About one year ago, I decided to myself that my dream of pursuing linguistics was growing kind of trite, and I just couldn't imagine myself reading a dictionary from day to night. That's when I recalled telling my father when I was 9 that I wanted to become an engineer to create weapons for the military. Well, don't ask why I wanted to contribute to war - I just randomly picked an occupation. I remember that kid who enjoyed building things and would just mess up any electrical toy exploring what the circuit board looked like. Perhaps to satisfy that long-forgotten passion, I bought an Arduino set.

Within just a week, I completely demolished the book that came with the set, trying out every exemplary project written in the book. Surprisingly what struck me as difficult was actually the fact that my fingers were too big to plug in the wires to the breadboard. I picked up the programming part really fast despite having no programming background whatsoever. Maybe Electrical Engineering could be a potential career path for me. Welllllll, that did not last long as I searched the tuition fees for Electrical Engineering at University. Hey, what about programming?

It was in June of 2022 that I picked up my first programming language - Java. Yes, Java. I absolutely hated it (and still do now). There was some "staticness" to it. It's like teaching Math to a kindergartener - you have to describe each step in UNECESSARILY GREAT details. It was a couple of days after that I decided to switch to C++. Algorithms and competitive programming appeared. I was so enthusiastic. The whole concept of designing an algorithm to automatically solve a complex problem and having to learn new things to find a way to optimize the algorithm provided me with some sense of "passion". But that "passion" came with a "bubble".

I felt so safe with competitive programming. Having my program accepted for a problem on Codeforces gave me that sense of achievement. It felt so good. So good that I didn't want to rid of it. So good that I was scared to not have it any longer.

On February 2023, 9 months until University application season, somebody asked me: "Hey, what do you want to major in Uni?" Without any hesitation, I answered - "Computer Science."

"Cool, are you doing any projects?"

That question struck a chord of silence in me. What have I done in these two years? Sure, I like programming, but what do I have to show for it? Maybe I am being a little "petty", trying to get validation, but why am I doing this if I have yet to create anything? I abandoned Linguistics for this path for I appreciated the whole concept of "creation." I embarked on this journey for that insatiable little kid that had always dreamt of creating something so powerful, so revolutionary that it may change the world. Where is that little kid now? Stuck in some bubble of false satisfaction? Or is that little kid fearing failure and trying to poison himself with some "dopamine of success"?

I had the audacity to neglect the path my parents had oriented for me all my life. I had the audacity to rid of all the achievements and fame I had gathered for years. I had the audacity to promise that little kid that I would be able to create that revolutionary something. Why would I stop here?

From February of 2023 till now, I have attracted a couple of internship offers as a developer, a few research opportunities, developed one of the best websites I have ever programmed for TEDxYouth PTNK, met friends and companions that in the future, we will work in conjunction and create big things. In that 3 months span, I made more than 300 commits in comparison with just 2 commits last year and this blog.

I know there's not much to flex about, but it is something that I am proud of. I'm not talking about some websites or projects that I have created. I'm proud that I tried. I'm proud that I had to audacity to step out of that bubble I have made for myself.

Well, that's pretty much all to my story, actually. GO CHECK OUT THIS REPOSITORY ON GITHUB, I AND MY FRIEND ARE COLLABORATING ON A CP GUIDE: https://github.com/hkt456/The-Not-so-Average-Competitive-Programming-Guide

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!!!

Welcome to my second post on HTML! If you're new here, make sure to check out our previous blog - "Introduction to HTML - Part 1."

Previously, we explored the history of HTML and actually coded our first website. However, our page only consisted of texts. In this post, we will go deeper into the capabilities of HTML in using images,...

Attachments

Images

In the last post, we already learned how to use simple tags like <h1></h1> or <p></p>,... for text formats. Let me introduce you to <img></img>

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
    <meta charset="UTF-8">
    <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge">
    <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
    <title>Document</title>
</head>
<body>
    <h1>This is my first HTML web!<h1>
    <h2>The reasons why I should learn HTML</h2>
    <p>It is the frontend backbone of website development</p>
    <p>It is easy!</p>
    <img src="imgs/programmerbear.png">
    <h2>Why it is so fun to learn HTML</h2>
    <p>Because this blog is so detailed!</p>
    <p>Just kidding!</p>
</body>
</html>

Above is our code from the previous post, but this time, I have added an image.

By adding

<img src="imgs/programmerbear.png">

Within the <body></body> tags, I was able to attach an image to our page. Now to scale the image to make it looks better, we just need to add the "width" and "height" attribute:

<img src="imgs/programmerbear.png" width="50%" height="50%">

Buttons

To give our website some more functions, we can add buttons using the <button></button> tags

Code:

<button>Click me</button>

Output:

Of course, the button doesn't really have any value to it because we haven't assigned any particular functions. But hey, we will explore how to do so as we explore the functionalities of CSS and Javascript in the future!

Input

Hypothetically, our webpage needs a feedback section where visitors will type in their thoughts. Now, we will need to create a place for them to type in their text, and to do so, we will use the <input></input> tag!

Code:

<input type="text" placeholder="Share us your thoughts!">

Output:

The <input> tag seems different because it has some attributes!

Formatting

With the attachments, you have given your website a lot of functions. But to make the text itself prettier, you will need to use different types of tags.

Line Break

If your text is too long and your website looks a bit too neat, you can use the <br /> tags:

Code:

    <p>Bears are cute</p>
    <br />
    <p>I am not lying</p>

Output:

Bolding

To put more emphasis on a specific piece of text, you can use the <b></b> tags:

Code:

   <p><b>Bears</b> are cute</p>
    <br />
    <p>I am not lying</p>

Output:

Italic

Sometimes when writing names, you need to put it in italic. To do so, you can use the <i></i> tags:

Code:

   <p><b><i>Bears</i></b> are cute</p>
    <br />
    <p>I am not lying</p>

Output:

Underlining

To heavily emphasize your text, you can underline your text with the <u></u> tags:

Code:

    <p><b><i><u>Bears</u></i></b> are cute</p>
    <br />
    <p>I am not lying</p>

Output:

The next 2 subsections show you how to change the size of your text:

Enlarge

Code:

    <p><b><i><u><big>Bears</big></u></i></b> are cute</p>
    <br />
    <p>I am not lying</p>

Output:

Diminish

Code:

    <p><b><i><u><small>Bears</small></u></i></b> are cute</p>
    <br />
    <p>I am not lying</p>

Output:

Divider

In my blogs, you will see me use a long line to separate different sections. To do so with HTML, you can use the <hr /> tag:

Code:

    <p><b><i><u><big>Bears</big></u></i></b> are cute</p>
    <br />
    <hr />
    <p>I am not lying</p>

Output:

Subscript

Hypothetically, you want to write a documentary on the bears, but you need to write a certain Chemistry formula. The <sub></sub> tags work the best:

Code:

<p><b><i><u>Bears</u></i></b> need O<sub>2</sub> to live.</p>

Output:

Superscript

Now imagine you are writing a bear-themed Math blog and you need to write an exponential equation problem, you can easily do so with <sup></sup> :

Code:

<p><b><i><u>Bear </u></i></b>needs to solve the roots of x<sup>2</sup>+2x+5</p>

Output:

The End

This is the last part of our series on HTML. At this point, you have gotten a grasp of what HTML is and have enough tools to create your basic website. You can brush up on your HTML skills by coding a simple blog website on any topic you are interested in or perhaps a product introduction website.

Later on, I will try to touch on the subject of Javascript or CSS (I don't really know what to talk about CSS since there's not much to it, and I used to learn CSS by doing my own research while creating mini websites for myself). Or maybe create a new series on algorithms with my friend!

Thank you for spending the time to read this. If you have any questions or feedback, feel free to put a comment down below. Here is a cute photo of capybara that reminds me of a special friend:

Preface

After 2 posts about not-so-programmish topics, this blog is looking like it's more like a personal journal. So to prove that I was not lying about this blog being a programming blog, I have decided to start a series on web development!

Make sure to stay tuned!

The background of HTML

HTML, which stands for Hypertext Markup Language, is a fundamental building block for creating websites and blogs. It is a markup language used to structure content on the web by defining the different types of content such as text, images, links, and more. HTML allows content creators to add headings, paragraphs, lists, images, and other media to their pages.

For a blog, HTML is used to create the overall structure of the website, such as defining the header and footer, setting up the layout of the pages, and formatting the text of the blog posts. HTML tags are used to define the different elements of the page and provide information about how the content should be displayed in the browser.

The History of HTML

HTML was first introduced in 1991 by Tim Berners-Lee, a British computer scientist who is widely credited as the inventor of the World Wide Web. At the time, Berners-Lee was working at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) and was seeking a way to share information between scientists and researchers working in different locations.

The first version of HTML, HTML 1.0, was a very basic language that allowed users to create simple web pages with headings, paragraphs, and lists. Over time, as the web grew in popularity, HTML evolved to include more complex features such as tables, forms, and multimedia content.

In 1995, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) was founded to develop and maintain web standards, including HTML. The release of HTML 2.0 in the same year marked the beginning of a more formalized standardization process.

In the years that followed, HTML continued to evolve, with new versions and features being added regularly. HTML 3.2, released in 1997, introduced support for tables, image maps, and forms, while HTML 4.0, released in 1998, added support for cascading style sheets (CSS) and scripting languages like JavaScript.

In 2000, the W3C released XHTML 1.0, which was based on XML, a more structured and modular markup language. XHTML was designed to be more extensible and to support the development of more complex web applications.

Today, HTML is the foundation of the web, and the latest version, HTML5, provides support for multimedia content, improved accessibility, and a more flexible and modular approach to web development.

Give me a high (HTML)5!

HTML5 is the latest version of HTML, which is the core markup language used to structure content on the web. HTML5 was released by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) in 2014 and is the result of a collaborative effort by web developers and browser vendors to improve the language and its capabilities.

One of the key benefits of HTML5 is its ability to support multimedia content natively without the need for third-party plugins like Adobe Flash or Microsoft Silverlight. This includes support for audio and video elements, as well as animations and graphics using the new Canvas element.

HTML5 also includes new elements and attributes that make it easier to structure web content and make it more accessible to users. These include new semantic elements like <header>, <footer>, <nav>, and <section>, which help to provide additional meaning and context to the content.

Another important feature of HTML5 is its support for responsive web design, which allows websites to adapt their layout and content to different screen sizes and devices. This is achieved through new features like media queries and the viewport meta tag.

Overall, HTML5 provides web developers with a more powerful and flexible set of tools for creating dynamic, interactive, and accessible web content.

Basic HTML

The structure

Let's jump right into the syntax and the basic structure of an HTML code.

Hello World! I am learning HTML!

Now I want to print the above message onto my website, what should I do?

Firstly, we need to create an HTML file. According to "Coders' rulebook", most main HTML files should be named "index.html"

Secondly, if you are using Visual Studio Code as your IDE, there's a trick to instantaneously create a default HTML structure:

!

By typing '!' and pressing "RETURN", you will get the following result:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
    <meta charset="UTF-8">
    <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge">
    <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
    <title>Document</title>
</head>
<body>

</body>
</html>

This is what a basic HTML structure looks like, don't worry if you don't understand it, we will get to it in a moment.

The Syntax

To change the content of our page, we will need to alter the content inside the body tag.

To give a heading to our website, we will need to add a <h1> tag.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
    <meta charset="UTF-8">
    <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge">
    <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
    <title>Document</title>
</head>
<body>
    <h1>This is my first HTML web!<h1>
</body>
</html>

This should appear on your locally hosted page:

Apart from the <h1> tag, you also have 5 other tags for your heading: <h2> ,<h3> <h4> ,<h5> ,<h6>

And to put more text content on your page, you can also use other tags like <p1> , <span>,...

If you want to do your own research on what kinds of tags there are, you can use this website as a reference: https://www.w3schools.com/TAGs/

Example

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
    <meta charset="UTF-8">
    <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge">
    <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
    <title>Document</title>
</head>
<body>
    <h1>This is my first HTML web!<h1>
    <h2>The reasons why I should learn HTML</h2>
    <p>It is the frontend backbone of website development</p>
    <p>It is easy!</p>
    <h2>Why it is so fun to learn HTML</h2>
    <p>Because this blog is so detailed!</p>
    <p>Just kidding!</p>
</body>
</html>

The output:

You can also use other elements in HTML to decorate texts (bold it,...), and we will discuss how to do that in later blogs in this series.

Conclusion

We have learned the basic syntax and structure of an HTML file and actually implemented the knowledge to a basic webpage.

In the next blog, we will go deeper into the capabilities of HTML, like how to embed an image and buttons,...

Thank you for going so far into this blog. This is actually my first time writing a programming tutorial. If you have any questions or feedback, feel free to put a comment below, I will make sure to reply to you asap!

I wouldn't say I liked Python. I hated the "readable" syntaxes. I was not too fond of the fact that it tried its best to mimic the English language. I hated the fact that it did not have any brackets or semicolons. I hated recoding parts of a program just because I accidentally pressed the spacebar twice. I hated that there exists a programming language that could potentially have a pivotal place in every tech field and that to adapt to this ever-changing developers' world, you would need to learn Python.

I tried to find every way possible to avoid having to learn Python. I learned C++ for competitive programming, learned HTML, CSS, Javascript, and PHP for my first websites, learned Matlab and Arduino for embedded systems, and learned Java and SQL because why not? Everything was going just fine as I did not have to worry about having to learn Python.

It was then. It was when I was first introduced to the world of AI. The prospect of having a piece of code does all the work for you got me into programming. But the thought of having a supermachine translate thousands and thousands of lines of text collects information from all over the Internet and returns a terse answer whenever you ask what "Floating Point Exception" means (Yes, I am talking about ChatGPT). AI caught me off guard. It caught me hard. It caught me so hard that I fell in love with it and decided that it is what I want to learn more about in the future.

So, I got to learning.

Convolutional Neural Network, Recurrent Neural Network, Backpropagation, Neural Machine Translation,... After days and days of learning the science and math behind AI and only understanding a whopping 15% of all the books and research papers, I could not wait to try and start my first AI/Machine Learning project. But guess what programming language is mainly used for AI? Of course, it's Python.

I knew this day would come. I know that I could not escape from the inevitable. That learning a ton of other languages was not enough to get me out of the woods.

After a whole two weeks of slacking through a Coursera Python Crash course, I figured that I should start a small project to revise what I have learned. I decided that a chess game would do a perfect project as it would have been my first game and first Python project. It took me a whole week (most of the time was just me stretching my eyes out debugging). I got used to it. I got used to not putting a semicolon after a command and not forgetting that the for-loops in Python are different from that in C++ (Like seriously, what's up with that? It looks so dumb).

It seems like Python was not all that bad.

It was time to code my first AI game. Using all that knowledge from my Chess game and some hours of research and finding out about NEAT, I coded a Flappy bird game with an ML bot. It was a heck lot of fun.

Well, well, well. Look who just had fun with Python.

It seems as if all this hating on Python was for nothing. I guess the people were right.

After spending a couple of minutes reading this blog, you must be thinking, "Is that all? Did this kid write so much about such a lame story?" Well, true; it doesn't have much to it as a story, but it was my realization. I realized that sometimes in order to achieve something that you REALLY love, you have to come to terms with something you hate. I realized that what is difficult about programming isn't that there isn't a free yet thorough online course; it is us- ourselves that are preventing us from going beyond. I learned that I was capable of changing and adapting, that I was capable of pushing myself forward.

I managed to bite through something I hated and made the most out of an uncomfortable situation because of something I really loved. Isn't that the same for all of us programmers?

"Great coders aren't born. They're compiled from binary." - Unknown

This blog will be mainly about my journey as an English major trying his hardest to become a professional AI researcher/Developer and my development as a 17-year-old Vietnamese boy trying to understand dynamic programming.

For my first post, I thought I'd share a little bit more about myself and what inspired me to start this blog. I've only coded for a year, but it wasn't until recently that I cropped up the courage to put it to actual use and share it with the community. Through my journey, I am learning more about myself as a programmer and a human as I explore the vast world of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence coming from a rather "Linguistic" background.

My target audience is other fellow high school students struggling to figure out what they want to do in life and how to learn what they love. Whether you are a veteran programmer or just wrote your first "Hello World" program, I hope that you will find some value here.

Thanks for reading, and stay tuned for more!