Fourth: Redmadrobot developers winter internship

For the fourth time, we chose 20 iOS and Android developers and taught them to write code like robots. And although the algorithms of robots are (almost) perfect, every year we roll updates. How the system has changed this year, the internship organizers say.

In our program

There are things that remain unchanged - every year we review the internship program based on changes in technology, new experience of the team and feedback from interns from the last set. We explain the difficult things, which are easier to explain, and on the contrary, we dive into some questions in more detail. We are talking about the current stack of technologies that we use, and how the processes of robots are built.
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Artem Kulakov, Android Team Lead:
- From the program for Android, they threw out, for example, CI, since it is quite simple and not very interesting. Something was updated and we added new lectures - this year Google finally presented a normal ORM, and during the course we talked about how to work with it. They didn’t repeat the video from the presentation, but examined in detail how to design databases from scratch, how the process is built, what components are present in it and how it all works with the new Google solution.

Ivan Vavilov, iOS Team Lead:
- Over the past year, we have greatly changed the Continuous Integration process within the company, and general and special lectures on testing have appeared in the internship program. We also took into account popular testing tools and CI, such as Xcode UI tests, Snapshot tests, Fastlane and Danger.

There is even more security. We talked about something in a new way: for example, the list of threats to OWASP Mobile Top 10 has been updated, and something remains relevant as the practice of (not) storing confidential information in code.

Artem Kulakov, Android Team Lead:
- A lot of attention was paid to UI, because they more or less figured out the guts, but the interfaces leave much to be desired. Last year, we talked about the basic things about material design, this one is more interesting tin: animations, layout preparation, custom views, and so on. Not all developers love and know how to do UI - in this area there are always fewer specialists than those who like to dig under the hood. And few designers can create interfaces that can be implemented without pain.

About selection

We had a little more than 200 applications from Android developers and 150 on iOS. As a result, they took 20 interns - 10 per platform. Internship of robots is not for beginners - but for those who already know something, we can give a good growth and an invitation to work.

Ivan Vavilov, iOS Team Lead:
- All those who submit applications to us, I divide into three categories. Those who never wrote iOS and wants to learn - such people don’t get to us, because they just don’t understand anything. The second type: people with a lot - from 7 years old and above - experience in development, who want to switch to iOS - we are sure that such people can pump themselves and come to us for an interview. The internship is designed for those who are very interested in growing and working in a company like ours: many projects, the need to quickly master new solutions, and so on. Therefore, we take those who have already worked in iOS, and give them the opportunity to try new architectural approaches, approaches to setting up projects and ensuring security.

Artem Kulakov, Android Team Lead:
“At Redmadrobot, we deal with things that the average developer either didn’t know or couldn’t try. Often, in the product team, 1-2 developers are sawing an application from year to year, without being able to try something fundamentally new - Room, Clean Architecture, Kotlin - and this is evident from the answers to the questionnaire. The knowledge that we give will be useful only to those who have already twisted in the projects. We do not take on completely green developers, because they are not for us, we do not take on mature specialists who want to change their specialization, for example, to switch from backend to mobile development, therefore this is unlikely to be useful for them. Very few people get an internship, and these should be people who want to learn and to whom we can give something useful. Hiring is important, but we set ourselves educational goals.

How was it

As usual: general theory lectures and special topics on platforms, plus homework assignments. Checking homework and analyzing mistakes is one of the main advantages of internship robots. We tried to optimize the process in time and labor costs, but at the same time we looked at the work of each and answered all the questions that arose.

This year, both groups wrote applications similar to the combat projects of robots. Android developers wrote a GitHub client, and the iOS team wrote an application similar to one of our projects.

Ivan Vavilov, iOS Team Lead:
- By the way a person behaves at lectures: how he listens, how he asks questions and how he then performs tasks, it is clear how well he understands, and we bring the material. When one intern does the task well and the other bad, one understands, and the second does not. If the whole group does badly, we have said badly. On average, 1-2 people do not reach the end of the internship. We calmly relate to this, but in our team we want to see those who have done all the tasks, even if not perfect.

Roman Rulin, trainee:
- Reading the reviews of previous interns, I realized that it would not be easy. The competitive moment in homework, of course, added motivation, I tried to do all the extra tasks and get the maximum points. In the last minutes before midnight, before handing over the homework, you had to write code with great speed, counting the remaining time, and send a letter at the last minute.

Dmitry Gachkovsky, intern:
- One of the main features of the internship is a thorough check of homework by teachers. It disciplines and ensures that efforts and mistakes will not go unnoticed.

Ratings

Every year, internships, courses, articles become more, the level of the community grows, and our interns are already more critical of the information. This year, for the first time, the material seemed too simple for the guys - however, only at first.

Artem Kulakov, Android Team Lead:
- The level of the weakest interns of this set corresponded to the strongest since the last internship. It is evident that the community is developing, people are drawn to the knowledge. If last year we spent a lot of time on the selection, because we were looking for the strongest of the many candidates, this time the selection was already among the best.

Ivan Vavilov, iOS Team Lead:
- In the iOS group there was no significant difference with the previous sets. Our interns have very different experience: from a year or more in commercial development to working exclusively in educational projects. It is interesting to observe how people grow during the internship - often less experienced learn more quickly than those who seemed more promising.

With the same amount of experience, developers now have more knowledge, albeit shallow ones, and higher content requirements. And this is a challenge for robots.

Artem Kulakov, Android Team Lead:
- Firstly, participation in the internship gives our children an excellent experience of public speaking. Secondly, the position of the guru increases the degree of responsibility - you conduct your own research and more deeply understand the topic to answer questions. Plus, the preparation of lectures helps to structure everything that you already know, and to pump over the oratorical skills. For us, internships are a school that helps grow authors of articles and speakers for Russian and international conferences.

Total

New lectures and lecturers, strong trainees and, of course, the completion of the robots. Traditionally, the best receive an invitation to our metal ranks. On this internship there were three of them. In total, the Redmadrobot development team now has 7 former interns - including those who have given lectures for interns this year. In the past five years, an internship is not the shortest and easiest, but effective way to work with robots. And if for some reason you did not get on it this year - in the next we will repeat.