Week 7 (July 22 - July 26)

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 about every two weeks and taking turns being a driver and a navigator. As we collaborated with people with different skill set, different working styles, and different levels of knowledge, we had to get used to being the person with more experience sometimes and being the one with less experience other times. Personally, for me, the biggest challenge was in being a driver. I did not enjoy being driver because I like to think quietly sometimes, but I also do not want to make my partner feel excluded in the process. I enjoy being a navigator more, but I do not enjoy it when my partner does not explain to me what they are doing or does not answer the questions I ask them. Ideally, I like it best when we are both drivers and working on solving different parts of the issues and then coming back together to explain to one another the changes we made and to discuss if they are good or bad ideas.

Usually, we have morning meetings to update our supervisors and co-workers on the progress we made and the obstacles that we currently face. Besides those meeting, I feel like we update our supervisors on our progress more frequently at the beginning of the internship. We used to get our supervisors’ opinion every time we made some changes in the application and also got their opinions first before creating a pull request. Over time, however, I think we have gotten more familiar with the application that we do not feel the need to let our supervisor know of every change we made unless it would totally change multiple areas in the code, and we are not sure if they are good ideas. Now we also just create pull requests and use the time that our supervisors used to review the code to also get feedback.

There were lots of things that I had to teach myself how to do when it came to working on the front end since that was the area that I lacked the most in knowledge and experience. Examples include coding in JavaScript, using AJAX and JSON to send data from JavaScript to Python routes and back to JavaScript, and also using cookies and session to change toggle states. These were topics I had no idea about when I first encountered them, and I had to do extensive research by watching YouTube videos, reading documentations about them, reading what others have said on different forums, and even asking ChatGPT. The majority of my time was spent researching than coding during these front end issues, but I learned so much more about the front end now and have a better understanding of them, so the time I spent on researching definitely paid off.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Week 8: July 29 - August 2

  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...
Read more

Week 4 (July 1 - July 5)

  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...
Read more

Week 6 (July 15 - July 19)

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 ...
Read more