4 hot topics in IT that you don't learn in the classroom

Before Ewoud De Preester started working as an Axxes consultant at Jan De Nul, he went through the Software Traineeship. In this program, he received an extensive introduction to Blazor, which was never covered in his Multimedia & Creative Technologies bachelor's program.

"Blazor allows you to easily connect the backend of your project with the frontend using C#, without needing to be a real frontend developer or know other frontend frameworks. You need to ensure that you structure your project using a certain architecture. For example, Onion, where everything is neatly organized into layers based on functionality."

Currently, Ewoud uses Blazor to create a .NET 7 application. "I was allowed to set up the application entirely from scratch and choose which architecture to use. After consulting with the team's lead developer, we opted for the Onion architecture that was introduced during the Traineeship. Thanks to the lessons from my experienced Axxes colleagues, I have gained a real advantage in the professional world, and that is a significant asset."

- Ewoud Depreester

Maxime also studied Multimedia and Creative Technologies, a program that covers various technologies. However, during the Traineeship, he learned concepts that were new to him. "A good example is clean code, which focuses on writing efficient and readable code that is easy to maintain. Its purpose is to improve software performance and reduce issues and bugs."

Those aiming for clean code must think primarily in the long term, ensuring that their work continues to function without the need to constantly rewrite code. "I am now fully involved at Axxes and mainly work on frontend tasks in Angular. The Traineeship was a great opportunity to learn more about clean code and how it is used in everyday life. Those six weeks provided a good understanding of how this approach is applied in large and scalable projects. I am now able to understand pieces of code faster and contribute to such projects."

- Maxime Vermeeren

Few consultants at Axxes pursued such a remarkable degree as Lars, who graduated with a master's in Physics and Astronomy. Nowadays, he works as a consultant at Corilus, a company that develops software for medical applications. "In my Physics studies, I learned to program in Python and C/C++, mainly for conducting scientific research, which often involved processing large amounts of data," says Lars.

During Axxes' QA Traineeship, Lars learned various strategies and frameworks for software testing, including Playwright. "When I started my project at Corilus, they were not yet using automated end-to-end software testing. Since then, I have set up a framework in Playwright for this purpose and have been mainly involved in maintaining and developing automated tests. These tests have already uncovered numerous bugs and help prevent new errors from creeping into the software in the future. They provide a certain level of confidence in the product without the need for manual testing of the entire software interface continuously."

- Lars Heylen

Last year, Alexis graduated as an industrial engineer in computer science, a program that focuses on a range of technologies. The topics Alexis uses in his job as a consultant were covered in his studies, but it was during the Infrastructure Traineeship that he was truly immersed in the world of technologies such as Terraform.

"Terraform is an open-source declarative Infrastructure as Code tool that allows you to manage your infrastructure safely and predictably. Written code models the different infrastructure components, allowing the tool to provision, modify, and clean them up," says Alexis.

Alexis was so convinced of Terraform's value that he and his team organized a session led by a Team Captain from the DevOps/SRE Team to provide further insights into the tool. "Following this, several proof of concepts emerged on my project where we use Terraform as a provisioning tool, and I can contribute to them."

- Alexis Martens