Although, I disagree with #1. If you're only doing the bare minimum, you're digging a hole in this massive system that'll come back to bite you.
To make sure Contracts can send quotations to our customers, I had to learn how the quotation price will change if we're discounting a regular customer, and if we're doing that, do we keep the units of sale from the last quotation?
That's only one 'snap-in' of the system, replicate that over the other departments, and you understand how everything clicks, and you can write better software.
(Sorry for the long read, thought i'd post my tale!)
I manage my company's internal management software, it allows the sales, support, development, testing, HR and contracts departments to operate as a 'paperless office'.
The first week, one of the first tasks I was given was to spend some time developing a simple plugin that displayed all the employees. From that, I had to research how the Entity Framework data models map to the object models within the software, how these models C/R/U/D and then how the 'snap-in' (the software uses a plugin based system, allowing different plugins to be updated specifically over updating the entire client) works with the host 'shell',
Although, I disagree with #1. If you're only doing the bare minimum, you're digging a hole in this massive system that'll come back to bite you. To make sure Contracts can send quotations to our customers, I had to learn how the quotation price will change if we're discounting a regular customer, and if we're doing that, do we keep the units of sale from the last quotation?
That's only one 'snap-in' of the system, replicate that over the other departments, and you understand how everything clicks, and you can write better software.
(Sorry for the long read, thought i'd post my tale!)