Throughout the summer, Skandalaris Center Summer Internship Program participants will be writing guest blog posts about their internship experience. Following is one such post. 

Beginning My Internship at TCARE

By Zachary Young (EN ’22)

Studying computer science at WashU, I have had no shortage of tests on object-oriented programming, algorithm analysis, and discrete mathematics. Many hours have been spent studying inheritance, the time complexity of a breadth-first search, or the Birthday problem.

However, when it comes to practical application of programming, I still have much to learn. This skill doesn’t usually manifest itself within academic courses — with the exception of some courses like Rapid Prototype and Creative programming, for example. The best way to learn these practical skills is to simply dive into projects you have never tackled before and to start hacking away.

And thus far, that has been my experience at TCARE during the first week of the internship. Otherwise known as Tailored Care Assessment & Referral System, TCARE aims to prevent family caregiver burnout. A caregiver can be defined as anyone who takes care of a loved one or friend by helping them with daily tasks. Our system is designed to assess caregivers and expose them to the proper resources to prevent them from placing their care receivers into nursing homes. Although TCARE’s methodology is built on years of research, it only recently started to develop a commercial product, giving it the feel of a startup. Each staff member has a dedicated role, but the tasks are fluid. For example, I work as a software engineer intern but my work can also include graphics work, whether it’s constructing a user interface or developing an infographic for a client. I find the fluidity rewarding since I plan to possibly minor in design and entrepreneurship in addition to my computer science major.

My first week at TCARE has mostly consisted of familiarizing myself with the technologies we were using. While I had experience in HTML, CSS, and Javascript, my experience with SQL and PHP was limited, so I had to further my understanding of those languages. One of my current projects I’m working on deals with security through browser fingerprinting. With another intern, we’re developing a modular approach to grabbing information about a user when they access our system. Information about the user — including screen size, computer specs, and installed fonts — can be used to detect suspicious behavior if any variables change by an unusual amount.

Within the next few weeks, I not only hope to learn software development skills, but I also hope to learn more about what it’s like to work in a startup environment.