When Uplift started our internship, one of the things we wanted to make sure of was that the experience was valuable to not only us, but more importantly valuable to our interns.
We asked our interns what they felt they learned during their time at Uplift, and this is what they said:
Eric Baldus
Prior to this internship, I had no idea how to apply my knowledge of computer science to the industry world. There is a huge knowledge gap between what people learn in college and what they learn in the industry. Thanks to this internship opportunity, I have started to close that gap. I’ve learned about test-driven development, using the command line interface, working with repositories, continuous integration pipelines, API and much more. Learning as much as possible was my primary goal for this internship, and I am confident that I have accomplished this, and will continue to do so thanks to Bryce’s guidance.
One of my biggest takeaways from this opportunity is the importance of problem-solving. Before my first day at Uplift Delivery, I was nervous about how little I knew in certain areas. After a couple weeks however, I’d say that it’s near impossible (or at least very difficult) to know everything about software development. The ability and eagerness to problem-solve will make up for what one doesn’t know and serve as a catalyst for success. This has certainly been the case for me.
The thing I have enjoyed learning the most is test-driven development. Test-driven development is a software development practice in which unit tests are created before developing actual code. This ensures that all changes made to software is incremental, structured, easy to manipulate in the future and most importantly – it does what we want it to do. Wherever my future takes me, I intend to use test-driven development.
Being an intern at Uplift Delivery has been a pleasure. Everyone has been very kind and embraced me and my fellow intern Sam into their team. I especially enjoy the days when team members bring their dogs in (I have become very fond of Herbert, Scout and Tina). Uplift has shown me what kind of team atmosphere and work environment I will always aspire to have in the future. I advise and encourage prospective interns to seek opportunities from Uplift if they are eager to learn test-driven development and problem solve while being part of an amazing team!
Samuel Tucker
This internship has taught me so much. I’ve learned how to create a skeleton for an online API, web app, and mobile app. I’ve also gained some experience in Azure, Azure DevOps, and GitHub. I really enjoyed doing the behind-the-scenes coding of creating a website. It was all very fascinating and practical to me.
Overall, it has been very fun to apply some of the skills that I’m learning in my classes to problems in the real world. Working with Bryce and Eric was awesome and they pushed me to ask better questions and grow in my understanding of how coding works. I’ve learned that most of what a software developer does on a daily basis is problem solving and debugging code. It’s less about what syntax you know and more about how good you are at learning how to do something.
If you’re looking to intern at Uplift, I would definitely recommend being in person at their office. My co-workers at Uplift were always interested in seeing what we were working on and getting to know me.
I would also be prepared to ask tons of questions and to get out of your comfort zone to learn new things.
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