Intern report: Building an in-class chat app for Tinkercademy
Editor’s Note: Raynold interned with us for just over a month in June of 2017, and he made a great little app for our use in the classroom. It’s called TinkerChatter, and it’s pretty great, even if we (the full-time staff) occasionally crash it and spend hours wondering how to bring it back online.
Hello! I am Raynold, and I was a Software Engineering Intern at Tinkertanker.
During my summer internship, I have been able to work on existing and new web applications as a full stack developer. I was tasked with creating a web chat application for Tinkercademy instructors to use during lessons for communication. They found their existing proprietary solutions (Editor’s Note: a giant Slack chat) to not meet their needs. So I re-purposed a program called Let’s Chat, released under an MIT license and written on top of the Node.js platform, to create TinkerChatter.
This internship was so much more than just a series of programming tasks. As the project owner, I went through all stages of product development: idea generation, discussion with end users, development, live demonstrations to troubleshooting and maintenance.
It’s like Slack, but for the classroom
Before drafting the specification sheet for the project, I got to sit in on a lesson to learn more about the use cases of the chat application, and possible areas for improvement. Through the course of development, I would have regular meetings with the instructors to discuss planned features. I was also tasked with the deployment and maintenance of the web app. I learned valuable skills such as web server administration, version control, and user testing.
Login page
Software development aside, this internship has been a priceless experience. Tinkertanker has an open office concept, making it easy to catch colleagues for quick discussions. I was surrounded by talented interns and full timers whom I often sought advice from whenever I got stuck. All of us were technology enthusiasts which made for exciting chatter during breaks or after work hours. Also, Tinkertanker has a very well stocked pantry, and I was very well-fed during my time there.
I enjoyed my internship in Tinkertanker. It felt very rewarding to push a product through all stages of product development and am glad to see that it provided great value to the company. The company is also involved in many other exciting projects, such as their micro:bit classes and kits, and their GuestDay app, which some of the other interns were working on.
Editor’s Note, because you can’t get rid of me: Raynold is a second-year Computing student at the National University of Singapore. He interned with us for just a few short weeks, because he had school commitments, but we really wish he could have stayed for longer. (And not just because we messed up the TinkerChatter server within a week of his leaving.) Raynold’s a quick learner, an independent and self-motivated coder, and a great guy to have around. Thanks for joining us, and for writing us this great little tool!