Sunnyvale Trip and Afterthoughts

Got back from Haskell Hackers

• Hi everyone! I just got back from Sunnyvale. I spent the morning doing an interview, and realized I was just burnt out. So I decided to rest for most of today.

In terms of my issue

• I realized that the only thing I could do to resolve the issue with my friend is to drop out of the community completely. The more I found out about the individual, I realized that the person was toxic. My brother’s been in the loop on this stuff, and I sent him a blog post someone else made about the guy (in which other people actually commented that they had blocked the guy, who is a well-known troll) , and the first thing he said was “wow…X is abusive” and that if that’s how he is, I didn’t need that in my life.
• What was worse was that it was starting to affect my reputation, in that I was now being perceived as “crazy” (as the individual was saying about me) and it was even implied by the individual that I was a stalker lol. I know…hilarious, right? I still have a bit of good humour about everything. It’s very hurtful when someone you thought was a friend does this, because (at least I do) I hold my friends to a high standard. But at the end of the day, you need to associate with people who are positive and have values that match your own, or yours will be sullied. So I spoke to the mods about it, and they of course were on his side because I’m sure he presented his case, and I had been gone for two days (on a bus, travelling, with no wifi), but then the mod started apologizing when I started explaining my side, and said he felt it was more of a miscommunication, but it made me angry because I anticipated this, and was warned by someone with good judgment that this would happen, and I felt like it was better for me to not be a part of the community.
• The funniest thing was that I was being cynical and said “cause I’m crazy”, and the mod kept saying “stop saying you’re crazy”. Hahah. I know I”m not. That’s a certainty. I’m as level-headed as they come. Also a pretty focused, hardworking individual. This past week alone, two people praised my work ethic. I may not be the best programmer now, but you bet in a year I’ll be twice as good, and so forth going onward. I’m determined.
• Anyways, I don’t want this sort of stuff to happen again. I work too hard and I care too much about my future for it to be sabotaged.

• I feel a bit angry with myself for trusting this person. This individual has a history of abusive behavior, misogyny and unstable mental issues. Plus, he’s also in a legal battle with someone else he was close with involving money and property rights, which is a whole other drama thing. He spends his day insulting people and is a negative person. I must have been out of my mind to trust him.

• So yeah..it was bad judgment on my part to befriend and trust this person, become close to them, and not expect it would blow up at some point. Really bad.

• I was telling my mom that I’m also hurt because when you think someone is your friend, and they relegate you to “crazy”, it makes you wonder what they really thought of you, all this time. It’s kind of like a giant back-stabbing, which was just crushing.

• It gave me a great reason to leave the community, though. That worked out perfectly! The mod was shocked. He said “you’re leaving because of one person?”. Yup. But more importantly, I think that when you put yourself in a positive path, and surround yourself with good people, you set yourself up for success.

• That’s my Catholic (actually Anglican :)) upbringing for you. Seeing the best in people. My brother had a talk with me the other day and told me that this is a weakness we have, and that some people really are just not nice people. It’s something I have to remember going forward. Having an engineer’s mind means I always want to fix things!

Moving forward

• There will probably be less FP; it’s probably a good thing, because even though it is, I think, affecting my code and making it cleaner (one of the positives I heard today), I think it’s distracting me from just learning a language I can think in. Right now, that’s language is actually more C++, but I’ve been telling everyone it’s Python :/
• I honestly don’t even know how to do OOP in Python, but telling someone you know how to do OOP in C++ opens up a whole other can of worms. (I do know OOP in C++ though). I feel like telling people I know C++ is like lying lol. It’s such a huge language, but I’ve also invested so much time in it. But I feel so far away from understanding it. It’s like the unknowable langage haha.
• I also just really like C++, and people look at my resume and see C++, but I don’t feel comfortable enough to test in it, which is making me test in other languages I may not quite be as good in, which is making me seem less competent. So I’m thinking just stick to two; Python and C++. JavaScript may not be a bad addition, since I already have to learn it for my Nanodegree.

The actual Haskell event

• Was really great. We went out for drinks and eats at Firehouse in Sunnyvale afterwards.
• I took notes; it ended up being two presentations! Yass! :)
• I’m undecided about whether I should make the hotswapping an entire post or just include it here.
• Eh..I’ll probably make an entire post this weekend, so I can link to the repo and stuff. It was really fascinating, as was the other talk on Probability Distribution, given by Tikhon.

Things to do Fri/Sat/Sun

• Continue with Nanodegree (Google/ Udacity challenge)
• Continue with C++ game
• Get started on my JPL application

=====================================

• And..that’s about it…

Katas

• find power of number given number and power. Return if even, or else round to nearest ten

function danspower(num, power) {
    var power1 = Math.pow(num, power)
    if (power1 % 2 == 0)
    {
      return power1
    }
    else
    {
      return (Math.round(power1 / 10) * 10);
    }
}

• sort textbooks. This one, I had to do research on. Only way that worked was lambdas, to specify how to sort capitals and common letters

def sorter(textbooks):
    return sorted(textbooks, key=lambda
    v: (v.upper(), v[0].islower()))