Joshua Goller (he/him) jsgoller1

Notes for new players

Here's a quick intro to D&D to help you get ready for your first campaign.

The purpose of D&D is to have fun

D&D is a storytelling and roleplaying game; there is no specific victory condition or loss condition, except those designated by the story.
D&D has a lot of rules, many of which are common RPG tropes (such as XP, turn based combat, spellcasting, etc) but there is no "right way" to play D&D. Having fun takes precedence over following the rules - the only "wrong way" to play is if any players are having a bad time. As such, some DMs will be more orthodox with the rules while others will be more lenient (but consistent), depending on the preferences of the players.
Because of the sheer volume of the rules and mechanics, D&D can be overwhelming at first but most people catch on quickly. You don't need to read all of the rules before playing (though skimming some can be helpful) - the DM is expected to help new players get familiar with the rules.
Rules are organized i

Virtual environments ("venvs") make setting up Python projects easy, especially for projects multiple people work on. First, we need to create the venv:

joshua.goller @ joshua-goller ~/Code/skip-example
└─ $ ▶ python3 -m venv ./venv
joshua.goller @ joshua-goller ~/Code/skip-example
└─ $ ▶ ls
venv

How to slay programming interviews

This gist is currently under re-development after my most recent round of interview prep and will be re-posted with major edits soon.

	# https://www.hackerrank.com/challenges/ctci-bfs-shortest-reach/copy-from/72471548

	from collections import deque

	class Graph():
	def __init__(self, node_count):
	self.nodes = {}
	for i in range(node_count):
	self.nodes[i] = []

	"""
	https://leetcode.com/problems/search-a-2d-matrix/description/
	---
	Understand

	Program takes a value and a list of lists, should efficiently find whether
	the value is in any sublist. Returns bool, not index.

	This is a D&C problem - the lists are sorted, and later lists bound earlier lists. We do not
	need to examine every item, so we can likely binsearch.

	# Create a file called "Makefile" and copy / paste the contents of this gist into it.
	# Then from the same directory, run `make all`. Requires docker-ce and GNU make to be installed.

	anaconda all: anaconda-rm anaconda-container anaconda-shell

	# Stop and remove the running Anaconda container
	anaconda-rm:
	-docker stop anaconda
	-docker rm anaconda

	/*
	3-5. Write a program that will keep track of grades for several students at
	once. The program could keep two vectors in sync: The first should hold the
	student's names, and the second the final grades that can be computed as input
	is read. For now, you should assume a fixed number of homework grades. We'll see
	in §4.1.3/56 how to handle a variable number of grades intermixed with student
	names.
	-------------------------
	Again, I think we can just use a map - can we use a mapping of strings to
	vectors?

	(define atom?
	(lambda (x)
	(and (not (pair? x)) (not (null? x)))))


	(define generic-eq?
	(lambda (item1 item2)
	(cond ((and (number? item1) (number? item2)) (= item1 item2))
	((and (atom? item1) (atom? item2)) (eq? item1 item2))
	((and (list? item1) (list? item2)) (list-eq? item1 item2))

	"""
	This was the first challenging programming assignment I ever tried to complete,
	given as an early homework question when I took CS220 (Introduction to Programming with Python)
	in Fall 2011 at the College of Charleston (we had just learned about conditionals and iteration).
	I was 21 years old, and was learning computer programming for the very first time.

	The prompt was: "write a program that takes as input a symbol and a number, then prints a center-justified
	pyramid of the given symbols and the height of the given number."

	I stayed overnight in the computer lab, chugging energy drinks and banging my head against the desk