Advent of Code 2020

My adventures learning Julia, test driven development, learning to use VIM, daily productivity, and other growing pains

About Me

My name is Sam Mohler. I am a long time student in mechanical engineering, mathematics, and scientific computing. I have a triple major in undergrad in mechanical engineering, physics, and applied mathematics. I did some internships at NASA and upon returning to Portland, OR. I decided to go back to school to get my masters degree, this was a quick decision. I looked for employment for a couple months but realized I was going to go back to school regardless in the future so I decided to get it out of the way. My masters degree is in Mechanical Engineering with a focus on the analysis of equations that govern the flow of liquid when gravity is not present. Currently I am a research faculty at Portland State Univeristy where I teach undergraduate and graduate level fluid dynamics classes and research low-gravity fluid dynamics.

Why Am I Doing This

Here is a ranked list of why I want to complete advent of code for myself.

1. Learn Test-Driven Development Every challenge in advent of code gives you examples you should verify before you continue. This lays a great working opportunity to learn the power of test-driven development. Last year I basically just floundered running unstructued tests occasionally and didn't really put any effort into making well designed test before I moved onto programming a solution. This year I want to focus on building good tests that guide me in programming solutions.

2. Learn Juila This is a new language that promises a lot and I want to become verse in it while it is still young to give myself an edge. I hear it is wonderful for large scale computation as well which is a career I'd like to work in.

3. Learn VIM I know I could have chosen eMacs, but I decided on VIM with a coin toss.