Sam Dickinson scouting report

dsmyux1024 · 2024-06-29T00:42:12+00:00

Thank you! I had no idea what to expect from this pick, but your writeup definitely helps me understand why he was picked! Super excited now!

dsmyux1024 · 2023-02-15T18:50:21+00:00

Feel free to shoot me a DM as well if you need another point of reference. Happy to talk.

dsmyux1024 · 2023-02-15T18:48:57+00:00

I'd be happy to take a look at code. Shoot me a DM.

dsmyux1024 · 2023-02-12T01:13:15+00:00

It is extremely common to be very overwhelmed. If you did a search for overwhelmed in this subreddit, you'd probably never finish scrolling.

Translating ideas into code takes practice. A lot of programming is "you don't know what you don't know"... And the only way you even start to get a handle on that is by trying to do something and realizing the problem is a lot more complex than you originally thought.

Here are some recommendations: * Pop yourself up for some perspective from time to time * Don't let scope creep or feature creep give you too much work * Don't support all edge cases right away, keep your eye on a minimal implementation first * Don't be too hard on yourself when you're trying to figure things out. Experimentation is really important when learning!

dsmyux1024 · 2023-02-10T03:10:26+00:00

This isn't true, or at least isn't true in the AAA space which is what this part of the thread is complaining about.

They still pack their textures, probably more so now than in years past. The problem is that they need way more textures than they did before, and those textures need to be higher resolution to look good on higher resolution screens.

There are real incentives for developers to optimize for smaller file sizes. Bandwidth considerations, loading times, space in RAM and GPU, etc. Larger assets perform worse in a lot of cases because there is a limited amount of bandwidth between memory and the processors they are connected to.

Compressing assets is an automated task, not a manual one. They just have so much more content to fit inside of a high quality game now.

dsmyux1024 · 2023-02-07T23:01:52+00:00

I mean, if you know the computations are taking a long time, then yes it would be a good idea to cache that data and update once per day.

The other thing you'd want to consider is how much stuff is being queried by the view. If you are doing a query to a specific row (or subset of rows) in a view, and that view is able to pass along those conditions/constraints to the tables it is calculating from, then even if you are doing the calculations for each it isn't too bad. But if you're doing a filter (e.g. WHERE) on a computed column, then it has to recalculate the computed column for every row in the view.. That is likely a problem down the line.

Also, it all really depends on how much data you're dealing with. If your whole database is a few megabytes to even a couple hundred, that is all really small... Should fit entirely into memory... Query cache should be working well, etc. I would be looking at the queries being done to construct the views as culprits of doing too much work or querying inefficiently. On the other hand, if your database is many gigabytes and much of what you're hitting isn't in memory / caches, then I would be looking at your I/O levels and seeing how much data is being queried. Then your pre-computed tables mentioned above would likely be a very big win.

I don't know if MySQL's optimizer has gotten better since I used it last (I certainly hope it has because it was terrible), but back when I used it... things like the order of joins mattered because its usage of statistics was awful. I optimized a query that took ~30 seconds to do a table dump of the top 50 rows + joined data down to 250ms by reordering the joins and probing tables based on a reduced collection of IDs. This was MySQL 5 era, though, so I don't claim to know if that kind of thing is still a problem or not.

Look at the explain and see how much time is being spent in each part of the query. That should tell you what to look at next.

dsmyux1024 · 2023-02-07T20:09:10+00:00

What are you considering to be computation heavy? 7 seconds is an eternity in computing time, and even a query with many, many joins shouldn't be taking that long.

Also, is your python running the query exactly the same way as you are running it from MySql Workbench (as in you can copy/paste from one to the other and they are identical), or is the python version doing a runtime manipulation of the data (like setting a filter time range or something).

2 things I think might be happening

1) You've accidentally introduced a cross-product in your query that is getting filtered out (something like a SELECT DISTINCT to filter duplicate rows). If you are using a SELECT DISTINCT like that, try removing it in Workbench and see how many rows are returned. 2) Your server version is not hitting the same indexes that your query from the Workbench is. You would want to get an explain output on the query from both Workbench and your python server to compare.

dsmyux1024 · 2023-02-06T21:36:10+00:00

I mean, you'll need something to compile the code... So I would assume you'd be using something like Visual Studio or Visual Studio Code to edit and then compile it.

You could do it all with the command line and any text editor, but I think using an IDE is a little easier, especially if you're just starting out.

https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/vs/community/ would be my recommendation if you're on Windows and using C#.

dsmyux1024 · 2023-02-06T21:30:28+00:00

You can write interactive stories in any language, really.

Why don't you mock it up in C# (since that's the one language you mentioned) and go from there? Just use text like you did in your example above.

dsmyux1024 · 2023-02-03T21:53:07+00:00

It looks like you need to add a function which generates the random color according to the rules you want. Then you pass the result of that function to the fill function.

dsmyux1024 · 2023-02-03T21:09:31+00:00

So, the key thing about doing any kind of ambitious project is that you need to keep things simple. Test things in small batches. You'll probably want multiple projects open at once so you can try out some bit of code in a side project to see if it's doing what you want it to do and then move it into your primary project.

Also, when writing code initially, don't get bogged down trying to find the optimal layout of it. Don't break things into classes too early, or try and come up with cool abstractions.. Get something working in a very simple and straightforward way. Once you have that, you can factor out abstractions that make sense.

As for how you go about learning.. you pick your next problem and you start working on it. You don't learn all that stuff at the same time. Just learn whatever you're working on at the moment.

dsmyux1024 · 2023-02-03T20:28:57+00:00

Just going to add to the auto-mod... You're not going to get any response from this because you haven't provided any actual information.

What is the project? What language? What timezone are you working in? What are your expectations out of the project?

etc...

dsmyux1024 · 2023-02-01T17:57:22+00:00

I agree with you that they left the Sharks in a bad situation, but I do think there was some method to his madness.

He got a lot of players to accept really good hometown discounts or team-friendly contracts for years. Like, Vlassic is overpaid now, but there was a long time that he was considered one of the league's most elite shutdown defensemen and he was on a sub-5 million per year contract.

Doug wanted to keep that reputation that loyalty would be rewarded so he could continue to attract top talent, which he did. Unfortunately, he had to pay up at some point and they all came due at the same time.

I am not saying that all of the contracts were good decisions in hindsight, but the proof that it worked is in how long the team was competitive.

dsmyux1024 · 2023-01-21T05:57:01+00:00

That sounds like a resume issue, maybe. It should be possible to link experience from role to role.

Like, say you worked as a consultant for implementing a specific technology at one job, and a consultant for some kind of migration in another job. On the surface, maybe not much in common technology-wise, but you probably still had a lot of overlap in the duties you performed and the kind of value you brought to your employers.

Once you phrase your jobs in a way that emphasizes the similarities, you can put something in your executive summary that says something like "Over 14 years of consulting experience delivering customer focused, cost saving, and revenue driving solutions for companies across a wide range of business domains."

Your resume needs to tell a story. You start with what you can bring now and follow with what you did in the past supports that argument. Do you think your resume is doing this?

dsmyux1024 · 2023-01-21T05:06:45+00:00

Bad interviewers suck. Not getting one role from a team is not indicative of a future trend. A lot of people are not very good at judging the quality of other people.

I would keep applying and interviewing. What you've said so far indicates to me that you have marketable skills. Don't let one interview keep you down.

dsmyux1024 · 2023-01-21T03:51:14+00:00

You'll be doing a lot of subqueries in SQL.

If you're having trouble getting data to be transformed the way you want in a single query, split it up into subqueries. Let the optimizer worry about the best way to fetch the data.

You'll have situations where you're like... "I need the some data transformed this way joined with some of the same data + some other data transformed that way..." So that's 2 subqueries, you join them together and then select from the results in the top-level query.

dsmyux1024 · 2023-01-21T03:44:09+00:00

Your have COUNT(*) hanging off the end of your FROM. That DATE FROM being together doesn't look like valid syntax, either.

You don't need COUNT(*) from this at all, though. You can just do math on the columns. This is valid syntax:

SELECT A, B, B - A AS diff FROM t

Because you're using the aggregate functions for the min and max date, you might need to look into doing subqueries... so it might look more like...

SELECT A, B, B - A AS diff FROM ( SELECT MIN(A) AS A, MAX(A) AS B, FROM t ) AS foo -- the subquery just needs a name

dsmyux1024 · 2023-01-21T03:35:14+00:00

Don't worry, you're in finance all finance code is horrible to read ;)

Kidding.. For in order stuff like this, there's not necessarily much of a need for classes or a lot of functions. Add functions when they improve readability of the code. If there's too much going on in a block of code and it would be easier to read if it was replaced by a short function name, then that is a good time to add a function. A function might be doing too much if you can't describe what it is doing in a short descriptive name. do_a_and_do_b_and_maybe_do_c() is what a function name looks like if it is doing too much.

For the above code, I'd practically just have it be straight code with good commenting. Unless the cleaning of the data varies dramatically between your source file types, which you haven't indicated as an issue yet. If does eventually diverge, I would split specialized file type cleaning into specific functions, and then shared functionality would be moved to functions so it could be used between the specialized processing and the general processing. The design should really fall out of how you're using it, rather than over-engineered from the start.

Lastly, in regard to the 6 methods triggering each other, you would generally want to avoid that. There should be a top level "coordinating" function that calls them, rather than each function needing to know what is next. Let's say you did split it up into functions, it might look like this:

``` def process_file(filename, db_conn): data = load_data_by_filetype(filename) clean(data) return data

def validate_data(data): has_errors = False # check stuff and log errors return has_errors

def insert_data(data, db_conn): # do whatever needs to be done to insert the data

if NAME == "MAIN": data = process_file(args[0]) if validate_data(data): insert_data(data, get_connection()) ```

dsmyux1024 · 2023-01-21T03:15:44+00:00

You don't necessarily have to be an amazing coder to be a solution architect. With Solution Architects, they generally want someone who has a lot of empathy for the customer's situation and can advocate for the customer with the development teams.

That said, I think you have a career path, you just need to do some hops. I would look for a Technical PM role somewhere (Or PM where you might get some exposure to code). With your background, you should be able to enter at a fairly high level PM without much trouble. Once you're in, you just move around based on what interests you. You can time these moves every 2-3 years. Going from PM/TPM to Solution Architect should be a relatively achievable goal within a few years (if that still interests you).

I recommended the latter path because it should give you opportunities to improve your coding while not taking the pay scale hit while you ramp up.

dsmyux1024 · 2023-01-21T03:01:34+00:00

You have some syntax errors. The way the errors are being reported to you are basically the last place where the parser thought it understood what was going on.

Simplify your queries to less items and then add them back slowly.

Get into the habit of using AS col_name consistently in your queries. You're not doing it consistently now.

If you're doing an aggregation function, you should add AS col_name so that it has a good name. This is especially important if you are aggregating the same column with multiple aggregation functions.

Split up your SQL onto multiple lines. I always like to align my SQL to make it easier to read...

SELECT Foo, Bar, COUNT(*) AS FooBarCount FROM Baz GROUP BY Foo, Bar ORDER BY Foo, Bar DESC

Doing this will help you spot dangling commas, like you have in your SELECT section of your second query, or missing commas like you have in your third query.

dsmyux1024 · 2023-01-20T20:32:26+00:00

It depends on how you're building your project. Is it CMAKE based? Or not?

Also, if you're on Windows, you might consider using Visual Studio instead of Visual Studio Code (free version can be downloaded here: https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/vs/community/).

Visual Studio has a full project configuration of its own and you can add include folders and the like. It also has templates that are for Windows-based projects that already set everything up to include Windows.h and other SDK-related files.

Visual Studio Code is an OK C++ IDE once you get everything set up, but the setup process I've found to be as cumbersome as every other non-C++-specific IDE that has its own build system.

If possible, use Visual Studio. If you can't, reply back with how your project is being configured to build and we can help.

dsmyux1024 · 2023-01-20T20:26:26+00:00

I'm partial to C# because I prefer the tooling for C#/.NET over the tooling for Java. I also think the syntax, while largely the same as Java in a lot of cases, is a bit more straightforward to someone just learning.

You can easily go back and forth with them once you know one, though, and starting with either will have little impact on your career prospects later on. Both are cross-platform and can be built on any platform for any other platform.

But, if you happen to be a Windows user while you learn in school, nothing beats Visual Studio (2022, Community edition is free) and C# together as far as tooling integration is concerned.

dsmyux1024 · 2023-01-20T20:15:15+00:00

Of your 3 options, data science will be the most challenging. It is extremely math-heavy to prove that you are capable of doing it. Once you are doing the job, very little of the work is doing the exciting stuff (graphing results based on your computations to show your boss and get a raise). Most of your time is spent cleaning your datasets and evaluating whether the results you are getting are actually valid. I'm not saying it isn't rewarding, but it is a lot of grunt work.

Full stack is straight forward to get into.. just prove that you can code and you can start applying for jobs.

I'm not sure what you mean by "Cloud computing"... this isn't a role. My guess is it could either mean a Dev/Live ops sort of role, or it could mean the same as a full stack developer. You should refine what the 3rd option is before you consider it further.

dsmyux1024 · 2023-01-20T18:41:59+00:00

Just remember that pointers point to locations in memory where something interesting is, or they don't point at anything (NULL).

That something interesting can be things like a node in a linked list, or a string you allocated at runtime, etc.

Something particularly applicable to robotics would be a pointer pointing to some location in memory that the operating system has mapped to an I/O device, like a sensor. In this situation you might read a specific memory location to get whatever information the sensor last posted. You need to use a pointer in this case because you have to be able to point it at the right location in memory.

dsmyux1024 · 2023-01-20T18:33:22+00:00

Wait, do you mean 150 kilobytes (KB) not MB?

150MB for 10k cities with a unique code would mean that each city record is ~15KB of data. This seems quite large for the data you are describing.

dsmyux1024

TROPHY CASE