The student perspective – Edward Chen

I have been a developer intern at UBC CIC since January 2021. Before starting, I was feeling both excited and a little anxious about the challenges here because there were a lot of firsts. For instance, this was my first internship, my first time working remotely, my first time using AWS, and my first time developing web applications. Therefore, I anticipated learning a lot over the next eight months.
 
Reflecting on the first couple weeks of the internship, it was all about learning AWS through workshops, a Udemy course (on Cloud Solution Architect) and React. The Udemy course was particularly helpful, as it provided me with a general idea of how various services are structured and used on AWS.

In 6 months, I have been exposed to around 10-15 different services on AWS and had the chance to work on two projects. Each project presented challenges and learning opportunities to the developers. In addition, the developers had a lot of freedom to design, build, and test the applications that they wrote. Because of this, I’ve realized that CIC has provided an experience that is rarely found in other workplaces. You would feel as if you got to take ownership of a project and be able to see projects that went from ideas to a working prototype. 

To summarize, CIC offers extremely diverse learning opportunities to student developers. Depending on the project, sometimes you will use IoTs, blockchain, database, or even machine learning services available on AWS. Having the curiosity to explore different tools, computer languages, frameworks and libraries is the key to success. For future interns, please do not hesitate to learn new technology on AWS because the CIC has many enthusiastic individuals that are willing to help you with your learning.