GSoC Day 57

Understanding

• I had a conversation with Matthias Felleisen today about how someone would know if they’re good enough to pursue a PhD. As always, I’ve been feeling like I’m not good enough, although I’m constantly surprised by all the scholarships and grants I’ve been fortunate to receive along my path. He said that I may not want to hear this answer, as many people aren’t, but “passion” is what is needed most. I really liked that answer. It was satisfying. He told me a story of a person who was not doing so well, but was determined, and is doing well now. You can turn it around if you are willing to put in the work. I liked that. It’s probably the highest rated thing (besides grit) that I have right now. This is not just for a PhD, but for learning Haskell in general.
• I know that there are better people out there in terms of the skill-set or when they started, but I have the determination. Somehow, that has made a huge difference.
• I also enjoyed the advice that he said, which was that I should look for an advisor who can fill in the gaps. Your goal isn’t to come in knowing everything, but to be willing to put in the work and have the passion and motivation to see it through. I can do that.
• I learned so much today, and it has helped me reason a lot better about code in general. It’s so weird.
• I also have another idea for PhD study that relates to one idea I have. It also relates to my GSoC project. So that would be kind of awesome.

Matthias also mentioned

• Quine and referential transparency. I had no idea the two (philosophy and RT) were related. Now I want to read all of it. I downloaded the paper. I believe he calls it referential modularity. Speaking to Matthias made me just think more deeply about a lot of stuff. All of a sudden I had all these questions. He is really one of those persons who is not only passionate about what he does, but he makes you think about things in a different way. I really liked interacting with him.

Meeting with my mentor

• I filled out the second evaluation today. And had a really great meeting with both my mentors. They have given so much of their time. We spoke about a bunch of things we could possible work on, and finally decided on the debugger that goes back in time for simulationOf. So I’m currently working on that.
• My first step was to add the exported function into the Codeworld.hs file, and basically clone the simulationOf function and make it debugSimuationOf. This will take a list of values instead of just one, and cons the last state to the front of the list, and pop off the first element. This also assumes that there is at least two elements for popping off, which means I need to include cases for one or no elements in the list.

Anyways

• I am bushed today. Going to take a rest. Getting up at 6:30 or so and working on some Haskell.