This blog

My personal hero, Richard Feynman, knew that knowing the name of something is different from knowing that thing. This blog is the documentation of my personal struggle in learning new programming languages and tools so that I, and perhaps you, will understand it and explain it to a 6-year-old with ease.

Skills

I am proficient in Python and have good working knowledge of Javascript and Go.

In terms of libraries, I am familiar with PyTorch, Keras, Numpy, Flask, and some Go web programming packages. Previously I dabbed into Django and Rails but do not use them at the moment.

Tools-wise, I have a decent command of Git and Docker.

Who am I

I was born and raised in China but have the privilege of choosing where in the world I want to live and what kind of values I want to identify with.

I speak fluent English and Mandarin Chinese. My German is currently at level C1 and I work on improving my spoken German further.

Formal education

My formal education constituted a bachelor’s degree in history from Texas A&M University and a master’s degree in international business from Stockholm School of Economics.

Programming story

When I was 16, I tried Turbo Pascal in a crash course session at my high school. I did not know that most other students in the session had already learned programming one way or another, so I felt stupid and was scared out of ever touching a DOS again.

About 10 years later, over a coffee in a mountaineous town in Switzerland, a kind and friendly value investor softly rejected my proposal to do an internship at his investment fund. Instead, he recommended me to learn Python for machine learning.

I was shocked. Never did I imagine that my life would have gone a full circle to come back to a subject that haunted me a decade ago. I went to sleep feeling defeated.

The next morning, having woken up and found an online tutorial for Python, I bit my teeth and gave it a try.

The rest is history.

Contact

If you are in Berlin and share similar interests in programming, history, politics, leadership, or classical music, feel free to reach out to me; I will try and respond within a few days.