Investigated what Discourse is, what services it provides, the development community behind, and how they serve their clients.
Improved understanding of Bash and Windows terminal commands to navigate around file structures, verifying dependency versions, and writing small scripts to automate setup commands.
Reinforced understanding of Git and GitHub.
Studied about the basic syntax of Ruby from suggested YouTube videos.
Tools
Bash terminal, Windows PowerShell, Command Prompt
STEM-AWAY forum
Git, GitHub
Ruby
Soft Skills
Developed calm and rational debugging skills.
Continuous communication with team lead and members.
Learned to take on different roles in a team project and deliver.
Reading open-source project codebase.
[2] Achievements
Implemented best practices when collaborating with GitHub such as pull requests and creating separate development branches before committing to the main branch.
Contributed to a Notepad plugin initiated by team leads by creating show/hide panel option via JS DOM selector.
Affinity with the front end has led to a switch to the front end team to develop style sheets and add feature for the note pad.
[3] Challenges
Struggled with the reading task due to weak foundations and mediocre time management skills.
Struggled to communicate with teammates and resulted in multiple commit conflicts via GitHub.
Backend API endpoints and request handling are still really confusing.
[4] Goals for Week 7
Continue to work on the final project voted by team members.
Learning actively while doing the project alongside.
Participate and communicate constantly with teammates.
Patience when debugging.
Fundamentals take time to master and understand.
[2] Achievements
Continue to perform quick bug fixes to the javascript code and simplifying the codebase with SCSS property.
Ensure contribution doesn’t cause merge conflict with members who are more active in the development process by constantly checking for new commits.
Implemented a fully functional hide/show panel for Discourse’s notepad style feature to save space and be less intrusive.
[3] Challenges
Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to contribute to the back end team as I find the learning curve for the implementation was too hard for me so I decided to put all my energy into the front end before the deadline comes.
Some bugs took longer than expected and have caused delays in team expectations.
[4] Verdict
A lot of work, but it’s all worth it. I feel like I have become a better teammate and developer from this internship. I have better time management skills, faster pick up for new languages and most importantly a better communicator. Despite multiple unexpected circumstances that happened along my internship, I was able to communicate with my teammates to stay on track.