Reflecting on My Internship Experience
Observations During My Week
I could not find much time to research companies this week. I can listen to case studies, investing books or podcasts in my car while commuting. However, all of that can help very less compared to doing homework myself on a few stocks. If there is a voice assistant that can read parts of annual report, financial statements/notes of any company on my request, that would solve my issue!
On Wednesday, I attended a fireside chat with Brett Hurt. I saw a very humble person with enormous success through his work ethic. I almost felt like even if all his material accomplishments are taken away from him, he will still have the same quality of life (which is what this blog is about). I took away one important advice from him: validate an idea for 5-6 months before committing fully to it. He does it in the context of startups but it can apply to other things too (like stock ideas). Unless I validate my ideas, I can end up in a completely wrong place after a long time. I thoroughly enjoyed watching and listening to him.
Reflecting on My Amazon Internship Experience
I am almost done with my internship (two more weeks left). I gained exposure to technologies I was not familiar with (like dynamodb, angularjs, spring). More importantly, I learned how good software development is done. The single most important takeaway from my internship is to write good unit tests. I got exposed to the idea of test driven development. Though I did not entirely follow it, I opened my mind to it. I am more confident now to develop durable and highly available systems.
This is the first time I was developing production software for around forty hours a week (I was not writing code all the time though). There are highs and lows to it. I was frustrated on many occasions. In my experience, the number one cause for that frustration is problems related to the development environment of a project. If I were to do my internship all over again (or any software development job at a new company), I would spend time answering these questions before jumping into any coding:
- How does the build process work for development purposes? I would build the entire service at least three times. I would try to reduce the manual steps to a simple keyboard shortcut. If I can do this, I will be happier and more productive when coding.
- How can I run unit tests and add them into the build process? I realized it is very important to do this in the beginning of the project because I will get too comfortable with the workflow of not writing tests as I progress. Without writing tests, I am not confident about my code. Without confidence, I am not a happy developer.
- How does the continuous deployment tool work and are there any integration tests running on it?
Even if I do this, I will still have challenges with the development environment. This is part of being a developer. I need to accept the possibility and manage my frustration when it happens.
