Googling my way out of coding issues🌼
Hi there!
A quick note of thanks to all my readers for being here. I started this newsletter in July and just four months in I’ve been blessed with over seventy subscribers — I couldn’t be more grateful for all of you 🙏🏻
Onward!
This week in coding was made possibly by … 🥁🥁Google!🥁🥁
Uh?? What now Areena?
A lot of how programmers solve challenges involves looking up how others before them have. If you don’t look up how others do it, you look up the documentation for it. It’s akin to any research really. You don’t know something, you look it up. Let me illustrate: Last week for an assignment, I had to plot dates which were given to us in this format: 412 for April 12. Plotting the number 412 as is didn’t make any sense. It looked like:
I can tell you the 501 at the end is May 1st, but it’s not intuitive at all. Bad, bad graph. Solution? Look it up! For this particular question, I looked up how to convert float (a number) values into a date format. I read up the documentation and found my way out! Here’s the updated plot:
I know this too is missing context, but I wanted to illustrate the importance of Googling-out solutions and how normal it is! On a bigger note, hope this helps destigmatize seeking for help, because we all need it; we’re all better with it.
To read …
Here’s an interesting off-beat Thanksgiving read I stumbled upon: Former slaves brought Thanksgiving to Liberia — and rebooted it. The piece is full of rich history and lots of information I didn’t know before. I recommend it!
Excerpt: The two countries' observations of the holiday have diverged over the centuries. Liberian Thanksgiving falls on the first Thursday of November, rather than the fourth.
The buzz lately has been about the global supply chain and here’s a piece I found that touches on some key issues underneath the chaos: Who Peels Your Garlic: Inside Manila’s Informal Economy
Excerpt: The Philippines was 100% self-sufficient in garlic until the 1990s. But the influx of cheap Chinese imports has decimated local garlic production.
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This week, I also got to see Saks Fifth Avenue’s glorious holiday lights show and visited Bryant Park’s Winter Village — a much needed break after a stressful couple of weeks. I’m also starting to work on a really interesting data project which will involve scraping five websites and then doing a word analysis using regex; I’m stoked to share more about it in the coming weeks!
For my friends and family in India, take a moment today to remember the heroes of 26/11. Say a prayer for them and keep survivors in your heart.
That’s all for now. Have a beautiful week ahead! 💜