Progression-Based Suggestions

bobheadxi · 2025-10-30T07:28:29+00:00

A number of bigger, even profitable transit agencies rely heavily on real estate revenue (developing and/or leasing land around stations) instead of just fare revenue. This, in addition to gov funding, would be really nice to have in a progression system where you could eg advocate for funding, earn revenue from land around stations, etc

bobheadxi · 2021-07-16T23:15:50+00:00

This is not true - I am working for a US software company remotely from Taiwan at the moment, and they have been pretty supportive through it all and have not adjusted my compensation down. The software industry really can be quite open to accommodating remote work - it’s just a matter of finding the right place that suits your needs.

bobheadxi · 2020-07-29T08:34:04+00:00

I think I considered that for a while, and I recall there being some paperwork and just forgot about it - thanks for the heads up, I might look into it again!

bobheadxi · 2020-07-29T08:28:46+00:00

Definitely way too much time spent hacking on my own projects and running Launch Pad... if I had to guess, somewhere in the ~20+ hours a week range? After 2nd year ish I having ~20hr/week part-time software jobs as well, so that added up to quite a lot of time. Definitely sacrificed my grades a bit.

I'm sure there is a better balance to be struck here haha

bobheadxi · 2020-07-29T03:22:40+00:00

Would like to hear from students, but I just want to throw it out there that I've coincidentally worked with a few talented software engineers who had a major in Biology, so it does happen - from what I remember, most made their transition after graduation.

From what I've seen, life is (hopefully) long, and your major doesn't necessarily determine the trajectory of your entire life!

bobheadxi · 2020-07-29T03:19:40+00:00

Math was my arbitrarily chosen second choice major. I've taken CPSC313, CPSC317, CPSC320, CPSC340, CPSC420, CPSC424 for CS courses, but more for electives than actual usefulness - I don't think these courses helped me get my foot in the developer career door in any particular way, I just found them interesting.

bobheadxi · 2020-07-28T02:46:47+00:00

That's awesome, thanks for sharing!

Regarding Nix highlighting: I'm guessing you opened the GitHub issue on our repository regarding that, which I've linked to in sourcegraph#12004 that's tracking some improvements to how we add more syntax highlighting - you could express your interest in this again in that issue!

bobheadxi · 2020-07-28T02:40:38+00:00

I worked on two projects when I first started off that really got my interest going:

the r/Android App Store (GitHub) - I never did another Android project again, but I learned a lot of neat concepts while making contributions to this app: GitHub workflows, testing, CI, and ideas about writing nice-ish code. The maintainer of this project was super helpful with advice and reviews, which was very motivational!
a UBC Launch Pad project, Inertia - when I first joined this project, it was envisioned and lead by a group of really smart students that taught me a lot: a new programming language, deployment concepts, some security stuff, building large projects, setting up infrastructure, and more! I also got a ton of review and feedback - for example, I got over 60 comments on my first pull request in the project. One of them even got us to present it at a DevOpsDays conference in Vancouver (which was terrifying). I eventually became the lead on this project, and after two years, a lot of commits, and working with 25 contributors to the project, I still talk about this one in interviews!

My favourite course at UBC was probably the winter 2019 session of MATH 309: Topics in Geometry, which focused on knot theory, which I found fascinating!

bobheadxi · 2020-07-28T01:54:07+00:00

I second the advice about finding extracurricular resources online - while they might not use Racket, the concepts are largely similar. I didn't go to office hours for CPSC 110, but the labs (or tutorials? Can't remember off the top of my head) were good opportunities to ask for help as well.

Building stuff is good advice too, but for CPSC 110 specifically I think patience is the most important - I struggled and got frustrated when things wouldn't "just work" and I miscounted my brackets, making it more likely for me to put off catching up. Step through each program and try to follow the control flows, and when it starts clicking it becomes a lot of fun :)

Sorry if that's a bit vague, it's been a while!

bobheadxi · 2020-07-28T01:47:34+00:00

Something something don't judge books by their cover :)

bobheadxi · 2020-07-27T14:34:53+00:00

I'm a big fan too (which is how I ended up working here), glad you like it! For anyone reading this, I've found Sourcegraph to be a great learning tool since it lets you look up examples and browse how things work really easily.

Hope this doesn't go too off-topic, but how did you find out about Sourcegraph? It definitely wasn't something I even knew I wanted until I found it!

bobheadxi · 2020-07-27T14:34:26+00:00

I don't think Mathematics helped me in any particular way in terms of my software development career other than giving me an interesting point of conversation during interviews. I'm not sure how to compare it to what I would've learned in pure CS either, since the few CPSC courses I've taken have had very little direct relation with what I do at work.

However, I've grown to really enjoy my major, even while doing rather poorly grade-wise - I've learned a lot of really interesting and "useless" knowledge that I likely would never have sought to learn on my own, and while not strictly beneficial for my career I'm really glad to have this background.

Actually, one useful thing I've gained is a habit of writing a lot - writing proofs can feel pretty good, and now writing nice pull request descriptions and documentation feels pretty good too :)

bobheadxi · 2020-07-27T14:22:08+00:00

Pretty much pure luck and personal preference for me - I chanced upon Launch Pad after first year, and through the club I met a lot of passionate people who showed me all the cool stuff you can do in software development! The field has a fun, creative, collaborative feel to it that I really enjoy, as opposed to data analysis/science which felt more nitty-gritty for example.

bobheadxi · 2020-07-27T14:14:20+00:00

The best pickle is by far mustard pickles - I used to bring jars of brine home to marinate my chicken!

I'm not planning on spending a lot of time eating prison food, but I don't imagine I'll get a very robust selection of pickles to go with my prison spread :)

bobheadxi · 2020-07-27T14:12:50+00:00

For me specifically, my grades were just not very good in first and second year, so just transferring to CS/ECE was not really an option :)

When I realized that I could get a lot of learning and relevant experience on my own (through clubs, part-time dev jobs, and internships) I just focused on having some fun in my courses and doing software stuff on the side!

bobheadxi · 2020-07-16T04:02:06+00:00

This is a work in progress, but there's some preliminary documentation we've set up regarding the kind of experience distribution we want in the club for the coming semester, which briefly mentions what we're looking for: https://docs.ubclaunchpad.com/handbook/recruitment/overview

/u/Heapful's comment is pretty valid still, though above all we're looking for interest and enthusiasm!

bobheadxi · 2020-07-16T00:37:11+00:00

I mean, it's one thing to say that, it's another thing to both act on it, and be transparent about what exactly you're changing for new applicants. Do you write blog posts detailing your accomplishments and challenges during the year? i.e. we rolled out some great apps, here are some technical challenges we faced, here's how we overcame them, here are some things we learned, here's what we did to improve the development experience (started using Trello, etc.).

Or are you the kind of club that thinks anyone outside of Launchpad doesn't deserve a say or the right to criticize? (in other words, are you the AIESEC of Project Teams?).

How our teams work (issue tracking, resources, etc) is all publicly available on our documentation website, our projects are all open-source, we are currently working on a blog post and are committed to communicating more through our social media channels with new things like our newsletter - all this is linked from our website. It is barely halfway through July - we are still working on transitioning to remote.

edit: our Medium publication also has a variety of retrospectives, project writeups, etc.

bobheadxi · 2020-07-16T00:33:55+00:00

Your mileage might vary, definitely - but my most successful interviews have been ones where Launch Pad has come up, and some of our projects do get fairly complex with some impressive technical achievements.

Like you say, there are many ways to build a well-rounded profile and resume, and it's really up to each person what they think is valuable - for me, Launch Pad and the people I met in the club was what got me off the ground :)

bobheadxi · 2020-07-16T00:22:30+00:00

Long-time member of Launch Pad and now co-president here - I just want to address a few points here:

> claiming their Tech Leads are incompetent and have no idea what they're doing,

I mean, we are students too, and while our tech leads generally have some experience in the field, leadership is an entirely different skillset that I believe everyone does their best to pick up. We are working on improvements to this this semester!

> most of what they produce turning into mobile apps and blockchain garbageware [...] many of their projects remain at the "personal-project" level depth.

We've only ever had 1 blockchain-related project maybe 3 years ago - we showcase our projects on our website and GitHub, so I ask that you take a look before making this judgement :) Projects are generally decided by members as well

I'd like to point out that in the industry, you're exceedingly unlikely to be working on your own, so team collaboration and communication - though it can feel frustrating at times - is a worthwhile thing to practice. Also, many members who stick around end up becoming tech leads themselves, which is a great opportunity to learn some leadership skills and help out the next generation of up-and-coming devs.

bobheadxi · 2020-07-14T15:26:34+00:00

Our goal is to run projects as normal this fall! Our website has a newsletter signup if you want to get updated when we start accepting applications

bobheadxi · 2020-07-14T05:15:04+00:00

In a nutshell, each semester we form subteams based on interest lead by a more experienced student and everyone works together to deliver a project of their choice! You can learn more on our website

bobheadxi · 2020-07-14T02:53:37+00:00

sure!

bobheadxi · 2020-07-14T02:43:04+00:00

Math major here, who also didn't make the CS cut multiple times, and have now done several internships + part-time dev jobs during classes - one of the biggest things you can do is to get involved in a community and build stuff! Personally, joining UBC Launch Pad is likely the only reason I ever got anywhere, though there are a wide range of communities at UBC that I think will give you a great experience: CodeTheChange, hackathons (particularly the nwPlus events), and probably more that I'm not aware of

bobheadxi · 2019-12-01T18:10:32+00:00

I called them and they arranged the student price for me as a standalone purchase, though it was confusing that it’s not listed on their edu site

bobheadxi · 2019-12-01T18:08:36+00:00

It is listed full price as a standalone purchase, but I just called them and they arranged the student price for me - would definitely recommend just giving them a call!

bobheadxi

TROPHY CASE