GSoC Day 73

I was so tired today

• I left my local internship early and went home and slept from 3:30pm to 5:50pm. Then I got up, checked my phone and saw that my landlord had left a message saying she was going to stop by because she wanted to check something or other in my apartment. So I called her back and said okay. Apparently, one of my neighbours was out of town and had a friend staying in her place and the friend left the faucet running and pretty much flooded her apartment. So yeah..fun times. To my knowledge, it hasn’t really affected me, but she still wanted to check and ensure things were fine in my flat.
• Enter: the sound of plumbing in the background while doing my meeting tonight. So yeah..that was pretty fun. Fortunately, I have a good sense of humour about it, so it worked out.

So today

• I got a few things done. Fixed some extra stuff for a code review
• Also got to start moving the sliders around and we abstracted the logic so I only have to worry about translating them in one part of the programme.

Future things

• So, we had a discussion about what to do next. Chris still thinks it’s a good idea to have a write-up, and Gabe wants me to do videos LOL. So I will be working on that this weekend. I think Gabe means screencasts, but I think I get what he means. He said something about “videos of what we saw today” and “awesome”. LOL.
• I am not ready for a Haskell job and I’m not going to be silly and purport that I am in any way. I like Haskell and I do want to work in it, though, at some point. The competition is steep and there are very talented programmers in that eco-system. I don’t think people should lie to themselves and admit otherwise, because this is the reality. It’s possible to obtain one, though, with hard work and consistency. However, in continuing in line with what I want and getting there, there are some things that were recommended (I’m putting them out there for other people, too).

Things

• Build projects in Haskell. Build them from scratch, set up test suites, work on open-source projects.
• If you can’t directly get a Haskell job, it’s easier to transition by learning another functional programming language like Clojure or Scala, because someone who is hiring is more likely to choose someone with FP experience like that for a Haskell job.
• To get better, it’s imperative to find a company or mentor that can spend time with you and teach you (ideally full-time).
• Reach out to teammates for help
• A PhD might be a good idea, because it can be an excuse (as it was for Gabe) to learn and use Haskell for several years (which helped later on)
• Also, blogging. Super important for people to find you and the work you’re doing.

Why people would want to hire you

• You find problems interesting
• You take leadership opportunities
• You are a good communicator to your team

They also showed me

• Some cool benchmarking tools
• How testing is done in industry for Haskell
• Is load testing done in Haskell and Open-source projects and how?
• How are databases used in Haskell and which ones are not advisable.

So I have a lot to chew on

• I also got some advice about stuff I’ve been thinking about. I may actually stay home tomorrow to just work on Haskell, but we’ll see. That’s about it.