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firesofmay

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Mayank (a.k.a firesofmay) has over 8 years of experience covering a wide range of skill sets, including Development, QA, Community Management, UX/UI, and running a small startup. He’s also a mentor at 91springboard.

Hey me at firesofmay@hey.com

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It's A(door)able 3 years ago

I found out about this today; coincidentally, it was also my wife's birthday. Used it to wish her a surprise.

In the end, the expression on her face was totally worth it. Thank you for making amazing interactive games as always!

Hi everyone,

So, I had this crazy idea to write a love story with the help of ChatGPT and Midjourney. Like, why not use AI to do the heavy lifting, am I right? I mean, sure, they might have taken over most of the writing, but hey, at least I get to claim the title of "Mastermind Behind the Idea"!

Anyways, it was a hilarious experiment if I do say so myself. I was driving the story, but it was the AI that was writing most of it. I mean, who needs a professional writer when you've got two sophisticated pieces of software that can spit out paragraphs and plot twists in the blink of an eye?

But all joking aside, I'd love to hear what you all think of my little AI love story experiment. Don't hold back, folks! Give me your thoughts, your ideas, your criticisms. And who knows, this could be the spark of something beautiful. Or something totally ridiculous. Either way, cheers to trying something new!

I haven't read through other peoples post here but I have gone through this.

I am from India, and my reasosn were a bit different. I had failed in my final class in school (12th). Right before you are supposed to apply for college. I had science. Except for Computer Science I sucked at everything.

And I was like really fed up and I gave up on studies entirely.

Told my parents about it. They tried making me understand but I said this stuff doesn't go in my head.

Finally they gave in. And I joined my dads business.

For 4 years I tried doing that stuff, And I realized that I am not cut out for it.

One day, me, my dad and my uncle met. And My dad was trying to ask him to take me up as a partner in his firm while he'll invest.

My uncle said straightforward, "look, If its money, I can get it from banks. It's about the knowledge and what he can add to the company. Why don't you ask him to get back to studies?"

And that started this whole pursuit of trying again.

Told my parents I'll try to clear my last year in school again, did it somehow via distance learning. Cleared it.

Finally Got an admission in decent Engineering college and got into I.T.

First 3 years I had no clue what I was doing, why am I here, while I would do great in practicals, I would do horrible in theory.

In 3rd year, I failed one theory subject 4 times which is like a year down (basically you have to clear that one subject within a year and wait till you clear it)

I was like WTF.

And I told myself I'll just learn things on my own.

First thing I did was setup Ubuntu on my machine.

Unfortunately WIFI just would not work.

Wasted a week, luckily Ubuntu 10.04 (I think) came out and It just worked! :D

And I began my jounrey of self-learning.

One good thing that happened to me was due to a year down, all my friends passed out and joined several big companies. And I saw that these big companies care too much about marks.

And I decided not to apply to anyone of them coz they'll reject me even before trying to know me.

And I told myself, one year down the line, i'll get a job without applying via college, "off-campus", on my own.

And I would attend all kinds of meetups, events, updated my github profile, updated my FB (kept it clean), wrote blog posts etc....

After a year on FB I got a message from one startup about writing some python scrapers for them as a freelancer. I did it for 2 months. Also I was doing my final year project under someone. They both offered me a job. And one person I met in a python conference. I got a job offer from him as well.

I landed up a job at Helpshift. These guys don't care about your degree, your "years of experience" etc. Just pure knowledge.

It's been almost 2 years I've been working here, and life is good.

So was degree really required? No. Is it a good to have? Yes. Is it a must Have? No, depends.

Its all upto you, what path you wanna create. By doing X you open certain gates up, and close some others.

If you study on your own, and chart your own path, you make it easier for yourself to study exactly what you want, but you close other gates like Trying for a company like Google perhaps which may not reject you but will definetly make it it harder for you.

If you do get a degree, you keep your options open but you'll have to go through this whole cycle.

So again, both have its tradeoffs.

Do I regret dropping off? No. I learned to value knowledge (Not degree btw).

I would just say, choose the path that you'll regret the least. Everyone who tells you that you are doing wrong, are saying from what they have seen or their experiences. They could be wrong too you know, just like you might be too.

Whats more important is what would you regret less if it does not work out in the future? Choose that. And just give your everything to it, Degree or No Degree.

All the best to you. :)

Totally agree on asking FizzBuzz type questions first! I have understood a lot about the person just by asking simple questions. Most people fall into the trap of answering it in a very complicated way to advoid many if else if conditions for no reason! :P :)

Would be nice if it caches 2-3 answers so it doesn't have to call each time. Also if I could specify like -p123 it shows me first three answers instead of only first and I have to make a new call till I find my answer. Really useful. Thanks for sharing.

I was actually thinking of the whole web app being written in clojure/clojurescript actually. And not teaching SICP via clojure.

Good initiative. I wish it was done in clojure/clojurescript, would have been great. But still its a nice way to learn. One suggestion. Add paredit mode to balance the parens. Without paredit mode one has to worry about balancing the parens and its a painful experience. It's like coding in notepad. Looks great! Looking forward to more chapters :)

One of the best reads ever. I've faced this issue so many times. Even the gym example has happened to me and i've failed for over 2 years. Slowly I learned it on my own as I was learning programming and understanding that I am over optimizing at start. And this post hits the nail for me. Awesome. Thanks for sharing.

Hey this is great! :D I loved the idea of No communication puzzle game! It has nice twist to it! Port it for Android/iPhone.

Suggestion, You might want to emphasis somewhere that flipping (F) is also a button! One time, rest of us got it right, 4th guy didn't know he could flip and we all were waiting for him to flip and fit it! :p

Awesome stuff!