My Internship Experience at Camp K12.
In this post, I will go through my internship experience at Camp K12. The whole post is divided into four sections.
1. Description of the product that I built.
2. My experience building the product.
3. My experience at Camp K12.
4. My experience at Gurgaon.
In September of 2018, I was offered a Full Stack Developer Internship at Generation Blockchain. You can read more about how I got the offer here.
Generation Blockchain is a subsidiary under Camp K12 that builds Blockchain based educational products like Certification System, Blockchain Learning Courses etc. My internship duration was one month from November 30 2018 to December 31 2018 based out in Gurgaon.
During my internship, I worked with web technologies and blockchain technologies like React / Redux, Node.js, MongoDB, Express.js and Web3, Solidity, Truffle, Mailgun, PDFMake etc.
Description of the product that I built
My internship project was to build the Generation Blockchains’s Blockchain based Certification System from scratch. The system can be used to certify people for achievements like completion of a degree or a course or an internship or a camp etc. The system works using Smart Contracts that have been deployed on Ethereum Network to issue certificates.
Anyone can issue certificates on the system. Once a person has been issued a certificate, he/she will be notified by an email like this.
The email contains their certificate ID and a PDF version of the certificate summarising the achievements and skills gained. The certificate ID is verifiable and can be shared with anyone.
The PDF has a unique link and a QR Code pointing to the same unique link where the certificate can be verified. The QR Code can be scanned from a printed certificate which makes it easier to verify the certificate.
On clicking the unique link, it will take you to the verification page which looks like this.
Since the certificates are stored on Ethereum Blockchain, they are near impossible to be hacked or altered. Anyone with a certificate ID can verify the authenticity of the certificate using the application. The application directly interacts with the underlying smart contracts to verify the details of the certificate.
My experience building the product
The overall experience of building the product was good. I’ve learnt a lot of things during the development of this product that I did not know before.
My perspective on frontend development has changed quite a bit. Before building this product and before this internship, I used to not give much preference to frontend development thinking that it is not challenging enough for me. But after doing this internship, I realized that building frontend apps was so much fun since a lot of functionality should be implemented. Mostly, I was amazed by how complicated frontend apps can get and how challenging it can be at times to implement specific features.
I know that many people first used Angular and then jumped ship to React, but I have started with React. I started learning React after Anshul Bhagi(Founder, Camp K12) told me that I will be getting a React based assignment during my internship selection process. I’ve loved React / Redux since then. Now, I can’t even imagine my life without having client development code and server development code in separate folders 😁.
When building this product, I have gained experience of using many packages that do not have tutorials written on them. And so, I am left to read the documentation and find what’s necessary for me and what’s not and trying things out.
Also, when I was building this product, I’ve sailed many times into uncharted territories and gained useful experiences from them. Like for example, I faced a lot of trouble when working with auto generation of PDFs and Emails since I never worked with them. But now I am very confident that I can take on any such challenge and be able to finish it no matter what.
My experience at Camp K12
My experience at Camp K12 was I should say, quite amazing. I did not expect Anshul Bhagi to be so friendly and supportive. And the full-time developers, all I can say to that is they are awesome at what they do. I am always amazed by how they are able to develop such complicated applications.
Although the team is quite friendly to me, in the starting days, I used to have trouble with fitting into conversations as I am not a fluent Hindi speaker. But as the days passed by, I got acquainted with the team.
The whole team is very hard working be it marketing or design or development or operations.
Camp K12 has kids coming in every Saturday to learn programming and app development. Seeing happiness on those kids’ faces when they have built something useful and something that they are proud of is an amazing experience.
Camp K12 is an early stage startup and so, there is a lot of autonomy in what can be done and how it can be achieved. And also, there are many perks like you can eat at any time you want and you can work anywhere you want in the office and you can take a break at any time you want. All these things make it even more likeable and in fact, I am looking to join in early stage startups for a full-time position.
My experience at Gurgaon
I gotta say, Gurgaon gives you mixed feelings. I was there in Gurgaon at a time when there were no heavy rains or hail storms and the whole time I was there, the temperature was never below 10⁰C which is pretty awesome for Gurgaon since it has an extreme weather issue.
The city has a lot of traffic and the crime rate is too high. At one moment, you see the big concrete buildings covered in glass and the next moment, you see a news article about some crime that happened in the surroundings.
From the looks of it, Gurgaon is a modern city with a lot of working population and streets filled with cars during mornings and evenings. But the city is significantly poorly lit at night times in many areas.
One best thing I liked is that you are surrounded with all kinds of food from different cuisines. Being able to order food till midnight and getting it delivered in less than 30 minutes is something that a guy like me from a village can only dream of.
All in all, I would say that I am willing to choose Gurgaon for my career as it is filled with all kinds of innovative startups that are trying to solve important problems facing the Indian economy and also, the World economy as a whole.
Well there you go, that’s my internship experience at Camp K12.
Thanks to Anshul Bhagi for giving me such a wonderful opportunity to experience both Camp K12 and Gurgaon.