An internship is basically a months-long job interview. It is often difficult or undesirable to fire an employee, so the internship provides a risk-free way to

An internship is basically a months-long job interview. It is often difficult or undesirable to fire an employee, so the internship provides a risk-free way to evaluate a young employee and see if they are a good programmer. No one wants to have interns sitting idle (since that provides little insight into their abilities), but the demands of customers obviously trump the commitment to training an intern. So unfortunately real work can keep the intern's supervisor from getting as much time with them as they would like. The reality for an intern is that your code (if any) is not going to be included in a production application. The best you could hope for is to contribute unit tests from a code perspective. There is the possibility for meaningful contribution in other ways, but that isn't really the point. The point is for the company to evaluate you and for you to evaluate them as an employer. There is little downside for you an intern since you are probably making more money than you ever have before, and at least the experience will look great on your resume even if you end up doing very little. But hopefully your experience is better than that. My advise is to be eager to learn. Learn how to use the software your company makes. Look for ways you can contribute something and suggest it (likely to be testing/QA). Be proactive and curious. Be patient. Be humble. Be friendly. If you can pair program with an established engineer that is ideal. But you will mostly be watching, and it will move REALLY fast, so be prepared.