I have been the oldest in all my classes, right from ESL classes, community college courses, Hackbright Coding Academy and now in this internship too. My fear about this internship was that all the people that I would be surrounded by are of much younger generation who are very quick and agile at using smartphones and computers. I always felt if I would be good enough like the younger generation at coding.
My mentors are very patient and helped until the interns are comfortable. Sometimes if I didn’t understand what my mentor was trying to explain, they would explain in a different way slowly until I understood. Sometimes they clarified in the Slack channel that I can go over slowly and multiple times. Amazingly they even provided Pair programming with me. I had struggled to understand Redux for several months before the internship started, but as soon as my mentor SageRoss explained it, I was able to understand. I am very fortunate to have both of my mentors.
I learned so many skills. While creating React components, I learned the use of Switch, Routes, NavLink, pass the props, using mapStateToProps and mapDispatchToProps. In Redux, I have a clear picture of how actions, constants, and reducers work together. I also learned Ruby on Rails web framework (model, view, and controller) which is quite different from the Python web framework flask, that I had learned in the Hackbright boot camp. I was able to make a Home Tab component by changing the haml page with Ruby code in it. I also finished the other three tabs partially. Another topic that I learned was to create data in the JSON file. I gained more confidence in using git for branching, rebase, pull, stash, show, diff, show HEAD, merging, and push, I think I have acquired more knowledge than in last one year. It is like my veggie garden turning green everywhere in the spring season, that I have learned many skills in a short period of time. which is pleasantly surprising to me. I feel that I have gained more skills including debugging skills during this internship.
After I finished my coding Bootcamp earlier, I felt overwhelmed with a lot of information and it took a while to come out of the state. But this Outreachy internship helped me to feel more confident and proud of myself.
I have completed creating a campaign navbar which involved creating three components campaign_stats.jsx, campaign.jsx, and campaign_navbar.jsx file. In order to get data from Redux, I have created campaign.js file in reducers, campaign_view_actions.js file in actions, and campaign.js file in constants. I also finished the Home tab and the other three tabs are partially finished.
I have planned to finish this project myself. That way I can improve my programming skills and gain more confidence. I have talked to my mentor about it and he agreed.
Lalitha's blog 