And that’s a wrap

So I officially have the certification for having completed Summer of Code

• I also get a one-time referral to apply to Googs, tshirt and other such stuff.
• Also, a tour of the SF office, whenever I would want one.
• I’m mostly happy for the experience and the growth over summer. I had awesome mentors :D

This week

• I’m so burnt out. I just started responding to people I am to make contact with this week.
• I also have some coding quiz thingys to do.
• There was also a 7.3 earthquake in the land of my birth. There hasn’t been one like that since 1968. However, my parents are in Glasgow, and our neighbour verified that our dog is quite happy and chill about everything. But some people’s residences were destroyed, with huge cracks and stuff in the foundation. Also, part of a building fell on a car in a muster point.

Haskell girl

• I inspired my friend to pick up Haskell :D Woot! One down…many millions more to go :D He’s starting with LYAH but I encouraged him to pick up Hbook afterwards and build something with the language.
• I also was recruited for a Haskell dev job this week, but I’m not where I want to be just yet.
• I know devs don’t really care for recruiters (I’d like to think of it as more a symbiotic relationship), but one from a company I care (in SF) about told me they couldn’t offer me a position but that I was “clearly talented”. I really appreciated that. It energized me to keep going. Tech has been one of those weird things where even though it’s not easy, it’s sort of been the most rewarding or “easiest” in terms of effort directly correlating to success, and I really appreciate that. I’ve been through a lot of other areas where no matter how hard I tried, I never got anywhere because there was a fair amount of nepotism and other such elements involved, so tech is, quite frankly, refreshing.
• It’s not perfect, but there are also some incredibly supportive people who want you to succeed. I kid you not, someone from an industry I once was in passed by me yesterday on the way home and elbow-checked me. Knowing these people, I cannot say that the person did it out of ignorance. All the horrible memories came flooding back, but I didn’t feel anything. It did remind me of the constant disrespect I really just sucked up for a long time. My potential or intelligence wasn’t acknowleged, or was otherwise put down because it was a threat. Thankfully, that isn’t something I think about anymore. I am focused on moving forward and just getting better in this part of my life. I love programming.

Right now

• I start class next week (C++). Specifically, it’s advanced data structures and Discrete structures
• I am continuing with pull requests in Rust for open source work
• I am continuing with Hbook. Once I’m done with the book, I’ll be moving on to work on projects of my own.

I watched quite a few talks

• One was on browser optimization and research problems in Rust. They’re really fascinating, and a fair number of the researchers have a background in Haskell! So that’s pretty great.

A bit frustrated

• I’m a bit frustrated because I’m doing a part time gig and the momentum is not there for my peers. It’s been difficult for me because this summer I was working on an entirely different level from my peers because of the specific environment I was in (that was a unique experience). And the peers I was in the company of were really exceptional. I’m going to miss that. I guess that that just means I’ll have to continue on my own. People have lives so it’s not anyone’s fault, but I’d just like to be around people who are more excited about programming in the near future.

Finally

• I wrote the first draft of my statement of purpose last night. I also am booking a GRE appointment and going to reach out to people I think might be able to write good recommendations for me.
• I also hang out with my friend at JPL tomorrow evening; we’re going to listen to Jazz.

That’s about it for now