Ann Arbor Spark Intership Blog

    As promised, pictures from demo day! I had an amazing experience talking to a bunch of different people from different backgrounds. I was able to connect on LinkedIn as well, so the overall experience benefited the company along with myself.     This week, I worked on the Admin Portal, which is separate from the Web Portal. The Admin Portal is designed to help manage account creation, as those who use our platform will not be able to sign up on their own. Those at Roadsr will be able to add an account, and from there, a user can then log in with an authorized email. There has been a lot of discussion on how we want to manage this workflow while ensuring that there's not too much control on Roadsr's end. I have been thinking of ways to optimize the workflow while also balancing the power of reads/writes. Especially when considering deletes, it takes a lot of reads, especially data tied to the company.    Because there is a lot of...

    This week's primary focus has been on preparing for a demo to present the work we have done, which is scheduled to take place at Ann Arbor Spark. The event is called "The Waymo Journey: From Moonshot to Your Next Ride." I am very excited to present the work I have done over the past 7 weeks. From deploying a functioning web portal to designing a database, it's been a journey learning new technology. I hope that through the event, I will be able to show the progress I have made. We also all plan to wear matching Roadsr shirts, so I will definitely be posting a picture next week of the demo :)          As for the work that I have been doing, I mentioned refactoring the code I have been working on to ensure I have been following all best practices to ensure future scalability. This week, I have added a couple of more features, primarily focused on user accounts and the set...

As I near the end of my internship, I’ve been reflecting on both what I did well and the areas where I could have improved. This kind of reflection is essential as a developer. Often, it's only in hindsight that we realize the steps we took to achieve something could have been done differently, especially as we begin integrating new features or systems. It’s important to recognize that most people learn by doing. As much as we try to plan ahead as software engineers, an idea that seems optimal in theory may not hold up in practice. Unexpected challenges are part of the process. Over time, experience helps us better gauge risk and anticipate obstacles, but that insight only comes from trial and error. Through my work during this internship, I've made it a priority to ensure that my code is well-documented and easy to refactor for future implementation. I’ve been improving my codebase to promote reusability and follow best practices, so that future developers can build on it more...

    It’s crazy to think we’re already at Week 5, which is more than halfway through the internship. It honestly feels like just yesterday we were getting started, figuring out our tools and meeting the team. Now, heading into Week 6, I realize how much I have learned and how much there still is to learn.      This week especially reminded me of the  Dunning-Kruger effect:   the more you learn, the more you realize how much you  don’t  know. What I learned during this internship has taught me invaluable technical, business, and even teamwork skills.  By opening up your knowledge to these sectors, you understand the difficulties that arise when establishing a start-up and how constantly changing requirements can make it challenging to have a set game plan.       The primary focus this week was getting the videos displayed from the cloud on the website.  The most challenging part was...

    Week 4 defined itself with lots of application of my technical skills, specifically coding and project development. With the task of creating a web portal, one of the most essential features is the ability to provide helpful, low-cost metrics to fleet managers, helping to increase safety  within their fleets. Like most web development applications, user experience remains a crucial aspect of usability. Furthermore, the information we present on the website must be displayed clearly to help enhance fleet managers' ability to make informed decisions based on various metrics.     With my market research, I already had an idea of what metrics are helpful in fleet management and defined user flows alongside a lo-fi prototype. However, as I began development, I recognized  how much I had missed when implementing ways to display those metrics. I noticed gaps in my origina...

         As we move into week three, I have begun to shift into more technical work, utilizing my software engineering skills. After gathering requirements, creating a lo-fi prototype, and refining based on feedback from my mentor, I was tasked with creating a high-level web portal to display data from an IoT device. I had the freedom to choose my own stack, so after weighing different options, I settled on something that will hopefully allow for scalability in the future, also by including documentation that will guide others through my codebase.       I set up a CI/CD pipeline early on to ensure no roadblocks for frontend deployment while also ensuring compatibility with the backend integration. While I have the main components set up, the more I started to delve into details about routes and specific pages, I recognized I needed to reconvene with my mentor to get an idea of how high-level we want to be, while also aligning with f...