Q / A SESSION WITH OUR INTERNS
This Spring Spyhce had two young and talented interns. Dana Craciun and Florin Tomozei joined us for a two months internship, and we were really curious how was their experience.
Here’s what they told us about their time at Spyhce and how this python internship helped them better understand the industry.
Q: Dana and Florin, can you tell us a bit about yourselves and how you got in touch with the IT industry?
Dana: I'm a Computer Science student in my second year. My interest in development started during the first year of university, when I realized that most of my knowledge about programming was basic at most. So, I started doing some research on my own, aside from my university assignments. I found myself immersed in a whole world I had no idea existed, a world which I was excited to know more about. I've come a long way from then, but I still have a lot to learn.
Florin: I am currently studying Software Engineering at the Babes-Bolyai University of Cluj, as a follow-up to my bachelor's degree. My past professional experience includes some Java, ASP.NET and PHP development, spanning across a time period of about two years. In the meantime, I've started working with Python and the Django web framework, and I can say that I am slowly, but surely falling in-love with it. Why IT? Well, that was simple. I was wavering between IT and Med. school, having a big passion for biology and chemistry. And then my mother said: "Go to IT. That is the future". And so I did!
Q: What was your first impression about Spyhce?
Dana: From the first moment I walked in, I felt that Spyhce is a different workplace, there was a warm atmosphere and everybody was very welcoming. Everything moved along very smoothly, so we were able to start work on our internship project from the first day!
Florin: I thought: “well, here is the place where problems and emergencies are treated with care and reason!” in team meetings and hallway conversations that sprang out of nowhere. So, according to my expectations, the first day of work was a blast, filled with new and exciting things. We were introduced to the rest of the team, assigned to our mentors and got to set up our working environments. And so the fun and enthusiasm at work begins.
Q: It is not appropiate to talk behind the colleagues back, but I’m very curious about your integration process. How did it go?
Dana: I was really impressed with the fact that everyone around here is down to earth and always ready to help, no matter what difficulties we may have faced during the development of our Python projects. Not only that, but we also got a lot of suggestions on how to improve.
Florin: Everybody at Spyhce speaks with passion about the technology we use, and are eager to share their knowledge and experience with us. The crash courses we attended are filled with important information and experience-based good practices that would make our life easier and give us a good grasp on the theoretical part of Python and the Django framework. We learned from the start to follow the coding etiquette that comes with Python (PEP 8) and all of the concepts that were presented, came along with much needed visual representations and "how-to" code examples and scenarios. Our colleagues are fun and always helpful, jumping to our rescue every time we find ourselves in distress.
Q: What are the newest things you learned since you became a part of Spyhce team?
Dana: In the last few weeks, on the non-technical side, while working with Florin on our project, I have learned to value collaboration more. On the more technical side, I've learned a lot of good web development practices!
Florin: First-hand, documentation is your best friend. If there is a problem, most surely there is a solution (or several, as in most cases) and also there is another person that stumbled upon that same problem and found that solution. If he is not in the team, you can find him online with the help of our good old friend named Google (or Stack Overflow).
Q: Give us some examples of tasks you liked working on. What about the opposite?
Florin: The whole Django framework is fun to work on. It has many features that are centered on solving recurring problems, thus making the development process much easier. Some tasks that I have worked on involved the creation of a user account system to manage and allow access to the application we are making. Django came with a framework for users upon which we have built a user system that provided to our needs. The whole principle of DRY (Don't Repeat Yourself) is something that I love about Django, since I hate redundant and repeating tasks and code. Cannot say that I hate something that I have worked on until now. I always like a good challenge.
Q: In your opinion how is this internship here going to benefit you?
Dana: I think this internship has given me a better insight on the way I interact with people, code and everything in between. I've come to understand how important it is to communicate, to accept that sometimes you might be wrong and that at the end of the day the best solution might not be your own, but in spite of that you need to keep learning and developing yourself.
Dana, Florin, the whole team at Spyhce would like to thank you for your amazing work! Looking forward to working with you!
If you still have questions that remained unanswered or you would like to experience life as a Python intern at Spyhce, we are just a few clicks away. Contact us via email and we’ll gladly respond!