By Priyanshu Singh
Recently, I had the incredible opportunity to participate in my very first dev sprint – and what an experience it turned out to be! Each day was filled with learning, collaboration, and meaningful interactions with amazing developers from Tech4Dev.
On one of the days, we had a session with Devi, where we got an insightful overview of system design. It felt great to have the opportunity to attend and learn from this session.
We also had a session on Claude Code by Himanshu, where he demonstrated how powerful AI agents can be and how they can accomplish tasks much faster.
We also had two more sessions with Vijay and Shamoon, both of whom were amazing. I learned a lot of new things I didn’t know before, and it was a great learning experience overall.During the Shamoon session, we focused on identifying factors that were decreasing our system performance. I got the chance to dive into the platform, explore other repositories, and understand how other people think and approach problems.
A Fun Evening at Devi’s Home
One of the most memorable moments of the sprint came in the evening when Devi invited the entire team to her house. The location was beautiful, and the atmosphere was warm and welcoming.
We played games, shared a lot of laughs, and created memories that I’ll cherish for a long time. The highlight of the night was when it was Ninad’s turn during one of the games — he somehow always got the most challenging diagram to draw! We laughed until we couldn’t catch our breath. It was the perfect way to unwind and bond as a team.
Experiencing Onam
Another special moment during the sprint was experiencing the Onam celebrations. For the first time, I got to try the traditional Onam — a delicious festive meal served on a banana leaf with so many different dishes.
The hospitality and warmth of the people who served us made the experience even more beautiful. It felt like such a privilege to witness and be part of this cultural tradition.
Exploring Bangalore
On the last day, which was a Sunday, we took some time to explore Bangalore. I made a new friend, and together we visited Orion Mall, where we had our first meal of the day. Shijth treated us to a big party meal, and we had a great time talking with people from other organizations. I also made new friends like Apeksha and Om, which was one of the highlights of the day. Afterward, we continued exploring the city, trying local food, and sharing experiences. This day felt special because it allowed us to strengthen our bonds outside of work and create deeper connections.
Ngo sprint
The first and second days were intense since I had to get the sprint bot ready and also prepare a prototype idea for my assigned organization. I also wanted to meet everyone on the team, especially my whole team, and it was a great experience to finally meet them all.
The other day, we had a bug bash event, which I thoroughly enjoyed. I was able to solve most of the tickets, and it turned out to be a great learning experience for me, especially on the frontend side.
The energy and vibe everyone brought were amazing! We even played games in between work, which acted as a refreshing break. I absolutely loved it ,it was such an enjoyable and fun day.
The real excitement began when all the NGOs arrived, and we officially started working on the prototypes. I was assigned to Sattva, And that’s when the real fun and the real learning truly began.
When I first began working with Puneeth, we focused more on understanding the core problem and exploring solutions, and hadn’t yet explored deeply into edge cases or scalability. As we went deeper into the project, and with guidance from my senior, we were able to help Puneeth build his prototype. He was amazed by the edge cases we considered and the decisions we made to make the solution more robust.
I also guided him on how to use APIs — such as creating a collection, logging in, and performing other actions — and helped him build a simple prototype for his work. Additionally, I showed him different ways to integrate Google Sheets and other tools into the workflow.
Through this process, I personally learned a lot as well. I gained valuable insight into how users think and realized that tasks which seem simple to developers can often be challenging for non-technical users. This experience taught me the importance of thinking from a user’s perspective and considering usability right from the start.
After finishing my work, I also helped Siddhant from Fortify Health solve his queries related to the API. He’s a college student, just like me, and we quickly became friends.
Along with Shijith, I also spoke with his senior and worked together to solve the API problems. It was a great moment to interact with the organization’s engineers and collaborate with them directly.
Overall, it was a fantastic experience. While helping Puneeth understand the Glific API, I was also able to discover several bugs in our current API and its documentation , which turned out to be very valuable for improving the system.
Even at night, we had so many fun activities! . I made a lot of new friends, and we played UNO late at night. During that time, we shared lots of funny stories from our lives 😂, and I really enjoyed every moment.
I was the one who always lost though 😅 — I kept getting the worst cards and ended up losing every game! But honestly, that just made it even more fun.
Overall, it was a wonderful experience meeting all my seniors , especially one of my favorites seniors, Himanshu, who always made the day enjoyable.
On the last night, my team even made me sing in front of the entire Tech4Dev team 🎤. Everyone enjoyed it, and it turned into such a fun event. With all the cheers and smiles, for a moment, I actually felt like I might be a great singer myself 😄.
