Software Dev. at Berea College

  Based on my experience with this internship, I would say the most important skills needed for an individual to be successful in this organization and in this role is to be willing to learn and try new things, asking lots of questions, and be willing to adapt to changes even if they do not feel comfortable at first. First of all, it is important to be very willing to try new things because they will get exposed to all sorts of tools that they may have never seen before and in that moment, it is more important that they are willing to learn those new tools than wishing that they had already learn it, because they cannot always already know things ahead of time. It may make them stay ahead of everyone else if they already knew all sorts of programming languages and tools, but if they are willing to learn new things, they can still end up with the same level of skill set even if they started barely knowing anything. Secondly, it is important that they are asking a lot of questions, b...

A technical knowledge that I brought into this internship was my understanding of the logic of functions in the back end from the Berea Computer Science courses. This knowledge helped me better understand the way things were working in the back end in the CELTS application. I applied this knowledge when I was working to add the new feature in the create event page of the application. We had to new a new field into the event table in the models and modify the functions that currently existed in order to make sure that the new field is working as intended and also modify the tests so that they all pass and that the new features we added are being tested. My knowledge with understanding function logic helped me understand the process that existed before we added our feature and also helped me get a better idea of the changes I need to make in order for the tests to pass. I think that the biggest challenge that the majority of the team faced was adjusting to working with a new partner ab...

Before starting my internship, the questions that I had were the difference between backend and frontend, what it means to be a software engineer, and if I would enjoy a career as a software engineer. From this internship, I learned that the front end is what the users interact with, and the back end is the logic that happen behind the scenes. I was also able to quickly figure out that I had the most experience with backend from the Berea College Computer Science courses and that I did not have a lot of knowledge in frontend at the beginning of the internship. The life of a software engineer in the real world would be very similar to my internship, except that there would probably be more strict deadlines because in this internship, we are given as much time as we need to learn as much as possible. I feel like I would enjoy a career like this internship for the most part since I enjoy researching about an issue that occurred in the application, figuring out why the issue occurred, and ...

  Types of oral communication required at my internship include discussing with my programming partner on how I think we can solve an issue and letting them know what I think about their opinions. This is important because if partner and I are not aware of each other’s ideas and opinions, then we could be trying to implement two totally different things, which could mess up the whole code or be implementing the same thing, which would make our efforts be pointless since we both wasted our energy just to get to the same thing. It is best to discuss and work together so that we are not creating redundant code or are struggling by ourselves. Other oral communication include going to my supervisor to review a code that my partner and I have finished to get feedback on what we did well, what we need to fix, and why those changes are needed. This review process lets us know what our supervisor is looking for before he approves of our code and also lets us understand the considerations th...

  In this internship, I have met my goal to experience what it is like to be a “software engineer” as I was able to see that the day-to-day workflow and workload depends on the issues that I chose to resolve with my partner. The pace that we solve each issue also depends on how hard or complex the issue is and the amount of prior knowledge that we have that is relevant to the issue. I also realized that maintaining a website exposes us to various languages and even if we started out with little experience, we would eventually end up knowing a little bit of everything. For example, this internship is the first time I have had to use JavaScript, HTML, and other front end related tools intensively in order to add a new feature into the program. As of right now, my goals have not changed much, and minor new goals include getting experience with solving issues in various areas of the Celts program and trying to become familiar with working both front end and back end, since I came in wi...