Ravit's Blog

I realized yesterday that I haven't been living up to my full potential. I have been doing my math homework at the last moment, going to bed late, skipping lectures, and underperforming in my classes. I have been lazy, staying in bed a lot and watching too much YouTube. The fact that I have been lacking is not good for my reputation or academic performance, but it also makes me feel lowly and rotten inside. Yesterday, I had dinner with a fellow CS student, who impressed me in a few ways. Firstly, he seemed to have a vast knowledge of math during our discussion, mentioning his enrollment in honors complex analysis and discussing some advanced mathematical concepts. Secondly, he secured an internship at SpaceX, for which he completed an 8-hour interview problem. Thirdly, he talked about how he built a productivity app in CS97 that reached a hundred downloads in the past week. Additionally, he appeared to have a vast social group, referencing clubs such as StartupUCLA, and personally ...

  On occasion I find myself relieved that the human lifespan, typically speaking, is as long as it is. Because when I read the great works of the writers who immaculately and beautifully string together words with masterful precision and beauty when I gaze upon the artwork of artists who have a creative imagination and incredible technique too, and when I listen to the controlled, intentional keystrokes of master pianists, I am overwhelmed by a great sense of inferiority and awe. In part, this drives me to continue on my mission of becoming a better artist. I imagine that when he was my age, Jordan Peterson would have been a better artist in nearly every conceivable manner. Better writer, better speaker, better artist, better pianist, better dresser. And the attainment of these tremendous artistic capabilities obviously is not something that can be cultivated in an instant but rather requires the dedication of many quiet, focused hours. So, I do want to become a more cultured per...

Hey everyone, It's been a number of months since I last posted so I wanted to write a little check-in post. I don't have much to advertise about my life over the course of this past school year, except to assure my hypothetical readers that I am in sound health and that I am in no grave danger, which unintentionally sounds like something an abductee would be forced to say to a camera at gunpoint. I have faced some challenges in recent months, as is natural through the progression of life, pertaining to my professional and personal life. I don't wish to get into the details of these difficulties at the moment because I am still working through them and I think that writing about them at this uncertain moment would burden me more than I would like. But rest assured, I have written them down and intend to discuss some if not all of them after they have been resolved to some extent. Additionally, I have achieved one major milestone which brings me much joy, that is, submitting ...

The third year of my university is beginning tomorrow. I know the next couple of months will be quite busy with classes, lab, and grad school applications. Nevertheless, I'm excited for the grind to begin. I feel pride when I look back upon the winter and spring quarters of last year, which likewise kept me very busy. I am more than halfway done with Crime and Punishment , which I have been enjoying so far. While I'm away, I think I'll miss my neighborhood friends and the company and support of my family. I hope that not much changes in the meanwhile. Out of all the things I plan on working on this quarter, I feel the most unprepared for graduate school applications as well as internship applications. I think above all, I need to make a plan for each of these activities and stick to it.

Hello there, It's been a while since my last post, so I thought I would reflect briefly on what I've been doing this summer and what my plan is for the next couple of months. My internship at Cadence ends next Friday, the 17th, and the first day of my university is the Thursday following that, the 22nd. My internship experience this summer has been a pretty positive experience. I went to the office regularly and had a chance to meet the members of the San Jose team. I often met and had lunch with the two other interns on our team in the office breakroom or in the campus cafeteria; we got along pretty well, fortunately. I found my work quite engaging and interesting, especially since I was writing code and adding features to a program of manageable size. In addition to weekly intern meetings, my manager(s) shared invitations with me for larger team meetings, in which the team discussed bugs, new features, and progress updates. By attending these meetings, I was able to understan...

Society values people who: are knowledgeable, and have well-thought-out ideas Top Tech CEOs are all hardworking and hence know a lot about their companies, which are like their babies. People who can defend their ideas and win debates are better negotiators and get their way. are tall and handsome it's true, but don't worry if you aren't; life is unfair. you can probably get quite far without these. are goal-oriented Dr. Larabee asks Akeelah "Do you have any goals?" are witty A friend might react positively if I say something witty. Maybe the idea behind wit is to laugh in the face of suffering. are relatable If you are like them, they want to be like you. They can learn from your actions. are humble, likable, and optimistic Humble people are humble because they think a lot about how much they don't know, not about how much they know. Likable people tend to attract people. Optimistic people give people around them a reason to live. are trustworthy Trustworthy ...

One of my professors is a theoretical computer scientist. Looking at his past publications, which all are very mathematical in nature, I started to doubt whether I should really go into TinyML, a field that is very high-level for a computer science field. I also started to think about different skills that are required to contribute to these fields; I guess theoretical computer science requires a mathematically-oriented mind, while the majority of ML requires an engineering-oriented mind. I also was thinking about the nature of software engineering. It is exciting to come up with a new idea or improvement that can do good in the world--improve the performance or quality of a tool or introduce a new digital product. For example, it is exciting to propose new OS philosophies, research ways to make networks and distributed systems more efficient, and develop new hardware accelerators. But, it seems to me that at the heart of most of today's software is the repetitive implementation of...