It has been some time since my last post. I was too busy because of the last-term exams and because of TEDxYouth PTNK.

I tried to keep my identity in this blog completely separate from my social and real life, but I think that I really want to share about my life recently.

Exams

Being a complete dumbass on the subject of Chemistry, I struggled to regain basic knowledge of 11th-grade Chemistry and pulled through the exams with dragging colors. I still have 3 subjects left to complete, but they are kinda unimportant so I am not too worried about them.

I have AP CSA in about three days - right before my last exam date. I am not too fluent in Java, but my experience with Object-oriented programming in Python and C++ has helped a lot. I still have a lot of past papers to deal with to get some confidence prior to the exam tho haha.

CSES challenge

One thing about me is that I absolutely love challenging myself lol.

This time, I have challenged myself to "Every day a CSES problem" on CSES.fi.

It is a way for me to brush up on my problem-solving skills and algorithmic knowledge. It has been a few months since I last partook in any competitive programming activity.

TEDxYouth PTNK

This is perhaps something that I most want to share about.

In August 2022, I and my friends decided to create our own TEDx event for our schools. The journey was long, and a lot to talk more about, so I will cut to the chase and only talk about my process of developing our website (I know some of my friends are gonna see this, but what can they do? It is my blog after all)

The website is live at: https://www.tedxyouthptnk.live/

TWO MONTHS. IT TOOK ME TWO MONTHS TO PROGRAM THE WHOLE WEBSITE.

I know many people that two months is only worth a small project, but it is actually the longest I have ever spent on a project.

The website was coded using Three.js to render and control the 3D model of the crystal. The model was created by my friend (Shout out to Bennard Huynh) using Blender, and I was the only developer on the project.

I had to learn everything from scratch (well, not everything since I already knew HTML, CSS, and Javascript, but they weren't enough). I learned from that project design pattern, UI/UX, Three.js, and of course, project management. Not forget to mention how to please a client as a developer. The coding and research took wayyyyy longer than I had expected, and it was only put into use just yesterday.

The path was gruesome, but I can say with confidence that it is by far a programming project I take the most pride in. In estimate, with my website, more than 50 people were able to sign up to our event, not counting those who weren't able to because our Early Bird tickets sold out in just an hour!!!

Enough flexing. The real reason why I wanted to put this on this blog is that: seeing my website being put to use, getting compliments on the design, and getting some recognition meant a lot to me. Not that I am needy or anything. It was some great encouragement, that's all. Being able to create something useful to contribute using my programming skills helped me realize how far I have come on this whole programming journey of mine. Just last year, I was learning what a variable is and how to include libraries in C++. I realized that "Damn, I love this", that maybe I didn't waste my time for nothing, and maybe my efforts are paying off.

For the first time in my life, I didn't feel lost after finishing a big project, to me at least. For the first time in my life, I felt energized and motivated to learn more and more.

For the first time in my life, I felt like I didn't make a mistake. (Well, I didn't really make the website responsive, so I kinda made a mistake there)

Conclusion

So, next time you ever get too tired trying to debug. Remember, it will all turn out great. Just don't give up!

SEE YOU NEXT TIME!!!