I am Marnic Janssen, a student in IT at PXL college with a specialization in Application Development. I always have been interested in computers and IT since I was young. This interest only grew over time, so I knew I wanted to do something in IT. Besides IT, I also have other hobbies like skiing, playing soccer, and fitness.
The project
My assignment was an internal application, called the cv-app. This application ensures that every employee has an identical CV layout.
The start
On my first days at JIDOKA, we went through the existing code and set up the project on my laptop to learn how it currently worked. I also investigated the used technologies and looked up some Pluralsight courses to further improve my knowledge about them. We started by adding an edit and delete function to the config page of the cv-app. Adding this feature in the frontend was pretty straightforward, and making the connection to the backend went pretty well. To make sure this feature works correctly, I had to write tests in both the backend and the frontend. I had some experience writing tests in the backend, but none l for frontends. So it was quite a challenge to get these right. After writing these, I wanted to learn more about them, so I continued to do so during my internship. During this time, I worked primarily with Angular and Java Spring Boot. I already had some experience with Java and Spring Boot, but less with Angular. Despite the lack of experience with Angular, adding these features went smoothly.
I also got to know several colleagues in my first few weeks at JIDOKA, and they were all nice and helpful. If I had a question or just wanted to socialize a bit, they were always open to it, and even if they didn’t know how to fix a problem, they would still try to help.
Time flies, when you are having fun!
In my first weeks, I learned the ins and outs at JIDOKA and implemented my first features. After a few weeks, I attended a daily stand-up where I could tell what I was doing and if I experienced any difficulties. I also met up with Bjorn on a nearly daily basis to see if he could help me with anything or explain something I didn’t understand. It was fascinating to hear him explain certain things, and I learned a lot from him.
Unfortunately, after 5-6 weeks corona struck again, and I couldn’t go to the office anymore. I had to get used to working from home again. But with the great help of my colleagues and some challenging but fun features to implement, I got used to it pretty quickly again.
Around this time, we also made our first sprint planning. This sprint lasted two weeks, and I had to finish several features within this time frame. At the end of each sprint cycle, we held a retrospective and a self-reflection. It was great to see what I did well and not so well, and we took the good things to the next sprint and the not-so-good ones we tried to improve.
The last weeks
Fast-forward a couple of weeks, and I managed to add some great features to the cv-app and fix some annoying bugs. I am currently in my last week, and time just flew by. Now, all that is left is to fix some minor bugs, and I will be ready to present my work to the jury. If I look back at those three months, I must say I did not know nearly as much back then as I do now. I learned so much during my internship, especially about Spring Boot and Angular. I did not like writing tests. During my internship, I learned the benefits of writing tests and improved a lot.
All in all, it was a great internship with lots of laughs, lots of learning, and meeting great people. This internship exceeded my expectations, and I would like to thank JIDOKA and Bjorn for allowing me to complete my internship and investing their time in me.
