It’s been a month now since the HNG Internship officially kicked off and we’re now at the part of the internship where people really get to learn what real-world programming is like.
Since day 1, you’d have started to acquire different skills from design using Figma, learning GIT for collaboration and getting familiar with PHP the core programming language that was used for this year’s version of the HNG Internship.
So you could think of all the previous stages of the internships as preparation for stage 5 and ultimately stage 6. Now, what did stage 5 have in store for interns that started off this real-world programming?
HNG Internship Stage 5 Task
- Finish 3 tickets on Pivotal for project Roomhub
Mark Essien, the founder of Hotels.ng and the lead for this internship called Roomhub the project that will prepare you for 90% of what you will need in the real world.
And that’s quite true, for stage 5 all you had to do was just finish 3 tickets that were put up on a project management tool called Pivotal for Roomhub. Sounds simple enough hey?
Well, yes and no. It does sound simple, however, it is by no means simple at all. Roomhub is a PHP based project that is setup via docker. It is essentially a hotel room management system, hence the code name “Roomhub”.
Since this is a real-world project, the variety of tickets that one could take were quite broad ranging from anything you can think of in frontend development as well as backend development.
However, to most who had just started learning computer programming through this internship, Roomhub was like Mount Everest. Fortunately, there was also another alternative project that you could have worked on which wasn’t as intimidating.
That project was the HNG Internship website. The same task applied for you to go to stage 6, you just had to finish 3 tickets in that project and get them accepted. Once that’s done, you’d be in stage 6. And like Mount Everest, the internship just kept getting steeper and harder to climb.
HNG Internship Stage 6 Task
- Get 10 points for contributing to project Roomhub
The task for stage 6 was quite similar to the one for stage 5. However, instead of just finishing a fixed number of tickets, you had to get a certain number of points.
The way you’d get the points was by finishing tickets. Each ticket that would be available on Pivotal had some points assigned to it, from 0-3. Depending on whether you had done project Roomhub tickets earlier in stage 5 or HNG website tickets, you’d need to finish fewer tickets in stage 6 or more.
So for example, it could take you 4 tickets to complete stage 6 task if all of them had 3 points each and you had done tickets for HNG website earlier in stage 5 or it could take you one extra ticket if you had done tickets for Roomhub in stage 5 since the points you got there still counted.
Already, this sounds just like what you’d do when working on a real project. There’d be tasks that need to be completed and you’d complete those tasks while other people you work with also completed others. However, there’s still a lack of that strong team aspect since you could just work on your tickets alone and progress through the internship.
Teaming Up To Win Some Prizes
Since stage 5 of the HNG Internship, people were already teaming up to work on different projects together so that they could win some prizes if they had the best project. That side of the internship had been optional up until last week when it became mandatory for you to be part of a team otherwise you’d be saying goodbye to the internship.
Each team had a different aspect of the Roomhub project that they’d work on and if your team managed to get the most points by submitting tickets that get approved then your team would not only win the prize but they’d also get to stay in the internship.
If you’re unfortunate to be part of a team that loses then your whole team gets disabled. From the prize money that is won, not all team member would get a portion of it, you could be just working for free for the team if they decided to save you when stage 5 got disabled or you might not have been that active enough to deserve the pay as well.
So working hard and being seen for the work would get you to be one of the people who get the pay at the end of the competitions.
My Experience With Stage 5 And Stage 6 Of HNG Internship
Without a doubt, stage 5 is where I spent the most time in before proceeding to stage 6 because at first I had no idea where to even begin contributing to Roomhub and the tickets were also scarce since others were grabbing them before I got the chance to.
However, I ended up switching to doing tickets for the HNG website and before I knew it, I had 3 tickets accepted and joined stage 6. And stage 6 brought me back to Roomhub which I thought I had managed to evade earlier.
Slowly, Roomhub became familiar to me and I was almost able to start contributing. Unfortunately, with the rate that the tickets were disappearing as well as how much time they demanded, I decided that stage 6 was going to be the end of my journey for HNG Internship.
At this point, you’re probably wondering so what did I learn from taking part in the HNG internship? Well, stay tuned for next week when we wrap up the journey. 
Tweet me @Rayhatron with your thoughts about stage 5 and 6 of the HNG Internship or just to say hi.