Let’s start the year with a resolution. If last year was 720p, lets aim for HD Resolution this year! A…ha..haaa..
In all seriousness, 2020 wasn’t bad at all for me. I know it was a bad year. I wanna give a huge condolence for those who lost their loved ones, lost their jobs, lost their homes, and is placed in a tough spot since the pandemic begun.
2020
In 2020, I was blessed with 2 insanely busy school terms and a wonderful 4-month internship at StackAdapt. Met and worked with amazing individuals. I also found more time to geek out on new things/skills I never tried before - like FPV drones, keyboard, leetcode, cooking, stock investments, etc. I came to love coding a lot more than ever before since it’s pretty much my main source of entertainment and brings purpose that I can look forward to when I wake up everyday.
A few highlights to the year:
Moving from old windows laptop to a Mac 🍎
So this is what no lag feels like! My computer’s so much faster..
Doing the Daily Leetcode Challange 👨💻
I begin doing Leetcode Daily Challenge (it gives a random problem everyday) for the last 4 months or so. On average I spend about an 30 min - 1 hour per day, and occasionally up to 5h for a hard problem. When I give up I normally look at ‘Programming with Larry’ on Youtube (came across by chance but I really recommend his videos). Larry streams and record himself solving it live, so it’s normally super helpful to listen to his thought process on the spot before reaching to a solution, rather than your normal ‘here’s your solution’ type of videos.
I feel like I am much more comfortable problem-solving and identifying which appropriate techniques to use for a given problem. I try my best keeping a note of heuristics, although I think most of it is learned subconsciously. Tbh I probably forgot most of the questions I’ve solved LOL. IDK do shoot me a msg if you have suggestions of a better method of keeping note/heuristics so it sticks.
Anyways, I’m still FAR from good. But It’s fun and I look forward to continue improving this year (Yes Dynamic Programming, I’m staring at you). Hopefully will try out Leetcode weekly contest this year once I feel more comfortable.
New tech stacks to put in my repertoire
This year I get to touch on Ruby on Rails, Go, ElectronJS for the first time, and the AWS CCP thing. Also lurked on some ML stuff occasionally for fun (on Educative.io). I got myself a 1 year subscription for Educative.io. After going on the free trial last year, I like the type of lessons they provide (all text-based) since learning by reading allows me to go at my own pace (usually faster) compared to watching videos.
FPV
I have 3 tiny whoops before I realize it. I’ve broken 2 motors, and a flight controller (from the snow). Big Oof. Not so much of the price, but more to the hate of waiting for replacement parts to ship.
Buying my first ever stock
Tried out Wealthsimple’s auto-investment and manual trading account few months ago.
New Keyboard
I started using The Moonlander (a split keyboard). It’s my first mechanical and ortholinear keyboard and it definitely increases my typing speed so much, *after a lot of practice and typing tests. I can program my own key bindings, and it’s really easy to update the firmware. For now I have the following key bindings (probably will change over time as I find new ways to automate my common shortcuts):
Movies/films/Manga:
I’m almost always watching stuff when I’m having dinner nowadays since I got no one to eat with 😢. Absolutely loved Queen’s bandit and Alice in Borderland. I followed quite a few Kdramas here and there. Also… super honored to witness Chapter 1000 of One Piece this year!
2021
This year will be extremely pivotal, since I’d be graduating on May. After that… hopefully a good fulltime position.
I recently watched Jackson Gabbard’s video about Architecture and Systems Designs and he raised a few good points.
- Exposure to architecture/design problems.
- One could argue/say ‘my company don’t give me exposure to these types of problems’. However often times exposure is not limited to the things you work on. People talk about these design problems occasionally in work whether during one-on-one chats, tech talks, engineering blogs, conferences, white papers, etc.
- People who’s good at design problems, don’t solve this type of problems everyday, but surround themselves with the proper environment
- From the recruiter’s perspective not knowing something during the interview sometimes do indicate your capability/drive to learn
- For example if a potential employee have 8 years of industry experience, but hasn’t get the amount of technical skills that the employers need, it sort of shows that they are the type of person to be ‘complacent’ during their career, rather than someone who continues to push themselves.
Point No 2 scares me a bit to be honest. It’s like the score you’re given is not only based on skill alone but rather (score = skill / time). In accounting term I’m guessing it’d be analogous to the concept of ‘Time Value of Money (TVM)’ where the same amount of money now will be discounted in value over time.
On that note, I probably want to set myself on reading more this year. Engineering blogs, conferences, research papers, etc. Surrounding and exposing myself with how other people solve their problems.
I came back to Notion recently to maybe keep track of a reading log for myself. Hopefully the habit will stick in.