SP 2023-2023 ๐๐ (and other life updates)
Written by @admin1 on Tue Feb 06 2024 03:18:30 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time)I've been busy with life and various commitments for a while since I last updated this blog. Today, I had time to document various life updates over the last 6 to 7 months in 2023.
Jun to Aug 2023:
---Jun 2023:---
As a student, I got to hear/know of the TikTok Tech Immersion Programme - a free, three-week intensive technical boot camp for those studying in tertiary educational institutions such as universities and polytechnics. More than 1,300 students signed up to be among the first cohort of the program. From the program, I managed to learn server fundamentals, quality assurance, and site reliability engineering from TikTokโs engineering team. It was an eye-opening experience for us as we learned from the experienced engineers how to build apps such as TikTok's video-hosting platform that can reliably handle large amounts of user traffic.
In essence, there is a lot of consideration in terms of system design and architecture, when it comes to building the scalable and distributed systems that power TikTok. I understood from the Software engineers there why certain programming languages such as Go, were chosen to build the systems at TikTok - i.e. due to its efficiency, ability to handle concurrent requests, a wide variety of use cases, and many more. The QA and SRE engineers at TikTok were also very knowledgeable and shared their testing methodologies and the various observability-related tools that are commonly used in the market.
As part of the graduation requirements for the program, we also had to complete and submit individual assignments in June to graduate with a Certificate of Completion. The individual assignments involved answering several MCQ-styled questionnaires and a final project which involved creating an Instant Messaging System using Golang, Protobuf, Kitex, Redis, and Docker. Protobuf and Kitex are open-source frameworks developed by Bytedance that help developers build microservices. It was heartening to see fellow batchmates help one another in the Telegram chat when someone encountered programming difficulties.
Overall, this was a challenging but good learning experience. Going through this program solidified my decision to continue learning more about backend-related technologies in the future.
Certificate of Completion issued by TikTok - if you complete the program successfully - i.e. Met a minimum attendance for the lessons, and completed the assignments
For more information, you can refer to this link:
- TikTok launches 3-week course teaching tertiary students how to build high-performance networks
- TikTok Assignment Demo
---Jul to Aug 2023:---
In May & June 2023, I participated in the inaugural Singapore Nationwide AWS DeepRacer League Season 1 and 2 Competitions. As quoted from the AWS website:
- AWS DeepRacer is an autonomous 1/18th scale race car designed to test RL models by racing on a physical track. Using cameras to view the track and a reinforcement model to control throttle and steering, the car shows how a model trained in a simulated environment can be transferred to the real world.
I achieved 7th place in the Season 1 competition and 3rd place in the Season 2 competition - and was invited to a prize presentation ceremony at NLB Punggol.
Prize ceremony at NLB Punggol for the AWS DeepRacer League competition
Due to my success in the earlier competitions, I earned a spot and qualified for the Singapore Nationwide AWS DeepRacer League Grand Finale Competition, which was scheduled to be held on Sep 2023. Being relatively new to AI/ML, I did not expect to achieve such results; so I was very pleased when I qualified for a spot as one of the Top 12 finalists in Singapore for the Grand Finale competition (Open Category).
From the earlier competitions, it was evident many people were more proficient in their understanding of AI/ML technologies, or simply put - had more IT-related experience than me. Some competitors were veterans in the AWS DeepRacer League and had prior experience competing at the regional/international leagues. But that did not deter me from my determination to clinch a finalist spot - and I was ecstatic when I did achieve that :)
Seeing the fierce competition lineup for the Grand Finale (which included many experienced AWS DeepRacer competitors who have participated at the regional/international level), I was very realistic that it would probably require some form of divine miracle for me to win the competition. I knew I had to thoroughly prepare for the final competition to even achieve decent results.
During this competition, I fervently did my research to brush up my current understanding of AI/ML. I read up on numerous AI technical blogs and watched multiple AWS DeepRacer videos. I even researched several AI papers from Google Scholar to gain inspiration on how to better write my reward function, optimize my hyperparameters, and fine-tune my action space.
This was an extremely tough and challenging learning process. I had peers who learned AI/ML before who warned me about how tough that topic is, and it was only when I dived deep into it myself that I realized what they truly meant.
I soon fell into a rabbit hole; and the more I learn, the more I realize how much I don't know. Honestly, at this point, I just wanted to get decent results for the final competition - if not very xia suay and ma lu leh if get last place for the final competition.
It was a struggle and I'm glad that I persevered during this tumultuous learning period. When it was time to upload & submit my finalized ML model to the organizers for the competition finale, I did so with full awareness that this was the best that I could have done - and prayed to the lords above, for decent results during the final competition (I was praying to be at least median - i.e. 50th percentile; aka somewhere between 6 to 7th position out of 12 finalists).
Well, the hard work has already been done. Regarding the rest, I'll leave it up to fate...
Sep to Nov 2023:
---Sep 2023:---
The day of the Competition Finale finally came.
Honestly, I was both excited and nervous about the Grand Finale competition. Facing up against technologists with much more IT experience than me, I was honestly afraid that my ML model would perform poorly on the race track. But I decided to treat this as a learning opportunity - regardless of the results, the fact is to be able to reach the finals itself, was already an accomplishment.
The day of the Grand Finale competition - excited yet nervous, I made my way to the competition venue in hopes of a miracle that my ML model won't screw up...
Venue of the competition - we were given a special AWS T-shirt and lanyard that stated our competitor status
Prizes for the Top 3 winners (Student category), Top 3 winners (Open category), and Grand Champion (the biggest trophy seen in the photo)
A student being interviewed by the host/organizer of the competition
For the open category, we were divided into two groups. Group 1 - the first 6 went up first. I was in Group 2 - the next 6 that went later, after Group 1 had finished racing. For a moment in the competition, I managed to get and secure the 3rd position :O - a decent timing of 14.228s. I was praying to the lords above to secure the 3rd place, and get back home with a trophy :P
Well, the competitors after me had more IT experience, and their ML models proved to be much faster than mine :(... I did my best though, so no regrets about getting 7th place out of 12 finalists (Open Category) :)
Aerial view of the Singapore AWS DeepRacer League Grand Finale Competition at the atrium in One Punggol
Grand Finale winner together with Dr Janil Puthucheary - Senior Minister of State - Ministry of Communications and Information
In summary, I had a lot of fun participating as a finalist in the Grand Finale competition. The key takeaway was to treat this as a learning opportunity - to learn from more experienced technologists and get useful tips on how to improve my ML model.
In summary, here are my final results for the competition. ่ฟไธ้:
- Final ranking (Open Category): 7/12
- Final ranking (Open + Student Category combined): 9/24
- Overall ranking (All participants combined in total): 9/600+ (Top 1.5%)
For more information on the Singapore AWS DeepRacer Grand Finale, you can refer to the following links below:
- AWS drives nationwide machine learning in Singapore
- NLB x AWS Singapore Nationwide AWS DeepRacer League Grand Finale - Highlights
---Oct to Nov 2023:---
These two months (Oct & Nov) were extremely busy months for me as I juggled between courses from school and various scholarship programs that I was under.
I finished up the last few courses from school - i.e. AWS Academy Cloud Foundations, Red Hat System Administration I (RH124), and Red Hat System Administration II (RH134). It was intriguing to learn more concepts on AWS Cloud Computing and dive into Linux administration/Command line. The courses were conducted asynchronously - online video lectures coupled with occasional in-person tutorials. I've made a bunch of summary notes which would be useful for revision in the future.
Beautiful sunset view of the SP campus
AWS Cloud Computing Tutorial - Photo 1
AWS Cloud Computing Tutorial - Photo 2
Red Hat Tutorial - Photo 1
Red Hat Tutorial - Photo 2
I was also fortunate to be selected for several scholarships during this period.
Firstly, the GitHub Universe 2023 Scholarship - this scholarship provided 9 deserving recipients with an all-expenses-paid trip to the USA to attend the GitHub Universe tech conference in person - i.e., travel, accommodation, and miscellaneous expenses kindly sponsored by GitHub ($4,000 USD Approximate-Retail-Value).
GitHub Scholars at the event (in Red Hoodies - Total of EIGHT different countries) together with the GitHub Education Staff - GitHub Universe San Francisco Nov 2023
I had a lot of fun attending GHU 2023 and gained new knowledge on AI, Security, and Developer Experience. For my full detailed experiences regarding GitHub Universe 2023, you can refer to this link below:
Secondly, the Dan Kohn Scholarship from the Cloud Native Computing Foundation provided recipients the opportunity to virtually attend KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America 2023, the flagship conference of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation dedicated to Kubernetes and cloud-native computing.
Attended the conference and listened to a bunch of talks; I feel inspired to try out/learn more cloud-based technologies in the future
Dec 2023:
Thirdly, the AWS AI & ML Scholarship provided me and other recipients access to the Udacity AI Programming with Python Nanodegree program, mentorship, and career development opportunities from industry experts ($4,000 USD Approximate-Retail-Value).
AWS AI & ML Scholarship Recipient badge
To successfully graduate from the scholarship program, recipients would need to complete the following requirements:
- Learn Python
- Learn Data science libraries (Numpy, Pandas, Matplotlib)
- Learn Linear Algebra & Calculus essentials
- Learn PyTorch (AI/ML framework) and concepts on Neural Networks
- Complete the necessary quizzes for each module as stated above
- Submit two AI projects, subject to grading and revision by the markers
- Attend weekly mentoring sessions on Zoom
- Optional: Finish a 'Career Services' related module (i.e. How to polish up your LinkedIn Profile and GitHub Profile)
There was a lot of content that needed to be done in 3 months (~12 weeks). Thankfully, I persisted through and managed to complete the scholarship program in Dec 2023.
Looking back, I can't believe how fast time has flown since I joined Singapore Polytechnic (SP). It has been ~2.5 years - from my first day stepping onto the campus (Apr 2021) till my very last day at SP (Nov 2023). Along the journey, I learned and grew a lot as a software developer/engineer.
I still have a lot to learn - in terms of computer science concepts and software engineering principles. With grit and determination, I will continue to pursue knowledge to hone my skills (technical & non-technical) as a software engineer.
Let's see where life takes me in 2024! - Big plans up ahead :D
If you managed to read till the end, I applaud you ๐ - Take care, good luck, and wishing you an early Happy CNY Year of the Dragon ahead. ็ฅไฝ ้พๅนดๅ็ฅฅ๏ผไบไบ้กบๅฉ
