Elm Summer of Code…Day 46

Just kidding…

• I spent most of my day learning Elm today. I built two single page apps, and wrote a bunch of code. One thing that still isn’t clear to me is the file structure, although I’m a bit familiar with Model-View and some Node. What I mean is, what needs to be where, like how in Rust, you know your file structure is typically your .toml file, lib.rs, main.rs, etc. You also know which goes where. I tried elm-make a few times and it wasn’t super clear why one worked versus the other not working. But I’ll try again in the morning. The syntax of Elm is very familiar, but I kept declaring types using :: instead of :. Oops. But the error messages from the compiler are really excellent, so I was able to debug and solve most of my issues. It was really nice to see things directly on the screen, and I also played with the markdown package, which is neat, because I’m familiar with Markdown.
• It’s also the first language I can recall that it was actually easier to install on Windows than on Linux. Convenient because I have a Windows access during the day.
• Oh, I need to start playing with the debugger, which is the whole point of this.

A group of us

• Went out for pizza for lunch today. That was nice. I still don’t really feel like I fit, although I’ve noticed a strange fascination by some people into data science with testing. I guess I could reason why this might be the case.
• I actually get my work done in between just writing code. Until I’m found out for doing that, or someone makes a fuss about it, I’ll um…keep writing Haskell and coding in general, in between getting my work done. A lot of the people there, when I met them, had stopped coding once they started working. I swore to never do this (I could never do this!), but strangely, I’ve been seeing more people learning stuff around me. So today, one guy was learning Django, someone built a JavaScript Snake game, etc. And I had a conversation with someone about the new Python (3.7) that was released yesterday and the programming language J. I guess I’m infectious :D. This is a weird experience for me; coding in two internships and testing in one. Because devs talk about “testing” all the time but it’s kind of hand-wavy and they look down on testers, and testers b!tch about devs lol. And I’m…in the middle, wearing Haskell tshirts and writing Haskell and Elm. Right. I really don’t care; I thought there would be value in this experience, which is why I’m doing it. Devs can talk about testing all they want; I have some actual experience, while coding. And it will make me a better developer.
• Some of my dev friends think I shouldn’t be doing this internship / job (and that I should quit immediately lol), but it works for now, and honestly, it’s easy for them to say things like this off-handedly, not really thinking about how it was when they were starting out. Maybe they were just lucky and things just sort of fell into place for them. I don’t think it’s fair to assume that that is the case for everyone.
• I was reading an article on Mashable about a friend…it popped up under an article I was reading (tech related), but she is a camera operator friend of mine. She’s really well known now and is carving out a hell of a career for herself, but when I met her, she gave me a ride home, and she was struggling. And this is in a field where there were no females, or they set them aside to do oh so cute jobs. I always remember she told me that her partner (another female) had sold her operating rig and was doing other stuff, but that she (my friend) would sleep in her car before she did that. It really resonated with me. She had a lot of grit and she really wanted it.
• I had a conversation with a peer at my internship / job, and I told him that all day long I think about Haskell. And all day, I try to learn some by bringing up a repl and going through the book or doing whatever I can to get better each day. You can never tell if your journey to where you’re heading is going to be easy, but I’d say if you really want it, it’s worth a shot. Do what you have to do.
• I just read a post, coincidentally (by accident) of a friend who was working retail before he became a developer. He was so broke at the time, he was eating ketchup packs at lunch time. I had no idea, but I remembered during a particularly disappointing and $h!tty point in his life, I reached out to him (because he was alluding to it in his blog…and it was a particularly $h!tty experience for him) and encouraged him. I think it’s important to remember that not everyone has the golden road, and that’s OK.

Anyways

• I’m getting up in the AM to do some Elm, then at 9 I have a meeting with the Mozilla people :D, then it’s Rust for most of the day, and then in the PM I do Haskell (or maybe a bit of both, depending).

Also

• If you’d really like to support me, I’m always looking for ways to get better at Haskell, by either doing some kind of mentorship or internship (in Haskell or even PureScript or heck..even Elm!). I’d honestly be open to any of that after GSoC. And I’m going to continue contributing to open source.
• You don’t need to throw me money or buy me coffee or anything (I’m actually buying another friend coffee this Sunday, who sort of actually needs one right now, because that’s what friends do for each other..they pick you up when you’re down and help you believe in yourself when you don’t (or give you valid criticism when you need it!)), but I’m always looking for ways to become a better FP dev!

So I’m going to keep it short…

• So that’s it.