Reflecting on the Thirteenth Week of My Internship
Nov. 10, 2023 · 3 min read
This week, our tech exploration journey unfolded with significant discoveries and practical insights. It involved diving into Ruby, a dynamic programming language, and understanding the concept of gems for efficient code sharing. We delved into Git’s decentralized workflow, which emphasizes local operations and autonomous development. Lastly, GitHub Pages amazed us with its capability to host static webpages for free.
Thirteenth Week Reflection:
Day 1: Installing Ruby and Running the Engineer’s Log Locally
Ruby is a dynamic, object-oriented programming language known for its simplicity and productivity. In the Ruby ecosystem, a “gem” refers to a packaged library or application that facilitates easy sharing and distribution of code. Gems, managed by the RubyGems package manager, encapsulates reusable pieces of code, streamlining the process of sharing, installing, and managing dependencies in Ruby projects.
As interns, creating our markdown file for weekly reflections is part of our responsibility. So, for today, our task was to install Ruby on our local machines. This installation empowered us to run the engineer’s log locally, providing a seamless environment for reviewing and verifying our outputs before confidently submitting a pull request to our mentor for further feedback and collaboration. By the end of the day, after facing some challenges during installation, I was able to successfully install Ruby and run the engineer’s log locally.
Day 2: Git Decentralized Workflow
Today, our mentor introduced us to the concept of Git having a decentralized workflow. Git decentralization means each user’s copy is a standalone repository, allowing for local operations and independent branching. Developers can work autonomously, making changes and experimenting without constant network access. This redundancy ensures resilience, and collaboration remains seamless as changes can be synced when needed, fostering flexibility in both online and offline environments.
Day 3: Discovering GitHub Pages and Elevating Writing Quality with Grammarly
Today, I explored GitHub Pages, and I was completely blown away. I didn’t know that you could host static webpages for free using GitHub, despite having used this version control service since my first year of college. If I had known this was possible back then, it probably would have improved my grades in my school projects. Nonetheless, I am thankful that our mentor introduced us to this, and it will undoubtedly be pretty useful in the future.
In the afternoon, we received feedback from our mentor on our weekly reflections, and he suggested that we use a Grammarly extension for our VSCode. This allows us to enhance the quality of our writing by checking and correcting grammar and syntax errors. Implementing this tool will contribute to improved communication and presentation in our work.
