Back-End Development Intern at NoFish Hospitality
I spent the second-half of Summer 2016 as a Back-End Development Intern at NoFish Hospitality in the Northern Liberties/Fishtown section of Philadelphia. NoFish is a startup that specializes in home automation services for Vacation & Rental Properties, such as Air BnB. I met Co-Founders Ed Davis & Scott Pawlowski through the boss of a previous internship. Being that Scott is a graduate of Temple’s MIS Program, they were very interested to see what I could bring to their company. My title for this role was “Back-End Development Intern”, and I spent my time helping to develop the company’s new product, a Python-written Artificial Intelligent (AI) bot, built on-top the current platform, that interacts with guests to answer questions about the house/surrounding area. I found the start-up environment to be a very unique and exciting place to work. Having such a big influence on decisions, such as what back-end service or framework we should use, made the work I was doing feel very rewarding. I had the option to work in their office, or from my home depending on what I needed to do. The relaxing atmosphere made me want to work harder and help build this product out. I was also amazed by how much I learned. Before I took this job, I considered myself a very good Python programmer. I had built web apps and system back-ends before, but the AI bot was such an incredibly unique challenge. It is such a new, cutting-edge area for development that I was really forced to learn from trial-and-error as opposed to documentation on the Internet. After the length of the internship was up, I was thrilled that my experience was so successful. NoFish brought me back to continue my role and help push them from a start-up to a successful business.