notes to self for next job hunt (some of which may be generally useful): don’t apply to general tech companies anymore for many reasons. heard back from very very few but that may be b/c I don’t know many people at general tech companies never been able to get through interviews; they’re presumably looking for computer science grads (not me) most of their missions are probably not stuff I’d be happy about at the end of the day. despite missions of doing xyz, it’s probably really about $$ don’t apply to pharma companies any more. there’s lots of good software jobs in that sector, but i’ve struck out 3 times, and so that’s a clear pattern my background/whatever isn’t something they want next time only apply where I have a connection that can refer me or dig around for a referral. it’s super easy to apply for jobs, especially if you don’t write a cover letter; however, the less time I spend surely the less likely I am to hear back make sure (and I’ll probably fail to do it again this time, ugh) to write down what questions I was asked, how I answered, and how to improve on that answer. then study and reference those questions and answers for the next interview its good to have multiple offers at the same time, but then deciding is harder - & I don’t love to negotiating - so maybe don’t worry about multiple offers at the same time next time around I have relatively low expectations in any interview b/c I don’t do technical interviews well - I also try to seek out orgs that do not have crazy technical interview processes - eg., Roche had a whiteboard technical interview that I totally bombed, but was unsurprising in hindsight since the interviewer was an ex-Googler. I’m more of a thinker than a quick responder, making it hard to do well in very fast paced (for me) tech interviews. Though I know i have been a good software engineer where I’ve worked, so these fast paced tech interviews are probably selecting for a certain kind of brain function I guess? seek out orgs with interview processes that have take home assignments - or at least timed coding tests on something like hackerrank - instead of live whiteboard/zoom tech inteviews my last job Deck had a take home test Axiom DS has a take home test approach AdHoc uses a take home test approach Invitae had a hackerrank test, not a take home but better than live coding test cover letters? I still don’t know whether these are worth doing or not. the advice seems to be mixed. they sure take a lot of time, so I hope they’re not necessary for most hiring managers; given my bullet above about spending more time on fewer applications, I could find time for a cover letter on every application if ther’s not that many some data about this last job search: ...

Soooo, my last job at Deck was amazing. I loved it. I was doing data engineer stuff there, mostly maintaining infrastructure for data pipelines. Everyone was great and the mission was amazing: helping Democrats win. Yet the company was shut down about a month ago, sending me on another job search, the 3rd since early/mid 2021. I’m super thrilled to have landed a job (Software and Reproducibility Software Developer) at the Fred Hutch Data Science Lab (DASL), headed up by Jeff Leek, working with Sean Kross, Amy Paguirigan, and Monica Gerber, among many other amazing folks. ...

I recently had a use case at work where I wanted to check that file paths given in a Python script actually existed. These paths were in various GitHub repositories, so all I had to do was pull out the paths and check if they exist on GitHub. There were a few catches though. First, I couldn’t simply get any string out of each Python script - they needed to be strings specficied by a specific function parameter, and match a regex (e.g., start with ‘abc’). ...

TL;DR In 6 months (end of November 2022) the CRAN Checks API https://cranchecks.info/ will be gone You can still get badges at https://badges.cranchecks.info You can use the new badges like: [](https://cran.r-project.org/web/checks/check_results_dplyr.html) Find more details at https://github.com/sckott/cchecksbadges Sunsetting the CRAN Checks API If you contribute an R package to CRAN, you may use badges from the CRAN checks API at https://cranchecks.info/. The CRAN Checks API has been operating since about September 2017 (I think). The API has a number of routes, but really people only use the badges. ...

I was working on a work task last week, and needed to filter out one instance of a class from a list of class instances. No matter how you do this speed doesn’t matter too much if you’re doing this operation once or a few times. However, I this operation needs to be done about 100K times each time the script runs - so speed definitely does matter in this case. ...

It’s been interesting switching jobs with respect to programming languages. I used to write 95% R - now I write 95% Python. I have been using Python for many years, but not seriously or getting paid either. I’ve learned alot in the first 6 months. Some Python things learned: Functions and methods I used to think functions and methods were the same thing. But during the last 6 months I learned that functions and methods are not the same. Well, they’re not that different. A function outside a class is just called a function while a function inside a class is called a method. They could be exactly the same and do the same thing, but one is outside a class and the other inside a class. ...

You’ve experienced an HTTP redirect (or URL redirect, or URL forwarding) even if you haven’t noticed. We all use browsers (I assume, since you are reading this), either on a phone or laptop/desktop computer. Browsers don’t show all the HTTP requests going on in the background, some of which are redirects. Redirection is used for various reasons, including to prevent broken links when web pages are moved, for privacy protection, to allow multiple domains to refer to a single web page, and more. ...

In February this year I wroute about how many parameters functions should have, looking at some other languages, with a detailed look at R. On a related topic … As I work on many R packages that are API clients for various web services, I began wondering: What is the best way to deal with API routes that have a lot of parameters? The general programming wisdom I’ve seen is that a function should have no more than 3-4 parameters (e.g., this long SO thread, or this one). So should one do anything different from a normal function when that function is connecting to a web API route with a lot of parameters? I’ve not found very much spilled ink on this exact topic, but I’ll discuss what I have found. ...

Update on 2021-02-09: I’ve archived 8 more packages. Post below updated Code is often arranged in packages for any given language. Packages are often cataloged in a package registry of some kind: NPM for node, crates.io for Rust, etc. For R, that registry is either CRAN or Bioconductor (for the most part). CRAN has the concept of an archived package. That is, the namespace for a package (foo) is still in the registry (and can not be used again), but the package is archived - no longer gets updated and checks I think are no longer performed. ...

taxizedb arose from pain in using taxize when dealing with large amounts of data in a single request or doing a lot of requests of any data size. taxize works with remote data sources on the web, so there’s a number of issues that can slow the response down: internet speed, server response speed (was a response already cached or not; or do they even use caching), etc. The idea with taxizedb was to allow users to do the same things as taxize allows, but much faster by accessing the entire database for a data source on their own computer. The previous versions of taxizedb used a variety of different databases (MySQL/MariaDB, PostgreSQL, SQLite), so the technical barrier to entry was pretty high. In the newest version just released, we’ve drastically simplified the database situation, among other things. ...