Welcome to Your Blog!

My name is Adam Butler, and I am attending the TY course at Red Hat’s office in Co. Waterford.

What is Red Hat?

  • Red Hat is an open-source company mainly focused on software engineering and developing
  • Acquired by IBM July 9th of 2019
  • Red Hat is known for its own open source projects using the Linux operating system.

Monday

Red Hat Office

Monday Morning

We were greeted Monday morning by all the Red Hat staff that were involved in the TY program, and many of the staff explained to us What Red Hat is about, what work they have done, and the history of Red Hat.

Staff showed us to our desks and gave us a tour around the office, showing us the different teams, conference rooms, and facilities. across the office. Red Hat has lots of leisurely facilities for staff, including a TV, switch, Xbox, pool table, and snacks and drinks for employees.

Monday tasks/activities

  • Guess the celebrity
  • Agile introduction
  • Potato head team task

These were all activities that we did throughout the day that allowed all of us to get to know each other. but also learn how the Red Hat ecosystem works, which uses Agile, a team-based system where teams come together and learn. how to spot problems and adapt without having to fully disregard projects or work. This system provides better work flow. and allows teams and co-workers to learn from each other and allows small changes to happen instead of massive changes. without wasting hours of work.

Staff that worked with us

  • Gen
  • Pat
  • David
  • James

Tuesday

GitHub Logo

What we talked about

For Tuesday, the day was more structured and organized. The staff who were working on the TY program setup a timetable from 9:30am to 4:00pm. The day started with “stand up.” which consisted of explaining the plan for the day, what we were doing, and just general housekeeping. We started with Bash, which was our first lesson learning how to properly code and using the terminal. We learned about simple commands like echo, locating files, and creating a.txt file using the terminal, and using code with variables to produce text using x and y variables with Pat.

GitHub

Later that day, at 11:00 am, Pat and Gen taught us how to write our blog scripts using the provided template and guides provided by Red Hat and taught us the fundamentals of GitHub as it is. a important part of Red Hat due to being an open source company, they allow anyone to access their code. We learned about how Red Hat uses GitHub as a way of learning and experimenting with code. without the risk of breaking code. GitHub provides a way for staff to learn what works and what doesn’t and also work as a team.

Student Life & Women in Tech

After lunch, we talked about what it’s like to be a student in college and the different paths you can take after getting your degree. We talked to Sean and Jen about both their college experiences. We also spoke with Oxona, who came to Ireland 2 years ago from Ukraine; she gave us an insight about what it is like to be a woman in the tech industry.

Wednesday

Red Hat Tys

Wednesday Morning

All of us in the TY program met up in one of Red Hat’s conference rooms, where we were on video call to Kevin Quinn, the senior technical writer for Red Hat. We were also accompanied by James Mernin. and Gen, who is in charge of the TY program.

What we talked about

  • Present, future, and past of technology
  • Servers
  • Leading global companies
  • Careers in tech

Throughout the session, we talked a lot about how companies set out with a goal, and in a lot of cases, they accomplish more than intended. For example, Amazon originally set out selling books. But once they started gaining traction and selling various products, they were in need of servers to run their website and background processes. They realized it was more efficient to let others use their servers. during slow parts and times of the day. This is how Amazon Web Services was made and was another source of income for Amazon.

Another example is Nvidia, a company that consisted of producing GPUs for gaming but now has a major business in AI. and servers, as companies globally are now using their powerful graphics cards. This has resulted in their stock price going through the roof.

Engineering task

For the end of the day, we were set with the task of building a roller coaster out of straws and tape, and we needed to have a 360-degree loop included. So our team myself, Riona and Jeff, had a promising start, but right at the last 20 minutes the project fell apart, but we learned lots about what works and what doesn’t work and how to work as a team. We also had visitors from the states who judged all of our projects.

Thursday

Thursday Morning.

Thursday morning we had breakfast with all the staff in Red Hats office. We had an amazing breakfast and later had talk with Sean, an employee at Red Hat. about AI and the different types of AI. We learned how AI is used in everyday life and how companies need massive computers to efficiently generate this type of AI in massive AI computer centers.

Types of AI

  • Generative AI
  • Machine Learning
  • Deep Learning

InstructAi

Later we talked with dominic about InstructLab one of Red Hats open source projects. All of us in the TY program tested this new software by contributing with new information for the AI to learn. This means that when a user asks the AI a question relating to the topics we contributed with , it will answer with the prompts we provided for specific questions

Thursday Afternoon

After lunch, we set out producing a rain garden using AI. I was partnered with Oisin, and we set out to produce a rain garden for the Red Hat office in Waterford. Our design consisted of a sloped roof on the main office building with a drain for the runoff rain. This rain is then collected from the drain and then stored in a tank underneath the surface. Once the tank reaches full capacity and the weather turns sunny, a solar panel then sends a message to the tank to allow water to flow to the sprinkler system, and then sprinklers are powered by the solar panel, allowing water to reach the plants during sunny weather.

Thursday Evening

For our last gathering, we were on a Zoom call with Paulo, one of Red Hats employees from Italy. A massive Ferrari and Formula One fan who showed us how Red Hats telemetry software could be used to read telemetry data within the Formula One game. Paulo showed us a video of him working on a small project with his son by reading the telemetry data coming from the game and telling us various stats like speed, engine temperature, weather, brake force, throttle force, and lap times, all of which use telemetry data. This is the same software that Formula One engineers use in the pit box for live analytics.

Friday

Red Hat Office

Friday.

On Friday, we developed robots using microbits. Myself, Cian, and Jeff teamed up and developed a robot car, which we raced. We learned how to use a simple programming language that used an input from a microbit and a receiver to control the car. Our bot later won both races against other teams and set the fastest lap time. LED lights were also included on our bot for left, right, forward, and stop signals on the remote and on the car.

During the day we also had pizza and gave back feedback in our retrospective session with Gen about what we liked, disliked, and what we wanted more of for the next TY group so Red Hat can improve the TY program more.

What i liked

  • GitHub blogs
  • Roller Coasters project
  • Micro Bit car project
  • Pool tournement