This is week 7, also known as the halfway point in my internship. I have learned so much while working in this environment, and I’ve still got 7 more weeks to go. I do kind of miss school though. Working on small projects, and doing theoretical work. Here, I don’t really get to practice a lot of theory, but I do pick up some code style tips.
What I did
This week I got to plan out a user story for myself. Then I went over it with my team, and we found some ways to improve it. I then coded it, along with two other user stories, and all put them up for pull request. It has been a busy little short week.
TIL
7/3/2017
Today I learned that planning features is tough because you have to consider a few qualities of the feature. Does the plan for the feature blend well and integrate with the existing code? Will it require major modifications to the existing code? All of this needs to be done with proper coding style, and with well-formed code. After that you need to check if the feature will be easy for future developers to expand on and use. Not all of these qualities are necessary for all features, but they are things to be considered.
7/6/2017
I finally got around to completing the SMaC training course recommended at orientation. This is a social media course, and even for someone who had been using social media all their life, I learned quite a bit.
While I cannot aptly summarize the entire course in one paragraph, the most important thing I learned was that social media is a team effort. Every employee should at least pay attention to social media regularly, in order for the company to respond well to the customers. Customers now live on the cloud.
7/7/2017
There’s always another way of doing things when it comes to code. No matter how many times I’ve looked over a piece of code, and played code golf, there’s another way. Nine times out of ten there’s a better way too.
When someone else looks at your program with fresh eyes, they’ll see changes you will not have even considered doing. This a big advantage of code reviews, and through them, I have seen different ways of looking at my code. Self-improvement requires revision, and revision literally means seeing again.
Personal
There was another sail boat race this week after the fourth of July. We came in third out of five boats in our class, middle of the pack. I guess what matters more than our result is that I learned some tips on how to sail. Another sailor from another boat was invited onto ours, and gave some good advice.
All week I’ve been spending time at my grandparent’s lake house rental. It’s always a great time, water skiing, tubing, small boat sailing, swimming, and reading books. You can’t really ask for a better vacation spot in my opinion.