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On July 20 2011 06:37 Xanbatou wrote:Show nested quote +On July 20 2011 06:23 TwistedHelix wrote:
My advice to people with internships is this:
Its easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.
Don't be afraid to take some initiative and risks- not sure how to do something? Guess! Just be sure you have someone check your work before it becomes to official. I usually keep a running list of questions for my boss so I can ask him a bunch at once rather than one every ten minutes.
You're not expected to know everything as an intern- guessing right is more impressive than guessing wrong, which is more impressive than asking (IMO). Alternatively, couldn't you discuss your approach with whoever it is you are involved with, rather than waste your time doing something wrong? Then they get to see your insight, you learn, and you don't waste your time?
This works with some people. Others (like my graduate adviser) think that their time is so valuable that they get mad whenever you ask something "trivial". More often than not my research buddies don't know either. Then it becomes a matter of finding a solution and backing it up. It's definitely uncomfortable, and you're certainly not immune from mistakes, but more often than not your education kicks in and leads you in the right direction.
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On July 20 2011 06:37 Xanbatou wrote:Show nested quote +On July 20 2011 06:23 TwistedHelix wrote:
My advice to people with internships is this:
Its easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.
Don't be afraid to take some initiative and risks- not sure how to do something? Guess! Just be sure you have someone check your work before it becomes to official. I usually keep a running list of questions for my boss so I can ask him a bunch at once rather than one every ten minutes.
You're not expected to know everything as an intern- guessing right is more impressive than guessing wrong, which is more impressive than asking (IMO). Alternatively, couldn't you discuss your approach with whoever it is you are involved with, rather than waste your time doing something wrong? Then they get to see your insight, you learn, and you don't waste your time?
Its situation dependent. I just had a bad habit of asking too many questions. You def want to be sure you have the correct approach, and discussing that with coworkers is a great way to go about confirming that. I'm just saying to be careful that you don't become too dependent on asking for help, and don't be afraid to trust your own judgement.
Edit: And like the poster above said, many people think their time is valuable and don't want to spend time walking you through trivial issues. That's why I make a list of questions to ask all at once.
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United States4991 Posts
On July 20 2011 06:23 TwistedHelix wrote:
My advice to people with internships is this:
Its easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.
Don't be afraid to take some initiative and risks- not sure how to do something? Guess! Just be sure you have someone check your work before it becomes to official. I usually keep a running list of questions for my boss so I can ask him a bunch at once rather than one every ten minutes.
You're not expected to know everything as an intern- guessing right is more impressive than guessing wrong, which is more impressive than asking (IMO).
Hmm, I don't really agree about "guessing right"... While it's good to come up with your own approach on things, if you truly don't know about something, it's best to consult with someone on the matter. Not necessarily actually your boss - as an intern, it helps a ton to find some helpful co-worker (commonly who hasn't been in the field for an eternity, so they understand better where you're coming from) who can help you out with bouncing ideas off them, giving general advice, etc.
A lot of what you're learning as an intern is also how to work in a team (something a lot of universities don't teach very effectively), and building relationships with your co-workers is a large part of that.
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On July 20 2011 05:02 Xanbatou wrote:
Well, it doesn't seem like anyone was really bothered by it today, so I think i'm okay.
However, today I learned that you should always have a release directory and a development directory. I didn't cause any problems, but I modified the client and I guess people were surprised because I never made an official release or anything. I typically make sure it works before we go out and demo it, but now that it's been pointed out, it makes a lot of sense to have both a development directory and a release directory.
Is this something they are supposed to teach you in school? Maybe I haven't taken that class yet. Or is that something that's taught in industry?
It's not really something they teach because almost every development house uses different version control software and uses it in a different way.
We don't separate "release" and "development". It's the same to us. Our code is always ready for "release" (we just call it deployment).
The pipeline goes like this:
- Developer checks in code
- Build server sees new revision, checks it out, runs unit and integration tests
If the build passes all the tests then it will create JARs, package dependencies and deploy to our test environment. If it doesn't pass tests then we get an email detailing why.
If there was a major new feature or bug fix we let people do some testing in the test environment to make sure things that can't be covered by automated tests still work.
If testers are happy then that build gets deployed to production.
Sometimes we deploy to production multiple times a day. Sometimes none at all.
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In none of my interns (or my fulltime now) do I ever have a development and release. What's the point in having release? I mean, if QA says "there's a bug blah blah" and it doesn't appear in your current development code, then there's no point in fixing it since it's been fixed. Every place I've been at if we use version control on a project everyone (barring weird circumstances) uses the same branch and checks in against the same code.
Either way what's the worst that could happen? You're probably not working on mission-critical code (you said client interface right?) so if you screw up a little it's no big deal. Just be careful and double check whatever you check in against the latest code. Everyone knows you're an intern.
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On July 20 2011 11:50 King K. Rool wrote:
In none of my interns (or my fulltime now) do I ever have a development and release. What's the point in having release? I mean, if QA says "there's a bug blah blah" and it doesn't appear in your current development code, then there's no point in fixing it since it's been fixed. Every place I've been at if we use version control on a project everyone (barring weird circumstances) uses the same branch and checks in against the same code.
Either way what's the worst that could happen? You're probably not working on mission-critical code (you said client interface right?) so if you screw up a little it's no big deal. Just be careful and double check whatever you check in against the latest code. Everyone knows you're an intern.
Well, the reason we have release and development folders is because sometimes we have to demo for customers, and if we are in the middle of developing something that breaks existing functionality, it's much better to be able to just use something that is known to be good. It's kind of worrying developing new stuff when you have to demo the next day.
Also, what I am working on is semi-critical, because it's the client interface to a system. I mean sure, if I break something, the only one impacted is me (or the end user), but I don't think I can afford to do that anymore than the developer working on the server code could.
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EPT
