Look ma it's already 2023 and I am still dumb

Sunday, January 8, 2023 - (430 days ago)

Look ma it's already 2023 and I am still dumb

As the end of the year approaches, I find myself reflecting on the past 12 months and feeling incredibly thankful for all that has happened. While I was delving into writing a new blog post "New Year, Now what" consisting of some philosophical rants, my resolutions, my goal etc… all the future bullshit I believed that I wanted to become in the train of thoughts I had an idea to write about the failures, successes and monthly experiences of 2022, keeping it real and maybe some philosophical judgement on myself about how I was in 2022; That's why the title says Look ma It's 2023 already, I'm still dumb. I had great resolutions and goals for 2022 but was able to meet only a few of them.

To be honest 2022 was one of my best and busiest year so far, every day I kept doing something, maybe that's why I burnt out a lot and realised so much philosophically, financially, academically and personally.

I am trying to basically go through my memory map and see which events are not corrupted and try to write it to the disk [got the reference?, related to Operating System; lol]

Let's time travel back to 31-12-2021, I vividly remember I actually slept through the 2022 midnight as opposed to cutting a cake and celebrating the new year like I had been doing for almost a decade, I don't know why last year was different, maybe because I was fed up of online classes, offline exams, Submissions and what not.

whew Engineering is actually Hard if you don't love the majority of subjects, luckily I love most of my computer science-related subjects; [not advice tho]

[Skip to the end if you don't want to read up on monthly experience], Trust me you are going to miss a lot xD

Jan 2022:

It was the second era of covid in Bengaluru, again the idoticy of online classes were back, the whole month was just online classes [youtube is better lol] and I had one of my toughest course ever, DMS (Discrete Mathematical Structure), Automata Theory was taught to us in the begining I loved every bit of it [even now I like FAFL], maybe I misjudged the subject lol,at the end of the courses there was a chapter called Group Theory, for the love of god I couldn;t understand a single thing in online classes [maybe the avaliabality of youtube made me neglitiant], then after online classes as usual I opened Youtube and searched for Group Theory related videos, I couldn't find a single proper video with captions [1], my internals were scheduled in the feburary month, I was freaking out, I think I went though the ppt atleast 3 times but stil couldn't understand it, Gave the internals [leaving all to god, don't we all as engineers do], scored 5/50, which was my lowest score in my freaking life, but I wasn't sad coz I knew It's not that I put the efforts, I couldn't understand the chapter that's it.

Nothing exciting happened in January except all the anxiousness around me and how can I forget the late submission of reports and scamming in EL lol.

Feb 2022:

Perhaps I spoke about my lowest marks in internals, but what was worrying me was, now How can I write the Final Examination????, Finally went out and bought a VTU reference book [luckkily the syllabus was more than overlapping with VTU], and I must have read and solved the problems in Group Theory at least twice, WOW, That Instilled lot of confidence in me and was wondering why I didn't buy this book earlier. enough about the academic rant man.

Now On the tech side, I hadn't done any coding in January month and decided to do some hacking, did some here and there, and learnt nothing, but realised a lot, I tried TypeScript for the first time in Jan, thought to learn and improve, to my surprise It became one of language that I loved along with python [earlier I used to code a lot of python everywhere, even for leetcoding lol]. I discovered a beautiful concept called Type safety and it was mind-blowing, once I had accustomed to the idea of type safety I started to require similar functionalities in the languages I was using [this is where I realised the trade-off between dynamic and type-safety language, ever since I haven't gone back to python].

Looks like I blabbered a lot, nvm we shouldn't forget Feb had 28 days, It got over before it could start.

March 2022:

Oh Damn, It's march already looks like the Final exam is this month and as usual [for us engineers ryt lol], I was not prepared properly for the exam, especially DMS and FCSD, simantinously me and my friends started to discuss going on a trip, and we brainstormed a lot of places like Hampi, Wayanad, Coimbatore, goa etc…, one day my friend jokingly asked can we go to watch IPL and stay in Mumbai for a couple of days roam around and come back, I remember I had pulled his leg for suggesting this place, but I always had the desire to go to Mumbai and experience the nightlife finally a couple of my friends agreed and we started to plan A TRIP TO MUMBAI, I still can't believe it lol,

This was the only thing that was pulling me through the march month, the thought of sitting on Juhu beach while sipping on gola wowowoowoww :P. DMS went pretty okayish for me [guess what I actually passed the course; credits to me for passing lol that too in online sem]

Then one night I was casually looking around some blog posts, and someone posted Microsoft has opened Engage Registrations, I searched all about it and thought to apply, wow the thought of me working at Microsoft was absolutely mind-blowing for me, I registered and wrote 2 rounds of the test, on the next day of 2nd round I found out that I was not selected to the last round and let me tell you I felt that the whole world was collapsing around me and when I heard a couple of my friends were selected It even pushed me further, but I don't know how after talking with ma I was suddenly feeling more like normal, One thing I learnt in this experience is not to imagine the pleasures before you work for it [let me tell you this is the best experience that I got, till now I haven't imagined anything before working hard for it], I even offered to help some of my friends who were selected for engage 2022, they didn't take it well. Anyway learnt a lot about how to pull yourself emotionally and mentally and did I tell you we bought the tickets for the RCB VS GT match?

April 2022:

I had my sem holidays and I was interning [helping out] for a Team at IISC the project was going well, but I couldn't put travel daily to the IISC, so thought a lot and finally left the team now it was all about anticipating the trip to Mumbai, finally, the day came and we all bid goodbye to Bengaluru and went to Mumbai, had a lot of amazing time learnt a lot on how to travel alone and safely [those local train system, they still amaze me], got to know why Mumbai is called the city that never sleeps, man Mumbai is a damn cool vibe, I can't write it and explain it, the food, people, places, yellow taxies, beaches, celebrity houses and what not, really had a good time over there.

and Did I tell you we [RCB] won the match [I think we had to do something with our luck lol] [sadly lost the tournament tho, but since when it has stopped us from saying ESCN lol]

came back and vacations were over man, what a sad feeling, 4th sem was started :(

May 2022:

well during march I had become fully immersed in typescript and its features and was looking for some project ideas. One random night I thought why not build an automated accounts system for IEEE where I was the webmaster, thought about it a lot and discussed it with my friend also, it seemed like a good idea and I dived into developing it, within a few days I had the prototype ready and running,

I got the most saddening news in April mid [my childhood friend with whom I spent a lot of time died unexpeditly] it broke my heart I started to question almost everything in my life from there onwards I have started to experience everything from life, who knows what the future holds for us. I always advise others to enjoy life to the fullest and experience it.

June 2022:

Among all the work around the 4th semester, a hackathon suddenly popped into my calender feed, [I love participating in hacks, it gives me a lot of pressure to brainstorm for the given problem statement, developing the solution in less than 24 hours to spare] It was a hardware hackathon me and my friends registered for it, we developed an AUTOMATED STREET LIGHT MAINTENANCE SYSTEM It was really an amazing experience building it, the USP of our product was the entire software for data management was written by us so we could guarantee it's data privacy and also we could control the systems from anywhere in the world, the ideal response time was around 100ms, which was slow [of course it was we built the entire software in 24 hours, didn't really think bugs and code quality lol]

also, did I tell you that we won this hackathon which made me win my first-ever hardware hack :)

July 2022:

It was my 20th birthday month and I was feeling a mix of emotions as I approached this milestone. On one hand, I was excited to finally be considered an adult and have the freedom that came with it. On the other hand, I couldn't help but feel a little bit intimidated by the prospect of taking on more responsibilities and challenges.

I attended one of my first ever sunburn open DJs at my college fest, damn man that was a cool vibe, I danced like I never had, and my friends were absolutely surprised to see me dancing so much [PS: I couldn't understand the songs lol], then took part in overnight business marathon where we had to submit an actual realistic business plan to the given problem statement within 6 hours, [it was from 12AM to 8AM], we were finalists tho, but our team didn't win the competition, anyway it was a good insight into how a business plan is drawn and executed, what are the economic factors that we have to consider when we start a business and really gave me a good idea on how to evaluate the competition and market better than them.

Also visited toscano[2] for the first time ever [a high-end Italian restourent], and ate the best pizza I had ever eaten in my life, it was amazing I literally had orgasms on each bite [not literally lol, I left eating dominos from this day, till today I have not eaten a single piece of pizza that is not wood fired] It was authentic Italian pizza, I really recommend going to here if you want to taste real Napolean pizza. [not sponsored lol]

pizaaa

We had our first ethnic day and let me tell you it was so mesmerised by all of my friends, it was really cool and had a lot of fun, again in the evening we had an open Dj for Kannada songs, I danced even more than I previously did [this time I understood the songs :D]

also, I took my first workshop on the topic [noob's introduction to git and GitHub actions] along with my senior and close friend. If you want the slides for the session you can download them from here.

Didn't I tell you already 2022 was the busiest year, writing it looks like it really was

August 2022:

It was august already, my mind was still in July and having too much fun in July I decided to get some serious at studies [ do we really study often lol]

some of my IEEE colleagues planned to organise a hackathon that is fully led by the student committee and started to work on this, as a vice chair of the computer society I also had some responsibility on my shoulders along with my couple colleagues, we planned so much from writing a sample sponsor mail to inviting everyone, placing orders for banners, certies, registrations, etc.. the list could go on man.

Fortunately, the hack happened peacefully and grandly, it was so much fun and proud to see a student-led hackathon attended by almost 130 participants.

The whole month went into this planning and executing the hack plan. [In the end, everything paid off] You can find the website here

Discovered system programming languages such as RUST and GOLANG, decided to learn RUST, gave up after 2 weeks, dropped the plan and started to learn Golang, it is amazing and lot interesting too.

September 2022:

It was high time for me to start taking academics seriously and I started reading the subjects, I had already fallen in love with 2 of the subjects namely Microcontrollers & Embedded Systems (MCES) and Computer Networks (CN) , I enjoyed reading them implementing the theoretical concepts practically [I still love both subjects and frequently read up some excerpts about them]

Goldman Sachs had come to our college but didn't pass the first round online test [don't know exactly why maybe due to cgpa I assume]

Wrote the 3rd Internals, and marks came out good, also scammed so much in submitting the projects and reports, especially DTL and OOPS [only RV folks will get this lol]

Built a URL shortening service using golang and Redis for IEEE, we [team] decided not to use it after considering some of the tradeoffs. can find it here

October 2022:

It was EXAMMMM time, In the same month my parents shifted to the new home and I was still staying in my old home alone, coz it was not a good idea to shift homes in the middle of exams, Man I learnt a lot living alone and what it takes to live alone, doing the chores by yourself and all. [luckily I had a maid]

But living alone gives you a different level of understanding of money and health.

you can do whatever you want, but still, you chose to do what is best for you and your health. Discovered this powerful thing and ever since I have started to do most of the daily jobs myself.[It's a stress buster for me]

enough of my philosophical rant lol, now my exam actually went good and was really feeling confident after exams about the results.

I had also started to look for a part-time internship in a software firm and was really yearning for some real-world experience, had applied to several companies and heard back from a couple of them, took part in the interviews and accepted a tentative offer from a company called clusterDev which was a startup with millions of users, I specifically choose this company to learn more about handling the user load.

I want to tell you about the reality check, Aviz Networks was one of the companies I had applied to and they were interested in me, they took almost 4 rounds of interviews for me, and also gave online coding test, in which I could do well, but this interview gave me a reality check to my understanding in data structures and algorithms, it was shaky, have been leet-coding more seriously from then.

November 2022:

November, my exams were over and I had shifted to my new home along with my parents, college vacation started [ I mean 1 week lol], my internship also started, I was allotted a project and I started to work on it, it was a transliteration tool, I learnt so much by just reading the code base, you can read about one new thing that I discovered during my internship here, also put an additional one week of holiday to dedicate more time for the internship.

It was also my cousin's marriage next month, I started to buy clothes and some things for the function.

and I worked on my golang language skills.

December 2022:

It was the month of Christmas [not that I celebrate Christmas, but I love to see the city light up on account of Christmas and the plum cake man :D], regarding internship I was migrating the old legacy code base to the latest version, [most of the time software engineering is this only lol] it was going slowly coz I hadn't still understood the codebase properly and so on.

and my cousin's marriage approached and we all as a family had a lot of fun and a good time celebrating a lot. [put one more week of holiday to college lol] In no time first internals for the 5th sem was already approaching, bruh, I had no idea of what was going on in my class. I sat 2 days before the internals and went through the subjects like Software Engineering, Finite Automata and Formal languages and Database Design, all of the subjects were a little familiar to me and I easily picked them up,, but I enjoyed and loved reading Software Engineering it was like a holy grail to me, because It could tell what I was doing wrong before developing new software or feature, I loved the subject so much I also started to host notes for this subject which you can find here [3], and also loved to solve problems from FAFL, picked a book called Lex and Yacc to try and apply what I learnt theoretically in a practical way, so far it is going good.

Also decided to change my keyboard to something hardcore like 75% to 60%, if anyone has a good suggestion please reach out :), currently, my mind is set on keychron k2 [4].

For Christmas, we [cousins] all went out to Toscano, yes again :)

I learnt so many things in December considering my hobby as well as my academics, now I decided to have a realistic goal for the year 2023, some of which are here

Goals

get a minimum of 6-7 hours of sleep [I don't get much sleep]
go on at least 12 treks this year
build a keyboard from scratch
compile some amazing learning concepts related to system design and software engineering in one place here.
somehow manage the attendance for the 5th semester [lol, god help me now]
consistent leetcoding [not hashing; got the joke ? lol]

I will end my emotional rants here and the philosophical ones start [:P skip em if you don't feel like reading them lol]

This year has certainly had its challenges, but it has also brought many blessings and opportunities for growth. One thing I am particularly thankful for is the support and love of my friends and family. They have been there for me through the highs and lows, offering words of encouragement, a listening ear, and a shoulder to lean on. Without their presence in my life, I don't know how I would have made it through some of the tougher times this year.

I am also thankful for the support and encouragement of those around me. Whether it was a kind word from a friend, a shoulder to lean on during a difficult time, or a piece of advice that helped me through a tough situation, the people in my life have played a crucial role in helping me navigate the challenges of the past year.

As I look back on the year [past lol], there are certain things I wish I had done differently. In retrospect, I could have made more time for self-care and prioritized my mental and physical health more. I could have been more patient and understanding with those around me, and made an effort to listen and empathize with others more. I could have also been more proactive in pursuing my goals and making positive changes in my life. But rather than dwelling on these things, I choose to focus on the lessons I have learned and the progress I have made. I have grown and learned so much this year, and I am grateful for the experiences, both good and bad, that have shaped me into the person I am today.

As I look ahead to the new year [future lol], I am filled with excitement and anticipation for what is to come. I am determined to continue working on myself and striving to be the best version of myself that I can be. I am also looking forward to spending time with my loved ones and cherishing the special moments that come our way.

But no matter what our individual experiences have been, one thing is certain: we all have memories from this year that will stay with us for a long time to come.

In conclusion, as I reflect on the past year and look ahead to the future, I am filled with gratitude and a sense of hopefulness.

Some Tech Updates

Looks like I am starting to dislike javascript, especially its automatic garbage handling, objects etc.., I could go on xD
Finally came to terms with React, it's not set up for me (ie; high data-oriented apps, deving in a short time span, low latency) trying out vue
Looks like I have been hacking around hardware a lot these days such as ESP32, Arduino, and Rpi.
Left Prisma ORM to communicate with the RDBMS, now I use actual SQL Queries.
My POV of building projects have started to change, now I develop the projects/ features keeping the common sense of users in mind

"Keep It Simple, Stupid" is a philosophy present in software projects. If the user doesn't need a feature, do not offer it and the trade-offs that go with it.