It's been quite the extended break over on this blog while school took over most of my summer, after which I was able to enjoy three weeks of break before this term started. After getting some decent rest and being able to catch up with friends back home, it was soon time to jet back to Waterloo for my second co-op internship at BlackBerry!
Day 1
The morning of my very first day at the office was spent in a group orientation, where we got to learn a lot about BlackBerry's history, culture, and where they were as a company today. It was a really insightful session; as I got to know more about the company, quite a few of my preconceived notions changed. It was really inspiring to hear from employees who had worked at the company for many years, weathered its many changes, and were clearly still very enthusiastic and dedicated to their roles. Furthermore, we got to meet (albeit quite briefly) the fellow co-op students that would be working on roles throughout the company.
After lunch, I set off with my (very lovely and welcoming!) team and began to set-up my work environment. I'm really glad that I get to work on a Linux system! It's definitely a bit out of my comfort zone, as I'm still a dedicated Windows user so even much of the command line syntax is different, but it's funny because I was actually brushing up on Linux terminal commands a few weeks ago while on vacation. I've actually been hoping to become more comfortable with Linux operating systems, so this is the perfect opportunity to do it.
As for what I am working on, there isn't that much that I can say. And so for the rest of my co-op reflections this term I'm going to focus more on what I'm learning and goals that I have for improvement. I'm already very excited for what's to come!
Day 2
Today was exciting as my team attended a talk held by a Senior Manager of Software Product Management; it got me thinking more about some of the other aspects of software development. While it is easy to determine the technical requirements for a piece of software, there are many other perspectives that the software must be considered from in order for it to become a successful product. He discussed many products and their approach to tackling these additional perspectives, and it was interesting to consider things that I'd previously never given much thought to.
Day 3
I got to begin working on my first task for my team's project today! What started off as something that was supposed to be fairly straightforward ended up being more complicated than we'd originally thought, but I made quite some progress today and my mentor, as well as the entire team, has been so helpful in helping me out. Compared to last term, the process to push code is much more complex, for good reason as the code base is so much larger and there are many more people working within it. The learning continues everyday and I am really excited to move on into more in-depth tasks in the coming weeks. Our team uses Scrum, and so it's been really cool to see the various processes and methods that we'd learned about last term propagate into real-life applications at work. It's nice to be able to hear about what everyone is working on at our daily stand-up meetings, so that the entire team stays up to date on not only our own but everyone else's progress.
Day 4
I finished my first task today and also spent some time refactoring my code to clean it up as much as I could. Time continues to fly by so fast when I'm working, so I'm glad that I was able to finish my work in time for the weekend! I just need to test my implementation a bit more before it can be sent off for in-depth testing; since there are some issues with the test data, we plan on actually testing it with real data on Monday.
I also received my work phone today, a BlackBerry Passport! It's crazy because I remember writing about it from when I saw it pre-release at a BlackBerry information session during my very first term. I can't believe that it's already been a year since then and that I now get to use one for work. Like I mentioned in my other post, I really enjoy using the touch-sensitive keyboard, which is really convenient for typing fast because you can delete words and select word suggestions without taking your hands off the keyboard. As I only previewed it briefly last year, I look forward to playing around with it some more and discovering its full capabilities.
Throughout the week, there have been moments where I feel lost just looking at the codebase and times when I've felt frustrated that one problem leads to another. However, at the same time, there have been occasions when all of a sudden things become clear, or when seeing my feature come to life on a phone for the first time. I can truly say that I'm enjoying every moment, both the ups and the downs, as well as everyone who I've met along the way. Overall, it's been a really exciting first week and I am most definitely anticipating what's to come.
Day 2
Today was exciting as my team attended a talk held by a Senior Manager of Software Product Management; it got me thinking more about some of the other aspects of software development. While it is easy to determine the technical requirements for a piece of software, there are many other perspectives that the software must be considered from in order for it to become a successful product. He discussed many products and their approach to tackling these additional perspectives, and it was interesting to consider things that I'd previously never given much thought to.
Day 3
I got to begin working on my first task for my team's project today! What started off as something that was supposed to be fairly straightforward ended up being more complicated than we'd originally thought, but I made quite some progress today and my mentor, as well as the entire team, has been so helpful in helping me out. Compared to last term, the process to push code is much more complex, for good reason as the code base is so much larger and there are many more people working within it. The learning continues everyday and I am really excited to move on into more in-depth tasks in the coming weeks. Our team uses Scrum, and so it's been really cool to see the various processes and methods that we'd learned about last term propagate into real-life applications at work. It's nice to be able to hear about what everyone is working on at our daily stand-up meetings, so that the entire team stays up to date on not only our own but everyone else's progress.
Day 4
I finished my first task today and also spent some time refactoring my code to clean it up as much as I could. Time continues to fly by so fast when I'm working, so I'm glad that I was able to finish my work in time for the weekend! I just need to test my implementation a bit more before it can be sent off for in-depth testing; since there are some issues with the test data, we plan on actually testing it with real data on Monday.
I also received my work phone today, a BlackBerry Passport! It's crazy because I remember writing about it from when I saw it pre-release at a BlackBerry information session during my very first term. I can't believe that it's already been a year since then and that I now get to use one for work. Like I mentioned in my other post, I really enjoy using the touch-sensitive keyboard, which is really convenient for typing fast because you can delete words and select word suggestions without taking your hands off the keyboard. As I only previewed it briefly last year, I look forward to playing around with it some more and discovering its full capabilities.
Throughout the week, there have been moments where I feel lost just looking at the codebase and times when I've felt frustrated that one problem leads to another. However, at the same time, there have been occasions when all of a sudden things become clear, or when seeing my feature come to life on a phone for the first time. I can truly say that I'm enjoying every moment, both the ups and the downs, as well as everyone who I've met along the way. Overall, it's been a really exciting first week and I am most definitely anticipating what's to come.
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