[Launch School] Community Update - December 20th, 2023

Hello, everyone. 👋🏻 It's Brandi, honored to be writing you for our last community update of the year. Things are starting to quiet down around Launch School as people turn away from their screens and towards the beaming faces of their friends, family, and pets(pictured below we have Honey, Hudson, and Tommy all getting into the festive spirit 😍). My launch date was November of 2022, and I'm finding that after over a year at Launch School, I have many friends who exist within the realm of my computer screen. I'm so grateful for the wonderful community here, whether it's the familiar faces I get to cheer on through the curriculum, my study buddies pushing me further, my coworkers constantly inspiring me with their ideas and commitment to a student-focused education system, or the pets I've come to know and love. I see you all, and it brings me so much joy! In terms of gifts, Launch School has been a darn good one that I'm happy to have under the tree again this year. 🥲 [Pet Collage] Gosh, that was sappy. Moving on to Launch School News! --------------------------------------------------------------- Winter Holiday Hours Lovely time of year for a break, huh? Much of the LS staff will be stepping out both for Christmas and the New Year. This means that the general 'within 24 hours' window that you're accustomed to for grading, code reviews, and scheduling may be longer than normal. Some of us will still be around, though, so if you're feeling particularly compelled to submit your assessment on Christmas Eve, go for it! I'm wishing you an A+ under the tree when you awake. 🥹 [More info here.]( --------------------------------------------------------------- New Podcast Episode We have a new podcast episode up! This time, Chris chats with JD and Daniel, two SPOT Admins and current students. They chat about what the SPOT is, who it's for, and how it can complement your Launch School studies. They also show of a demo of GatherTown, the virtual meeting space. If you're a new or potential student, this a great episode to tune into for an idea of what the community is like here. - Listen [here]( or on most podcast apps. - Watch on YouTube to see the demo [here](. --------------------------------------------------------------- SPOT Lead Recruiting Speaking of [#the-spot](, they need more leads! If you want to solidify content from the previous courses as well as increase your retention, being a lead is the gig for you. Aside from pushing yourself technically, it's a huge boost in the realm of soft skills and communication. They're in particular need of JavaScript track leads as well as Front-end curriculum leads, but happy to take on anyone eager to help. Check out [JD's post]( for more information. --------------------------------------------------------------- Capstone Presentation Recordings We're excited to share that the recent Capstone presentations have been recorded and are available to watch on YouTube! Get a peak into what the hard work of Capstone can turn into: - [SmoothSail]( - [Arbiter]( - [Twine]( - [Embrasure]( - [Laridae]( - [Sundial]( - [Mayfly]( - [Umbra]( --------------------------------------------------------------- Curriculum Update: LS220 Lesson 1 of the Introduction to Data Structures and Algorithms course has been updated! If you aren't there yet, no worries. If you're in this course or already past it, you may wish to revisit lesson 1 for more information on time complexity and extra practice problems. Curriculum Update: TS240 By popular demand, we've added a [TypeScript Exercises Group for TS240](. These exercises will help prepare you for the TS240 assessment, and also help you practice what you've learned in TS240. Have fun! --------------------------------------------------------------- Meetups There was a two-person meet-up in Bangalore with Arjun and Bharat. Way to make it happen, guys! The [#india]( slack channel is pretty quiet right now, but maybe this will inspire some new activity! [India Meetup] --------------------------------------------------------------- [#california-south]( had a nice turnout last week! [Socal Meetup] --------------------------------------------------------------- Women's Group Always on top of the planning, the Women's group already has their next meeting set for the new year! Join them on January 7th at 12pm ET/9am PT to talk new year's intentions and goals. Make sure you join their slack channel, [#ls-womens-group]( to stay in the loop. --------------------------------------------------------------- Down Low Time for my favorite segment of the Community Update, the ⬇️ down low ⬇️ Here's what's been brewing in minds of the Launch School community: - Fellow student and career transitioning Scott wrote [a lovely article]( perfectly articulating what abstraction is. It's kind of the secret sauce to programming and computers in general, so go have a read! The analogies are on point, so this is a great article even if you haven't encountered the concept before. - PEDAC: Peh-Dack or Pee-Dack. We've all wondered, and Derek asked. How do you pronounce PEDAC? The consensus is a hard 'e'. As of now, the 'Pee-Dack' votes are at 59 and 'Peh-Dack' votes are at 19. [See for yourself here](. Though we may be divided on this, I think we can all agree that we need more voting-via-emojis. That's super fun. - A true conundrum most of us face, how do you explain Launch School to those on the outside? I reckon it depends on how suspicious your audience is to begin with, but there are a ton of helpful suggestions [on this thread](. Some of our busiest threads in the past few weeks have been new student introductions. So if you're new, don't be shy! There are oodles of us eager to get to know you and cheer you on. --------------------------------------------------------------- Below we have my Advent of Code calendar as complete as it's going to get for a bit. Great job to everyone who managed to earn even a single star thus far! If you made it out of the trebuchet, you did us proud. These are tough, and I met my match on day 17. I'm absolutely tickled to have made it 16 full days before meeting a challenge that I couldn't manage in the day. I'll certainly be returning to these puzzles in the months to come, but for now, I can relax a bit, and by relax I mean return to my neglected studies 👀. We have some incredibly impressive problem solvers here at Launch School. If these puzzles feel out of reach for you or you were hoping to make it further, look forward to next December, when you can start anew and be positively blown away by the growth you can have in a year of dedicated mastery-based learning. My goodness, how did I end up all mushy again? [Advent of Code] Well, that's it for now. Something about this all feels like it should end in a poem. Sadly, I'm not a poet, so here's a haiku (With an incorrect syllable count) from ChatGPT: Yuletide code compiles, Snowflakes of syntax descend, Debugging in peace. ❄️ See ya next year. ❄️ --------------------------------------------------------------- If you wish to stop receiving emails from us, you can use the one-click link below to unsubscribe. 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