20K followers AMA

Thank you to all the 20,000 people who followed me! It surprises me how I have more followers than certain countries have people! As promised, I'll answer some questions that I got on my question submissions code.

What is your real name?

I'll probably give a brief bio. My name is S Vengat in real life and I was born in 2003 (17 as of 2020). I'm a Singaporean and I study at NUS High School of Mathematics and Science and I have a passion in both Astronomy and Coding. I love Maths too and have gotten gold in several olympiads too :P

Do people in Singapore watch Indian Tamil movies?

Yes! At least the Indians do. I too watch movies from Kollywood and occasionally Bollywood. Not a movie freak though.

How many human languages do you know?

2. English and தமிழ் (Tamil)

Favourite meals?

I have no favourites. I only have meals I like and meals I don't. No ranks. South Indian meals included so they probably won't be familiar to all of you.

How is it like to be a Sololearner while in school?

In one word, conflicted. I do have to set aside time for studying which disadvantages me in an XP gaining race. Nevertheless I do stuff way ahead of time so I can guarentee some free time (for instance, this code was made on 31 December 2019). But I also make sure what time I spend here is spent well (and no, not using phone in class 😂).

Does schooling affect your programming journey?

Yes! There's homework, projects, assignments and tests. Aside from these, how does it feel to add a little side project too? This explains why as my code quality increases, the frequency at which I release my codes decreases.

Do you have classmates on Sololearn?

Not my class, but I know a few from my school. I joined Sololearn because of my once-classmate "Neo Wei Jun Samuel". I think his account still exists, but idk why in Japan.

Another schoolmate is the #2 in Singapore, blackcat1111. He joined really ahead of me, but I've overtaken him :P

The last one is Chua Yu Chen. He's here on-and-off and for some reason, he abandoned his platinum account to create a new account.

How are you such a good programmer at only 16?

Thanks for the compliment! I do consider myself above average, but not worthy of being considered "good". Whatever the standard I have, I've achieved it through inquisitive learning and copying (not word for word and not without learning) from w3schools and StackExchange.

Age is only a number though, you'd probably be as good as me at a younger age if you started earlier.

How to be a pro/successful programmer?

I am not one so I can't tell from experience. But what I feel might be worth considering is staying up to date, constantly practising and never getting scared by failure,

What JS libraries do you recommend JS programmers to learn?

Not a really JS-person, but some that are worth learning include (but are not limited to):

jQuery
Angular
React
p5

Favourite and least favourite languages?

Python ftw. Professional programmers might find flaws all they like, with reasons that I agree are valid. The beauty of Pythonic code captivates me nonetheless.

(Hopefully nobody gets offended but) I have to admit I don't quite like C as it requires a lot of unnecessary programming, that are probably abstracted in other languages. In addition, it does not support OOP. I don't have too much of exposure to programming languages so my least favourite might be hiding in some bush.

Any algorithms you studied?

Not too many. I prefer problem-solving first hand rather than memorizing by heart, but some that I do remember are:

Binary Search
BFS and DFS
sorting algorithms like bubble sort, insertion sort, heap sort (but if I'm on Python, always list.sort() :P)

Any Python learning sources?

realpython.com is pretty awesome. Go join their mailing list. That inspired my PyTricks series in the first place. After that, pretty much all I do to learn is to use searching. Websites I frequently land on in the procss include StackOverflow and GeeksForGeeks.

Is the Earth flat?

No. Seriously how do people think so? It sounds laughably stupid to think, for instance, that NASA wants you to believe the Earth is flat. But it's no surprise that flat earthers are usually anti-vaxxers, deep-state believers, reptilian-leader believers (which is more outrageous than a flat Earth.

What will you do with a million dollars?

Probably help clear my home loan and save the rest for university, if you ask me now. I'll donate if I'm more well-off but at this moment, maybe less than a hundred dollars. I need money to invest in my future first.

What's your dream profession?

Abstractly, a job where I'm not stressed to a breaking point, doing what I love, have flexible work hours and a pay enough for sustenance and savings. At this moment, I have interests in astronomy and professional coding, but I'm still undecided and would like some advice.

What is your favourite non-programming activity?

Sitting down, doing math problems or just watching YouTube endlessly. Both work fine for me. In fact, I frequently watch YouTube videos on my laptop while challenging on my phone. (And sidenote, challenges are related to programming even though I find absolutely no programming benefit.)

Why do you challenge endlessly?

I've thought about it and I can probably just say "because I've challenged in the past one year"? Seriously, I just do. Don't ask why.

How are you motivated?

Depends on context. Usually either because I like to do so, because I have to do so, or because I cannot stop now.

What will you do when you become #1 in Python?

Celebrate. Then continue to send challenges.

When will you quit challenges?

No idea. Tentatively when I reach level 20, but I once said I'll do so when I reach level 18 and I'm still challenging, so yeah you get the idea.

Who is are your most ~~favourite~~ inspiring Sololearners? (Edited)

Great coders, legendary challengers and just cool people in general. Some include:

BroFarOps
Kuba Siekierzyński
Krishna Teja Yeluripati
Nikolay Nachev, the "bot" of his time

Who do you hate most in Sololearn?

People who seem to live off everyone's ire. No names please.

You say that you've been banned twice. Backstory?

Both bans were over "cheating in challenges". To be fair, exploiting new challengers who seem to be just wanting to get a hang of challengers does look very suspicious, so I don't blame the people who banned me. Though I was salty for a few weeks after my first ban because I lost around 3900XP the first time, with no losses the second time.

Thank you for reading through and please continue to follow me!

© Prometheus (2019-2020)

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AMA for 20k followers!