At Home
Last Wednesday, Penn extended Spring Break by a week and moved classes online for a semester in response to the threat of COVID-19. The same day, the WHO declared the virus’s global spread officially a pandemic. In the days since, I’ve packed up my dorm room and moved home. I’ve tried to see how I could use this time effectively — tackling projects I wouldn’t necessarily have time for in a busy college schedule, and learning new skills. Here’s a good a place as any to jot down some of my ideas, and hopefully it’ll keep me somewhat accountable.
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Re-make When2Meet. It’s a super simple and well-liked tool on campus, and I think it would be a cool experience to see how I’d make it, and if I could find any ways to improve on it while keeping its simplicity. I’ve been interested in functional programming lately, so I think I’ll try to tackle this using ReasonML and Elixir.
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Learn iOS development. Something I’ve been thinking about for a little bit. I’ve been enjoying frontend development more lately, and it might be cool to add another skill to my toolbox on this front, especially with how many product ideas are mobile-first.
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Keep working on Penn Labs products. With students scattered around the globe, tools like Penn Course Alert and Penn Course Plan are going to be even more critical to students. We’re hoping to release a new version of Penn Course Alert with some new and helpful features before Penn’s course registration starts, and that deadline should help keep me motivated and moving.
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Improving this site. This only just went up a week ago or so, and right now is still using a pretty vanilla theme. I’m planning on adding some features like a project showcase and spicing up the theme a bit, with some graphics and color.