I can't believe I'm halfway done with my Internship. The number of times I've gotten stuck is more than the times I've made progress. My ego has definitely gotten many hits from that.
Gone with the old, In with the new
The original internship project timeline was well-drafted by my mentors and they looked manageable. However, as the proverb goes: man plans, God laughs 😅. We've taken a completely different trajectory from the original milestones that were laid out:
- Separate ChRIS Store bits from the front "promotional" page.
- Allow admin to customize featured plugins on the front page.
- Update developer quickstart page to pull from ASCII doc instructions/wrap ASCII doc output in JSX.
The new plan, for now, is to implement Pipelines Workflow for both the ChRIS Store and the ChRIS UI. Then tentatively proceed with the originally planned tasks.
Progress so far...
I have to say that I've made less progress than I anticipated for the first half of my internship (I definitely intend to make more significant progress for the remainder of my contract). I have managed to begin my first task (building the promotional page for the ChRIS Store). I was left with creating a documentation page as part of the site on the Store. I've also implemented the bare minimum for the new Pipelines Workflow task and slowly working with my teammates to get it at excellent functionality.
The Pipelines Workflow implementation was supposed to take about 2 weeks but I've taken twice the time. The API that I use isn't well documented, for now. Figuring out how to use the APIs required a significant amount of help from my teammates. I've started documenting it to help out the next person in my shoes.
What I'd Do Differently
I would've started by documenting the APIs as soon as possible. In addition to that, I should've spoken up after being stuck for more than a day. I tend to try and unblock myself for almost 3 days before reaching out for help. Yes, I know that maybe it's not the ideal methodology but I'd always like to make sure that I did all that I could before reaching out for help. I never want to come off as "lazy".
In Conclusion
I still plan on completing the previous tasks allocated to me. They are a huge opportunity for growth and a challenge I'll gladly take on. At the end of the day, progress is all that matters.