Apologies

First things first I want to apologize for the lack of posts. Probably only three people read this blog anyways you might say (I have no ways of verifying this, since there is no analytics on this website - yet ?). However, I am also apologizing to myself for not keeping up with this resolution I took last year.

I had written a big log for April, May & June but in the end did not finish it properly. And whenever I wanted to progress, more time had passed and more things should have been logged. At some point I just gave up.

To fix this, I will try to summarize those past 6 months.

Jobs

Internship at Mediarithmics

I feel satisfied with my 6 months internship. So here is a couple of thoughts about it :

Technical side :

• Scala is a mix of OOP and Functional but I sometimes wish it were two separate languages.
• The folks at Typelevel created a great deal of nice libraries make our work possible.
• Gave me a good excuse to follow the lectures of Bartosz Milewski on Category Theory for programmers (incredible guy !) - not finished them yet but working on it

The social side is more of a mixed bag in the beginning and got better by the end :

• I went from a very (very!) young and fast paced environment at Epitech to a normal company. The shock was bigger than anticipated.
• Most people on my team were from another city in France so social interactions were very limited. I find this is not great for new hires especially in the motivation department. It is much better suited for people already used to the work.
• All the people I have talked to were great and professional. I felt absolutely humbled by the knowledge of colleagues around me.

What’s next ?

Mediarithmics having merged with another company, they have had double positions (french law forces to keep some workforce when you buy another company afaik). 2 months before the end of the internship I was told that they could not keep me.

With the end of this internship, the oral and written presentations done and submitted, my master is officially finished. In fact, it has been two weeks without a job, a first for me !

So now, I would like to continue software engineering and working with a functional programming language because I find it most satisfying. Also It would be great to have more united team. Not talking about a “getting drinks every night” team either but somewhat in between.

I am also thinking about changing tracks from regular software engineer to more of a data engineer. It would allow me to use more scala since it seems quite popular when paired with Apache Spark.

Furthermore, I believe I won’t leave Paris region until at least another year. There is too much unfinished business here (konexii being part of it).

Programming

Open Source

While doing my side project Service Link I had some troubles with a simple “/” in HTTP4K. I opened an issue and quickly fixed the bug. This marks my first open source contribution !

I would like to do more in the future. It allows me to gain real experience much faster than doing glue code in a company !

Service Link becomes Konexii

During my first 3 months at Mediarithmics I have taken on my personal time to slowly but surely progress on Service Link. The company is now called Konexii to make it more differentiable.

We had a demo with someone interested in the project that opened new perspectives on the weakness and strengths of our idea.

• There has been a lot of progress on the Android app which is almost feature complete and should not change much from now.
• The administrator panel is mostly okay but will clearly need some work in light of the demo.
• The backend has been enhanced in more ways than I can remember.
• I am considering splitting the thing in two parts to clearly separate concerns (ability to build a form vs. management of users and preferences)

It is now apparent that the project could have some clients and is viable. I have taken a big break from it because I was distracted by personal matters.

My revised goal is to set up this company and product to launch before my 24th birthday. 29.01.2025 at 23h42 in Epitech fashion!

Hopefully, more news and demos will follow in november.

Events

Thanks to my ex-colleague and friend Jordan, DevMorning Paris is back alive ! I still participate as I did back then, but it is no longer my project alone. Way better now that we share responsibility.

Also finally met our benefactor : Arnault Becheler. He has been paying for the meetup subscription when I could not anymore just to keep the group alive and hosts a meetup called C++ & Coffee in Paris!

Personal

I went to Switzerland for the first time in a long time (maybe 10 years ? more ?). I visited Lausanne, Vaud and Geneva. Those were mostly holidays and a good way for me to find back my roots.