Adventures in Code

Hi! I know I said I'll make a Google Code-in review post around a week after the contest ended, but I had 2 rounds of mock final exams in Jan and Feb), and I just had to work on that. After that, the actual finals came along (March), and then the pandemic. My school started online classes, and those have been going on since the beginning of April till now. I had AP exams in May, and I had to rush the syllabus in April. Now, after the storm of work I had, I finally have some free time. And by some, I mean some. I have an exam tomorrow. Ugh. So, I've been busy with schoolwork, classic excuse. When's the GCI post? Well, I ended up as a Runner up. I hoped I'd be a winner but welp, can't change that now, can I? Also, I came across another extremely sad news: Google Code-in is dead. In all honesty, that small competition taught me almost everything I know about code. Let me just rewind a little into my code journey: I started coding in 6th grade (2014). I started learning...

Final week! Actually, this is only half a week. But anyway, let's get started. The end might seem a bit abrupt given how large GCI is, and how I didn't end it properly. I'll do all that in a review post. That post may come anytime. I'll just write it when I feel like it. I went to sleep, and I saw more work was needed on my Rock-Paper-Scissors game the next day (19th Jan). I had to add a points system and make the game best of 3. I did this, and submitted my task at 10AM 19th Jan along with some other code improvements. I had two 44 page essays due the next day, so I worked on them while I waited for the review. The task was accepted at 6PM on Jan 19th. I finished a sizable chunk of the essays, but I didn't complete them though I had the entire day. I claimed a task at 6:30PM: "Add an additional API Endpoint to StackOverflow.jl". I finished adding 4 endpoints, which took me some time, and I submitted my work at 11PM, and stayed up watching Cody Ko...

If I'm being perfectly honest, I kinda want GCI to end. It has been a crazy 45 days, and I'm tired of being stressed out and working till 12AM or 1AM in the night and ending sleeping for only 5-6 hours. But, I know we're on the home stretch now, and I should give it my best. Last week was kinda slow, and I completed only 4 tasks, that too Julia Academy ones. I really need to get on my tippy toes if I want to do well. After all, GCI is an endurance contest. Unlike CP (Competitive Programming) or Game Jams where you need to give your best for a few hours, GCI requires you to put in considerable and consistent effort over a month and half or so. This is also one reason I really like GCI to other CP or Game Jams. I'll do another review blog post thanking everyone and everything that helped me reach here, but I don't know when. Might be after the winners come out, might be next week, idk. Writing this final week blog post, I kinda want to reflect on why I started ...

Stuff is getting better. Like way better. Turns out, my essays didn't need to be 44 pages, so I submitted my best work. (This was for school btw not GCI). I'm writing this on Jan 26th, so happy republic day! I know, this was due on 12th Jan morning. I'm 2 weeks late. At the time of writing, Google Code-in is over, and results are yet to come out. Anyways, here's what happened in Week 6 of Google Code-in. Week 6 of GCI began on Jan 6th. I claimed my task "Design a quiz for the Introduction to Julia course on JuliaAcademy.com" at 5:30PM on Jan 6th. Yes, it was a Julia Academy task, but it needed extra skills so I don't think this was that unimportant . We will see that soon though when the winners come out. If all those Julia Academy tasks were worth anything, I'll be happy. The task asked us to claim quiz topics on a GitHub thread, and I claimed the topic "Control Flow." Rewind to 5th Jan (I started working on this task before my Mineswe...

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA I have so much work due :( I'm writing this on 18th Jan. This blogpost was due on 5th Jan. I have pre-boards next week, and I haven't started preparing. Last task claiming deadline is on 21st. I have a 44-page essay due tomorrow. Stuff is just piling up and I'm going crazy. Anyways, back to the blog. It was Dec 29th, evening and I had a test the next day. I started prepping for the test after banging out some reviews for the JuliaAcademy courses. The next day, I did well on the test again! I guess "Active Procrastination" works for me! If you don't know what active procrastination is, might want to have a look here:  https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.3200/SOCP.149.2.195-212 It basically proposes the idea that one can actively, ...

Oh boy, this is gonna be a long one. Also, I know this is literally a week late. [ WARNING : Dad joke incoming] In fact, this was due last decade! So, where did I end? Right. 11th task down. After publishing my blog post, I was really sleepy from the week and wanted to go to sleep immediately. However, I looked at the tasks and wanted to claim another task. I saw the task "Add install instructions to JuliaLang.org" and I immediately claimed it. I was going to add instructions for Windows, and since it was a popular platform, I immediately added a comment on the issue and claimed the Windows Instructions. That was smart of me because I realized my Ubuntu Installation broke again the next day. This is why I love external HDDs. They break whenever they want! Super-fast, boot time is like 1 ms, Super-convenient because they need you to run Disk Check every day, it's just great. So, the next day (Dec 24th) I started writing the instructions for Windows and found this to...

Again, this post is a day late. But hey, at least I posted! Well, I did slow down this week. I knew it. The good thing is I saw it coming. Coming to where I ended my previous blogpost, the mentor finally reviewed my task at 4:30 PM on that same Sunday (15th Dec '19). I had an exam the next day (Monday, 16th Dec '19) and had to prepare for it; Organic Chemistry was on the test. So, I ended up not doing anything on that Sunday. However, the phobia that someone will claim my next task was creeping up, and I impulsively claimed a 5-day long task at 8:00 PM on Sunday for some reason. I picked up the "Write a simple online app in WebIO and Interact" task and I decided I will make a transverse wave simulator. I stopped studying for the exam and did what I like: the task. I tried to make a dynamic UI for my simulator, but the entire evening passed by, and I barely had any idea of what I was doing. I was ready to abandon my task. On Monday evening, I was finally done wi...

On Monday, December 9th, where I left my previous post, I picked up my first task of Week 2. The previous week I didn't get much work done, and really had to catch up with others this week. I picked up my first real coding task, where I wrote lots of code. I claimed the task at 7:00 PM and started working on it immediately. The task was to implement a new coding exercise on this website called Exercism, and I did exactly that. It was a steep learning curve to complete this task since this was my first Issue and Pull Request on Github. I quickly learned the basics, implemented the exercise, and Committed my changes to the Repo. To my great disappointment, 2/21 of the tests on my code were failing! I had no idea what to do and felt like I couldn't complete the task. The task had an optional part, and I attempted that, but in Python. I submitted my task sleepily at 11:30 PM and hoped my mediocre work would get accepted.  The next morning, my mentors said that the optional...

I know this is a week late, but I decided to write down my experience later. For many others in my organization —  Julia  —  this week was incredibly productive; They had already completed 5 tasks. But my first week had a slow start. Google Code-in started on December 2nd at 11:30 PM IST. I looked at the tasks for Julia, and I decided this was the organization for me. At 7:20 PM on December 3, I claimed my first task: "Introduction to the Julia community". In this task, we had to join the Julia Slack, and write a small script to familiarize ourselves with the language. I wrote a Quadratic Equation Solver for this task. Since it was a beginner task, it didn't take much time. By 9:30, I had written, tested and added comments to my code. I submitted my task for review, and overnight, it was accepted and I could choose another task. The next day, at 7:30 PM, I claimed my next task: "Write a blog post about 1-based vs 0-based array indexing". In this task, I res...