Over a decade ago I missed a Delta Airlines flight. Fortunately my Aunt Shebronda, being the great aunt that she is, bailed me out, and got me a flight on American Airlines. That was the flight that brought me to MIT, to Cambridge, a city that would become my home for the next thirteen years. […]
Yesterday, I spent some time working on a test that needed to verify the delete method was called a certain number of times for a Django model. In the past we have used the assertNumQueries() method, but it always comes with some flakiness/tediousness (especially if we have to worry about queries made by middleware and/or authentication […]
I have been working on a prototype for the edX marketing site to move rendering from client-side to server-side. (Note that the marketing site is separate from the LMS.) The goal is to decrease the time to first paint—time users must wait to actually use our site. Today that time can range from 2s for […]
It’s a well-known fact that I’m a workaholic. This doesn’t necessarily instill a sense of pride or regret. When I left Kyruus, I was so committed to maintaining a “perfect” work-life balance that I neither brought my work laptop home nor cloned edX repositories on my personal laptop. I think that lasted for two months, maybe. The truth is: I […]
For the past two-and-a-half months I have been away from circus due to injury, illness, and holidays. I’ve mostly spent the time wishing I were back at circus, coding, and watching a lot of streaming media. Last week marked return. I was a bit nervous as I assumed I would have forgotten the various tricks and routines I’ve […]
One of my least-favorite, yet highly-used, apps is AMC Theatre’s app for finding movie show times and purchasing tickets. The app is highly-used because I watch a lot of movies in the summer. It is my least favorite app because it is not well-designed. From my perspective the app should help solve a few basic […]
This past April I attended a gala/fundraiser for Huntington Theatre. It was a great event featuring the cast of A Little Night Music…and an auction…oh that auction. I had joked with another attendee that I intended to win the lot featuring Hamilton tickets. No one was more surprised than me when the guy at the kids table at the very […]
Correction: Motor oil is changed every 3-10K miles, not 15-30K. This is what happens when I trade driving for biking. One of my favorite oxymoronic statements is, “Common sense is not common.” There is even a Wikipedia essay on the concept. I was immediately reminded of the statement after reading a few comments on a […]
Disclaimer: Coursera is a competitor of edX (where I work). My views are my own, not those of edX. Last week Coursera announced they’d be shutting down their old platform, removing some older courses. Hacker News and reddit went crazy and trashed Coursera. Ironically, Coursera made the right choice. They simply did a poor job […]
I’ve been reading various posts on Facebook, reddit, and Medium about MIT’s recent announcement of a moratorium on freshmen in Senior House. The overwhelming majority of what I am reading is dissatisfaction with the MIT administration. Many feel this another step to squash the culture normally associated with east campus. I didn’t spend much time […]