When are you proficient in a programming language?

Learning a programming language gives you the opportunity to explore other problem domains alongside new approaches to addressing familiar problems.

I write this as I was looking for the answer to exactly this question. There were many opinions that had me confused, some from ancient rockstar ninjas who command CPUS at will and others from earnest people who are also seeking.

Why would one ask such a question in the first place? It seems like the actual issue is 2 fold. For me it is firstly; when can this go on my resume. Secondly and probably more specific to me: when to move on to the next language or skill. When can I check off my to-do list and say that I know a programming language?

After looking at many other ideas, In my opinion: You are proficient in a language when you are able to read, understand and debug code along with deploying to production.

If you can read, write and execute you are well on your way and I would consider this profecient. Beyond this, optionally, persue mastery. Though in order to keep a language on your resume, make sure to continually read, understand and debug.

Link to other opinions: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/154862/at-what-point-can-i-say-ive-learned-a-language

Take a Nap, Change your life Book Review

I used to ascribe to the phrase: “sleep when you die”, but to what benefit? Hustling? Working hard? That may seem like the best thing to do now, but it may take 3 times as long for you to reach your goals, if you are burnt out, as you make a lot of mistakes in this state.

The title of this book grabbed my attention. Who doesn’t what to change their lives for the better? I guess most of us do, so the things I take form this book was exactly what I expeceted: Working smart and sharpening your most valued tool, the mind, is simply one of the best things you can do for your better future.

The book teaches that napping has many benefits and encourages you to incorporate a nap into your daily routine. On regular days, a short nap will do, but on days when you feel more exhausted taking a longer one is perfectly fine.

The short 20-minute nap gives you a boost in energy and alertness, which is good for motor learning skills. The longer 90-minute nap gives you a full sleep cycle, improved emotional state, and procedural memory, this also helps with new connections in the brain. Source for more data.

What I didn’t like about the book. I was expecting a 5 pager to be honest. Give me all the good stuff and let me go to bed right now. The book focuses on education around sleep in general. It makes a short hit at the naps and how to do it. The main focus is on understanding how sleep works.

You should read this book, if you want to undrestand why napping is important and how your sleep cycles work.

This book may not change your life, but applying the principles may have an exponential impact on your health, happiness and possibly even bank account.

Plant Based

3 Months ago, my wife and I embraced a new way of eating. We’ve tried all kind of diets and eating plans but none have ever worked out for us. We wanted to see results in the way we looked and felt. We mostly wanted to shed some pounds and with that feel more confident in our clothes.

Friends of ours introduced us to a Netflix documentary called What The Health. They suggested we try out a plant-based diet or vegan as most people know it, but these two should not be confused, more on that here. Our friends were meat eaters traditionally, and so, we were seriously shocked that they would consider this an option.

I, for some time, refused to watch the documentary as I was afraid to change my diet. I had tried so many things before and wasn’t in the mood for watching what I eat all the time. With Lauren’s help and constant nudges, we eventually got around to watch it. It is an understatment to say that this put my health on a new trajectory.

From day one, we went all in. Cold turkey. We stopped buying meat and my wife started learning some new recipes. We stopped eating our favorite bacon and eggs breakfast. We stopped eating chicken and especially pork.

Bey Bey Portion Control

After the first few days, I started noticing a difference. I felt lighter. No more did I feel the heaviness that always came after a big meal. Removing meat from my diet meant that I no longer needed to worry about portion control. I could eat until I felt full and then stop.

I felt more energy. I felt positive. This even led to us starting to walk again. The biggest thing I started to see was that the scale was showing some favorable numbers. I was struggling to dip below 100kg’s, but after changing to plant-based I started noticing that my clothes started to feel more comfortable.

I am never going back. After 3 months of doing this and seeing so many positive results, I can say without a doubt, that this is my new way of life. There are rare occasions where I will still eat meat but that is only if it’s lamb.

This is easier said than done and I must admit that, if not for Lauren I would not be on this path today. If you find yourself in a similar place and are struggling in this area, I advise that you watch these 2 documentaries:

#link1 #link2

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Creative Computer Science

I read an interesting article on how personal development as a Software Engineer should be largely focused on thinking rather than specific technologies.

To add to this, when you happen upon the new shiny tool, language or technology you should look at it and try to decipher the underlying ideas and concepts that allow it to exist.

We need to focus more on ideas and less on implementation and specific technologies.

Link: https://www.ybrikman.com/writing/2014/05/19/dont-learn-to-code-learn-to-think/

You are on time, your own time

New York is 3 hours ahead of California, but that doesn’t make California slow.

Someone graduated at the age of 22, but waited 5 years before securing a good job.

Someone became a CEO at 25, and died at 50. While another became a CEO at 50, and lived to 90 years.

Someone is still single, while someone else got married. Obama retired at 55, & Trump started at 70.

Everyone in this world is on their own time zone.

People around you might seem to he ahead of you, & some might seem to be behind you. But everyone is running their own race, in their own time.

Do not envy them & do not mock them. They are in their time zone, and you are in yours Life is about waiting for the right moment to act.

So, relax. You’re not late. You’re not early. You are very much on time.

Source:

twitter.com/travislima/status/1073852907953504258

5 things to keep in your Journal

Today, while reading my Journal, I had a weird feeling. The feeling that my Journal was actually becoming valuable to me. Like I’d be willing to put up a reward if I’ve lost it.

Keeping a Journal has been so beneficial, I believe it is slowly changing my life, for the better. I’ve written about this already, but to add to it, I wanted to share with you the 5 categories I jot down in my journal as they come up. Anything else besides these, I generally try to keep out of my Journal. The reason for ignoring everything else is this, these 5 things give me the positive reinforcement I need when I read my Journal entries.

1. Ideas

Ideas that are positive, Ideas that build you up. Ideas for changing the way you think. Ideas that may help you improve and Ideas for a better future.

2. Keeping track of personal development

I still need to figure this one out, but a simple question here is how am I doing on the personal development front. I get to this category when I’ve slipped up. When I have not been disciplined with working towards my goals. It’s just a place of honesty where I can write about why I failed and then try to find some motivation for going further.

3. Important Events

Any important Event. I just write them down, good and bad. This to bring some reality to the lofty dreams, goals and Ideas I write down besides them. 

4. To put into writing what one cannot easily say in public

This is for those times when you have things on your heart that are hard to explain or say. They may cause harm in their raw form, they are hard because saying things mean dealing with them as well. Somehow dealing with things in writing is much easier for me than saying the challenging matter out loud. This kind of Journaling I use to untie the knot of the emotions and separate out truths and feelings.

5. To dump good thoughts

Thoughts and Ideas are very similar, but to me, they are things that linger. Things that build up. They may be inspired by ideas, events even other thoughts. These, I believe, form a core part of our character. I start my day with a clear mind, and as I go through the day, it gets clouded with many thoughts. I would like to hold on to good thoughts and minimize bad and sometimes destructive thoughts.

It’s your journal

This is not a list ascribing to you what you should keep in journal, but it is a nudge to help you think about a more structured approach to the things one should have in your journal. Being intentional brings you, the writer and hopefully the reader, a lot more value in the end.

Why I’m learning a new Programming Language called Go

For the past few years, I got stuck in a rut, a good one. My sole focus was not the technology I used. but rather the thought processes behind why and how I write code. I write in PHP and I mainly focus on the WordPress CMS. This pays the bills and helps me take care of my family but, while focusing on thought processes, I didn’t realise that learning a new language can have the same effect, helping me think differently about similar problems.

So why Go (#golang)? This one I stumbled upon by accident. A colleague of mine, Akeda, automated one of our workflows. Before this, we had a weird process involving multiple tools and steps. His script made life just a little easier. I thought one could improve it just a little bit more, but in oreder to do this I had to go digging into Go source code.

After hacking on this project and getting it “mostly working” I decided to dig a bit deeper into Go. I found out immediately that it was created by a few very smart people at Google. It is open source and has a very strong community. More specifically, Docker, the tool I use all the time, was written in Go(mind blown gif goes here).

With Go you to create systems software. I know my way around PHP and this is great, but there are a few things an interpreted language simply can’t do. This presented me with another opportunity to learn.

Go is written in Go! Yep, that means you can eventually read and contribute to any bugs in the language itself, if that’s something you’re interested in. I think it’s great that one only needs to learn on language to get involved with an entire commuinity.

Learning GO is free, no need to buy expensive books. Do the tour, then work through How to write go code and then read Effective Go. After this, you can start using the language. If you are new to programming you may need more help.

With Go, most of the tooling forms part of the language. The following things are already included: code documentation generation, testing, dependencies etc. In most languages I know these are third party tools. They may not work exactly how you want them to, but they work and they remove the burden of having to choose between third-party options. Though third-party options are available, the idea is that everything you need to be productive should be part of the language.

New languages force us to think differently about the same problems, as per this stack overflow answer:

It’s not about the next “new thing”. It’s about thinking in different ways outside of your normal thought patterns

I hope this inspires you to pick up a new language. There are so many to choose from.

Featured image is a gophers, the Go mascot. It was created with https://gopherize.me/. Creating a unique gopher.