The first time I logged onto JIRA and saw those words, “At Modulus we love you”, I knew this journey would be super great.

The Last Day

How time flies, my summer internship just ended last Friday.

In the morning, I wrote something down for the exit interview I would have in the afternoon and did the last scrum. Brandon, Matt and I had a great talk during the interview. Then I had a foosball game with almost everyone who plays it, did a doubles with Brandon against Matt and Meredith. Never had I played so many foosball in a day before. My shirt was even soused by sweat.

After that, I started to remove my stuff one by one from that MacBook Pro I took from Charlie’s hands, which was really painful. I went back home and grabbed its box, wrapped it up carefully and put it on my table. I took out the keys and fob and laid them on that box. I washed the cup of my last beer at Modulus, shook hands with Brandon, and had a little nice talk with Jack. Then Matt walked me out and we had the last few words.

That was it. I can’t believe that I was still coding a day before on Thursday, then I wouldn’t be here fighting with my team anymore.

Review

I would like to share a brief review on it. It started from June 1st, ended on August 1st, exactly two months. What I did during it are as listed below:

1. Started to learn Node.js with the help of the book “Node Up and Running”.
2. Began to use TextMate.
3. Built my first project: server dashboard.
4. Joined in and helped with Node Cincinnati road show.
5. Learned about different neat and useful modules, async, lodash, express, request, commander…
6. Built my second project: gump.
7. Learned about unit testing and modules like mocha, sinon, nock, chai, istanbul.
8. Built sitemap web page for design.
9. Built a script to convert invoices to .csv file.

My Node.js coding skill was built up almost from scratch during these two months. As my knowledge on Node grows, I become more and more attracted to it. Moreover, my projects consist of both front end and back end, forcing me to understand the interactions between them. I feel much more engaged to web development now.

Another important thing I learned is the professional coding workflow. It is pretty different from building personal side projects and I can see clearly why it is reasonable. Efficiency is enhanced, mistakes are prevented. Agile, just as its name implies, is a very flexible way to build things up. I should say that I feel so comfortable in such a workflow. It would be an important factor of my choice of job in the future.

Testing is also a big thing I wanna mention. Like I once described, it reminds me of somebody’s left and right hands fighting against each other. Though writing tests is time consuming, it is worth doing it because it does help finding the logical flaws, improving robustness, and improve the code. Now I am able to set up automatic testing, write tests, and do continuous integration on my own.

I had a general impression on how senior guys code. That is the most exciting part. I finally noticed the necessity to upgrade myself to higher level - the pro level. Otherwise I would have been satisfied with toy projects and stopped reaching out.

I really gained a lot from this internship. I gained knowledge, gained skills… I even gained my weight.

Well, nothing is perfect. I have some pities as well. This is my first internship, and probably also the last one. I wish I had stayed longer and contributed more projects and code. I wish I had been better at English, then I could have been more active and introduced myself fully to you. It is always in my mind that instead of colleagues, trying to be friends, teammates, or even bros with others, which will inspire more potential and broaden one’s vision.

Comments

In a word, Modulus is AWESOME! Not only for the free beer, but for foosball and the free atmosphere. And most importantly, for the great teammates I have ever had. I will definitely introduce Modulus to my friends, no matter as a choice of their internship, or a choice of hosting their apps. I hope I can be back!

What about the estimate on me? I asked for some comments on my performance at Modulus and won a high opinion from Matt and Brandon. To be honest, I didn’t imagine that. I thought I just did what I should and acted normally. But things turned out very well, and I received much help from others to get them done. Your words will continue encouraging me to do better on my way.

Future

I am more than sure that I will be in the Node.js community after this internship. After my intern, I feel that there are still a lot more I can do and a lot more amazing stuffs that worth digging into. Like I once discussed with Matt, I am eager to focus on a single area and master it. My adventure on Node.js will be continued. The next big things are gaining more knowledge of JavaScript, reading through the Node API documentation, and studying the source code of popular modules. These steps will be written down as post series in detail and published to my blog. Also, I wanna be more social and reach out to the Node community. No matter online forums or offline meet-ups, I will put them on my priority list.

Sorry

I would like to say sorry for a few situations. Although my pronunciation is not bad, sometimes it is hard for me to understand fully of what you guys are talking about with each others. I am definitely not enough familiar with the names of famous people, trending dramas, or jokes. Sometimes I got them, but still not able enough to react quickly. That is probably because I have been here for only a year. So, if I did something weird, awkward or even annoying, I wanna apologize and say it is probably not what I meant.

Best Moments

The first time I logged onto JIRA and saw those words, “At Modulus we love you”, I knew this journey would be super great.

“I am pretty sure you would be pro after this intern.” - Matt said after our foosball game.

“This is yours.” - Charlie said and handed me over a new MacBook Pro.

“I love to see it moving.” - Jack commented when he saw the line chart.

“That’s a very good way of thinking.” - Matt’s reply on my question: how can I be as cool as you?

“Your English is good. I didn’t even think about that. “ Matt said after I said sometimes I don’t quite get the talks between you guys.

Thanks

This might be the longest section. I’m grateful for almost everything and everyone.

Thanks to Charlie for showing up at the career fair with Matt. I have to say nothing is gonna happen but for you. You have built an amazing company and a great team.

Thanks to Matt for the exciting games, nerdy talks, and jokes we had. My coding world is fully refreshed by my super cool, picky supervisor. You set me a great example on how to become a cool senior developer. I love the pickiness you have, it wins a sense of trust on your choices, because if you say something is great, then it must be really great. You let me in on the first day and walked me out on the last day. Thank you very much.

Thanks to Brandon for all the projects and tasks specially assigned to me. I know it’s not easy to come up with things for newbies. There is a sense of balance between how hard it should be and the total workload for each task. You even had several followed stages and improvements, thus helped me experience more on the iterations of a project. All these tasks fit me so well and gained my confidence.

Thanks to Jack for all the problems you helped me solve and the causal chats we had. You impressed me with your profound knowledge and experience on web development. More than that, you always have nice little ideas for improvement on those projects, which inspired me to go some steps further.

Thanks to Aaron for the coolest toys I’ve ever seen. I didn’t imagine I can meet someone who is fond of China here. If I stayed longer I could have shown you more Chinese funny stuff, such as all the hilarious movies of Stephen Chow I have ever seen. And thank you for setting up such a responsible example in our team. It is my pleasure helping you build those office facilities.

Thanks to Taron for your advices on dashboard, your smile and all the fist bumps. I really wish I had went to gym with you guys after work. I was shocked when you did that handstand in the office. You are amazing.

Thanks to Jeremiah for the cooperation on gump and all the foosball games we had. You impressed me much with your neat and beautiful codes. It’s also amazing that you have natural 6 abs. I am jealous! We are the only interns in this team and I believe we both do our jobs well.

Thanks to Meredith for that lunch you bought me and all the games. Although we don’t have similar work, I am still impressed by your professional attitude. Especially that time, you almost prepared that fantastic road show on your own. It is great fun to watch you play foosball, by the way. Our team becomes more colorful because of you.

Thanks to Ghuffran for the funny jokes and LumenoCity tickets. I admit that I didn’t quite catch you sometimes, but I know it must be fun. At first I don’t even know how to pronounce your name, but it is pretty close to “Good Friend”, which is exactly the impression you gave me.

Thanks to all the guys that made this team. As a Modulite, I am proud!

Modulus, Live Long and Prosper!