Did half an hour of Javascript exercises on jschallenger.com.

Javascript

One of the more interesting things I learned today was that you can use the ternary operator (a.k.a question mark) to make code more succinct.

Instead of

function returnLarger(a, b) {
    if (a > b) {
        return a 
    } else {
        return b
    }
}

You could just write

function returnLarger(a, b) {
    return a > b ? a : b 
}    

Career stuff

Attended a talk today that featured a software engineer who had no formal CS background, which was pretty heartening. She mentioned a really good way of thinking about your career, namely the importance of developing these 4 things: skillset (functional, conscious competence), mindset (self beliefs and self-awareness), teamwork, and network (influence and relationships). A lot of software engineering comprises of things that aren’t just your technical skill (unless you’re some kind of very monastic individual contributor who never has to interact with people).

Now that COVID measures are easing up a bit, I’m trying to push myself to attend more meetups and meet new people. I was incredibly nervous at my first meetup and probably committed some kind of social faux pas, but never mind. It’ll get better with practice.