WIMTACH Student Profile: Maxmillian Afanga

When Maxmillian Afanga moved to Canada, he was determined to join Centennial College’s program in Software Engineering Technology to bolster his experience for the job market. “So that it would be easier for me to fit in and learn and also compete equally in the job market,” he explained. With a similar determination, he joined WIMTACH earlier this year to enhance his professional experience as a Full-stack Developer and he enjoyed his internship so much, mid-way through his internship, he decided that he would apply for the opportunity to join more projects.

At WIMTACH he assisted the research team in a project collaboration with Sekond Skin, with a project centered on the development of an MVP consumer health and fitness mobile application for IOS and Android platforms. Maxmillian worked closely with the Back-end development team to build the APIs and databases for the application but he also played a role in the development of the Front-end development architecture for the system.

The project enabled him to collaborate with other students and learn from their skills as well. “You get to look at how people solve problems differently,” he said. “It’s really interesting because you see things from another perspective.” While he is comfortable with the technology stack he is using, he explained that the ability to practice Development Operations skills also known as DevOps, was crucial. These are skills that enable developers to automate and integrate processes between software development and IT teams. He was able to enhance his knowledge in several areas including how to set up servers, use decals, and back- up databases in case there is a failure. All of these skills are vital for all developers. “It’s really really important,” he emphasized.

Since WIMTACH Student Researchers are able to work in an Agile environment that enables constant communication with industry partners, he was able to gain a richer understanding of client relations and collaboration skills from his role. Also, a special feature of this internship experience was the ability to contribute to a project from scratch with other students. Incidentally, the Agile based environment at WIMTACH also provided a novel learning experience for him. In this environment, when each student has completed working on their independent sections of the application, they send it to each other for review and testing before merging their work. Through the reviewing process, Maxmillian was able to learn from their work which is especially valuable because as a senior developer who is often programming independently, this process of collaboration permitted him to gain a dynamic understanding on resolving errors to expand his approach to development. In fact, he noted that the Front-end developer for the project taught him a different way to structure his work, which created ease of development for future changes. “It is more structured in WIMTACH,” he added.

Moreover, his role in the project enabled him to have his first experience with Stripe and API integration, a new skill which he is very proud of. For the first time, he built the API architecture for the application and he also completed testing requirements by himself. “So, I am doing the complete Stripe [and] API integration with the system … which is something really big for me,” he said.

Fortunately, Maxmillian was hired as a Backend Developer at Sekond Skin following the end of his internship and as his internship has enabled him to further refine his skills, he is certain that other Centennial College students would greatly benefit from joining the program. “It’s different from the code that we write in class,” he said. Although he has had years of professional development experience prior to the internship, he emphasized the importance of learning and refining development skills in an open environment because of the opportunity to use the latest development architectures and libraries. As a result, he encourages other students to learn from the WIMTACH program and build the confidence needed to develop effectively. “Doing an internship [like this] is always useful as a developer,” he emphasized.

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