Trainingship

Since everyone seems to wonder how things are going with my trainingship at ESOC/ESA in Darmstadt, I thought I’d share some impressions I had until now.
There are two ‘dimensions’ or even more about a trainingship I think. The first one is not the work itself, but the organisation around it. There is this crazy theory you learn during university classes and suddenly, some stuff of that makes suddenly sense. So now we have a problem here: The best thing for management classes would be to first complete a trainingship in a big company, then attend the classes (even the base classes). For technical classes, a trainingship should take place after a couple of semesters (as it does now).
So what about the work itself? Well, I can’t tell anything – it’s top secret :). Really though – I can talk about some insight I had about proper software project documentation. In my case, I know that someone will have to carry on the work I am doing now, and that makes you feel that a documentation really is needed. Also, a usage documantation is needed when you know that people will actually use the software on a daily basis. I still think software should be self explaining by having a very good user interface, but in some cases, a little help is never a bad idea.
What I am really sad about is the fact that at university, no student ever carry on a project that has been started by another person.