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Discussion on: How to get the most from an internship

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ssimontis profile image
Scott Simontis

Volunteer for everything. Even the stuff that sounds like it is going to suck or isn't relevant to your career goals. At my internship, I got a chance to work in the electronics lab a lot. There wasn't any coding, but I learned how to solder correctly and debugging microcontrollers taught me everything I know about troubleshooting complex systems. Had I tried to get out of those duties, I never would have discovered how much I enjoy low-level programming.

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jasterix profile image
Jasterix

That's so true. How long did it take for you to get comfortable with low-level languages?

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ssimontis profile image
Scott Simontis

It's a process that continues even to today. In University, the professors did an awful job teaching C and didn't really leave us with any knowledge of how to use it in the real world. C itself is quite simple, it just requires a ton of error checking and handling anytime you do something.

I struggled with low level concepts. I ended up dropping out of school and never even took a physics course so microcontrollers were very hard to grasp conceptually. The data sheets for mcus are quite dense and not light reading material, so it took me a while to understand the initialization process and the configuration required to activate different forms of I/O.

With a mentor and proper schooling, I imagine it is a much easier process.