Internship@Novell (Evolution)

With my college days gradually fading away, my research activities slowed down. An internship was on the cards with me into my last semester. Me + 3 friends joined Novell as interns, and yet another good thing that has happened to me. Joined the Evolution Team and that was my chance to test my skills. I’m sure everyone would agree to the fact that the best in you comes only when you are guided and bestowed confidence and trust. Working with some of the best minds boosts up your confidence and promises a steep learning curve.

First week was fun and getting used to the new environment. Then started all the fun. First, the test cases. Then, couple of bug fixes and there we were, all set and on course to implementing our first feature set and to launch off.

I and Suman (my co-hacker and best buddy at work now) started working on the Delegate feature[1] for Evolution Exchange. I started off with the Mail part and Suman on the Calendaring portion of it. We hacked all summer, 3 days studying at college and the rest 4 days as Interns.

At the end, when we completed it and collected our certificates, I realized there was a definite change in me. I could boast of making a lovely impression and a name for myself in the community. Looking back that day, I realized I’d become a much better hacker. An ideal platform had been set for me. The open source culture had taught me a lot of things:

+ Passionate people dwell in here.
+ Recognition comes by contribution and not by experience.
+ Steep learning curve. Reading others mind through their code is fun.
+ Code is your best documentation.

That’s what we’d done

[1] Exchange has a feature that enables you to give other users permission to access your Exchange account. When you assign this permission to another user, that user is a delegate. You can enable a delegate user to perform the following tasks on your behalf:

* Read your email messages, and send messages on your behalf.
* View your appointments, add new appointments, and update existing appointments.
* View your tasks, add new tasks, and update existing tasks.
* View your contacts, add new contacts, and update existing contacts.