Next couple of days..rundown

I chose a path for my Nanodegree…

• We are at the stage where we have to choose a path and post about it. The options were “Front End Dev”, “Back End Dev”, “Mobile Dev”, “Data Analyst”. At first, I couldn’t decide between Back End and Data Analyst, but I realized their “Back End” probably wouldn’t be C++ and Java, and I’d have to learn/ focus on some JS and DOM stuff (yuck lol).

• Then, I saw the lady they interviewed who is a Data Analyst. As she spoke, I realized we had so many similarities in terms of our interests. It got the most excited out of all the options.

• We had to say what we chose and why. This is what I said:

     <p>10. After evaluating these four different paths into programming, 
     which role are you most interested in pursuing? Why?</p>
    <!--Your Answer to question 10 goes here-->
    <div class= "answer">
      <p>Data analyst<p>
      <p>I want to stay as far away from JS 
      (learning some PureScript would be nice!) 
      as possible (D3 looks pretty cool, though!), 
      and I want an opportunity to continue
      with functional programming.
      I've seen a lot of shops using Scala, 
      and it's something I'm interested in learning,
      as I really like Haskell
      and there are some similarities 
      (and I *love* the functional programming community!
      One of the people I look up to is a guy named Conal Elliott, 
      who uses Haskell at Target Digital, 
      and he is a distinguished Data Scientist.
      The community has been incredibly kind to me, 
      and their enthusiasm 
      and love for FP keeps me going). 
      I also really like Mathematics, Statistics,
      and patterns with numbers, and have already
      taken a few courses (years ago)
      in R and Python for fun, 
      as well as a course in Data Visualization 
      (using a plug-in in Excel and a little bit of Tableau).</p>
    </div>

• Yup, pretty much!

Sailing Trip!

• A group of us are going sailing to Catalina Island this weekend. It’s a big hang-out every year, where about 15+ boats and about 75+ people hang out at 3am on dinghies over there and pass out food, we eat Barbecue and have raffles where you can win prizes and stuff. It’s going to be a lot of fun and I will try to post a few pics!

• PS..I’ve never been to Catalina island, nor have I sailed at night! This should be FUN. We leave at 10pm on Friday and return by 4pm on Sunday.

Sailing group

• Oh, and I also joined a sailing group for women. I want to learn how to race and stuff. Well, I did some training a few years ago when I was in a rowing crew team, and I remember it to be really fun! It was a division 1 NCAA team, too, so the training was pretty rough, but also enjoyable. I definitely pushed myself physically. I also remember that the girls I trained with became like family, because there is a certain amount of bonding that does happen when you’re working as a team on a boat to compete/ win/ be your best.

Back to programming, though…

• So…continuing this week, was able to knock off quite a few things.

1. Cleaned up bugs from program
2. Finished chapter of Nanodegree.

So that means

• On to next part of Nanodegree..basically final project. To be quite honest, I can’t decide between Data Analyst or Back-End. I may do both? Not sure yet.

• I’ve decided to try a new version of my C++ programme. Basically, it will also be OOP, but I’ll start with a UML design. I want to see how this will improve the one that I solved. It’s not due until the 26th, so I still have a lot of time.

Today

• My mentor from JPL and I are going to listen to some Jazz. We’re also going to go through some PLT and start learning about DFAs and stuff. He works mostly in Fortran and C++, and is a mathematician at his core (and Physicist, who works with numerical computation), so I really am grateful for this perspective. I think it will make me a better programmer.

So..plan

• Work on UML (v1.0 complete)
• Work on C++ classes based on UML
• Continue with last part of Nanodegree
• Thurs (PLT lessons and jazz with mentor)
• Friday (pay membership fees for sailing group, get snacks on the way to sailboat)…sail!

Strange Loop is also coming up!

• It looks like it will be a lot of fun! Quite a few people I know are attending! I was also introduced to some members of the SF chapter of Papers We Love! I’m excited to meet them in person!

Booked for Chrome Dev Summit

• Also attending that..my second year. It should be fun, too!

Retrospect

• I had a really great week. During the break, a bunch of us had fun streaming. Rust and Haskell. It was really wonderful!

• I pulled through a situation that had been bothering me emotionally. One of my friends was incredibly kind. He said “I think you’d make a great programmer!” It meant a lot to me.

• I’m really enjoying everything. Last night, I really enjoyed C++ class. The class itself is a class, but C++ is such a beautiful language. I’m really enjoying learning it. I look at some Haskell code and I kid you not, I see some C++ structure in there!

## UML v 1.0

## UML v 1.1

## Katas

• Return true if prime, or false if not

def prime(n):
    if n > 1:
       for i in range(2,n):
           if (n % i) == 0:
               return False
               break
       else:
           return True
    else:
       return False

• Square. Return square root if it is a square, or sum of elements if not

function squareRoot(numbers){
  
   var total = 0;
   for (var i = 0; i < numbers.length; i++){
     total = total + numbers[i]
   }
   
   var a = Math.sqrt(total)
   if (total == 0){
     return(0)
   }
   else if (a == parseInt(a)){
     return(a)
   }
   else{
     return(total)
   }
}