Jonathan Sumner Evans
Sumner Evans
Software Engineer at Beeper

Is Getting A Master's Degree in Computer Science Worth It?

Posted on in School • 5833 words • 28 minute read
Tags: Computer Science, Masters Degree

“Master of Science in Computer Science”, it sounds so grand, doesn’t it? But is it worth it? I’m writing this post to give my perspective on whether or not getting a master’s degree is worth the effort and money. I’m assuming that you are currently in a computer science undergraduate program and are considering whether or not to continue on to get a computer science master’s degree. I want to be very clear, this post is my opinion only. Read more...

Waterloo

Posted on in Travel, Trip to FOSDEM 2024 • 925 words • 5 minute read
Tags: Travel, Waterloo, Belgium, Wellington Museum

Today I went to Waterloo, the town which gave its name to the battle that saw Napoleon’s final defeat at the hands of the Seventh Coalition. Getting there was quite an adventure. To start, I woke up late again. After managing to get out of bed, I tried to take the tram over to a bus that went directly to the Waterloo city centre. I found the bus stop, and waited for a few minutes before the bus came, but then it just rolled right on past! Read more...

Bruges

Posted on in Travel, Trip to FOSDEM 2024 • 486 words • 3 minute read
Tags: Travel, Brussels, Bruges, Belgium, Belfort

Today I went to Bruges, a beautiful city near the Belgian Atlantic coast. I woke up a bit late (I still haven’t really adjusted to the CEST timezone), but I managed to get to Bruges by around 11 in the morning. I enjoy trains, and I got to take the train from Bruxeles-Midi through Ghent and on to Bruges. I’d skipped breakfast, so by the time I arrived in the city centre, I was hungry and went to a restaurant called De Beurze. Read more...

FOSDEM 2024

Posted on in Travel, Trip to FOSDEM 2024 • 1773 words • 9 minute read
Tags: Travel, FOSDEM, Matrix, HSBXL, Go, Brussels

The primary purpose of my trip was to attend FOSDEM, a Free and Open Source Software conference. I attended last year as well and enjoyed it, so I decided to make the trip to attend again. FOSDEM is the biggest meeting of people in the Matrix community every year, and there is also a sizeable Go presence at the conference as well. At Beeper, I primarily write Go, and I work extensively on Matrix bridges as well as other Matrix-related projects such as bots and homeservers. Read more...

Brussels - Day 1

Posted on in Travel, Trip to FOSDEM 2024 • 554 words • 3 minute read
Tags: Travel, Brussels, Belgium

This year, I once again travelled to Brussels for FOSDEM (see my post from last year). I took the Wednesday 13:30 flight out of Denver through Chicago O’Hare to Brussels, and arrived on Thursday morning. The connection through O’Hare was a bit tight. As scheduled, I only had 50 minutes, and then due to our incoming flight being vectored to the wrong runway on the first approach, we had to circle around to land at the correct runway. Read more...

Advent of Code 2023

Posted on in Programming • 1058 words • 5 minute read
Tags: Advent of Code, Wheel Spinner, Competition

Every year since 2015, Eric Wastl creates a two-part programming problem for each of the 25 days of Advent. He publishes a new problem every day at adventofcode.com at exactly midnight EST which is 22:00 the day before for me in MST. The last two years, I decided to do the problems as soon as they came out and streamed my problem solving sessions on my Twitch channel and uploaded them to my Youtube channel. Read more...

Toronto, Canada - Work Retreat

Posted on in Travel, Work Retreats • 1406 words • 7 minute read
Tags: Travel, Toronto, Canada, Beeper, Work

This week, my company (Beeper) had our fall work retreat in Toronto, Canada. It has been nearly six months since our March retreat in Amsterdam and it was great to see everyone again and meet some of the new team members. I have also written about our four retreats prior to Amsterdam on this blog. One of the main goals of each retreat is to provide opportunities to connect as a team on a personal level. Read more...

Los Angeles

Posted on in Travel • 1848 words • 9 minute read
Tags: Travel, Los Angeles, California

This weekend I flew out to Los Angeles to see my friend Ethan Cranston. He is a former student of mine at Mines, and we got to know each other well because he was one of the most consistent in-person attendees during the hybrid COVID semesters. He now works at SpaceX and since I have a ton of Southwest points, I decided to visit him somewhat on a whim. I left Friday afternoon, and the outbound flight out of DIA was really pretty. Read more...

Becoming a Homeowner

Posted on in Life Updates • 162 words • 1 minute read
Tags: Homeownership

I recently became a homeowner. Here are a couple of reflections that I’ve had about this new phase of life: The permanence of owning my own house is nice. The first time this really hit me was when I was putting up some decorations. I realized that it was my walls that I was nailing things in to. I don’t have to answer to anyone about the holes in my wall if I move out. Read more...

Mines High School Programming Competition 2023

Posted on in School • 4219 words • 20 minute read
Tags: High School Programming Competition, Competitive Programming, Mines, HSPC

For the last six years, Mines ACM has hosted a High School Programming Competition (HSPC) modelled after the International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC). I wrote about the 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022 competitions on this blog. The problems from every year are new and written by Mines students and some Mines alum specifically for the competition. This year, I wrote four of the problems and helped Ethan Richards with organizing the competition. Read more...
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