A list of books that I think changed me for the better. Contents ∘ “Girl, Woman, Other” by Bernardine Evaristo ∘ “Nomadland: Surviving America in the 21st Century” by Jessica Bruder ∘ “End of the Rope: Mountains, Marriage, and Motherhood” by Jan Redford ∘ “In The End, It Was All About…

Taking a script from rough sketch to maintainable production code. — I recently had the challenge of migrating images from one online platform to another. This became particularly interesting since the platform we needed to move the images to presented a GraphQL API (The “QL” stands for “Query Language” and “API” is short for Application Programming Interface). Let’s dive into the…

Keeping things simple and efficient. — Contents ∘ The Task ∘ Understanding the Challenge ∘ Iterating in Steps ∘ A Set of Basic Mathematical Operations ∘ Test Cases Used ∘ References I really like Codility challenges. They’re a wonderful (and totally free) way to improve your problem-solving skills and programming language knowledge. They’re also a great way…

Keeping things simple and efficient. Contents ∘ The Task ∘ Understanding the Challenge ∘ Iterating in Steps ∘ A Set of Basic Mathematical Operations ∘ Porting to Python ∘ References I really like Codility challenges. They’re a wonderful (and totally free) way to improve your problem-solving skills and programming language knowledge…

Tips and tricks and a script… Disclaimer This post assumes a basic understanding of git version control. If you don’t know about it, I recommend reading chapter two of the free git book. Contents ∘ A Clear Case for Automation ∘ Checking Out ∘ Merging the Branches ∘ Logging and Pushing ∘…

A few weeks ago, I got a notification from the Daylio app on my phone that I had submitted a journal entry for each day in the last 1000. Here’s how I got there and what I learned in the process. Contents ∘ It can be a tricky habit to form…

A broad range of knowledge will help you shine as a team member. Part 1 of this series is here. Part 2 is here. Part 3 is here. Very few software developers work completely alone. Most spend their time working as part of a team. Even if you’re a freelancer…

“First we shape our tools, thereafter they shape us” ~ Marshall McLuhan Part 1 of this series is here. Part 2 is here. Compared to many other fields, software development is a new discipline. Still, brilliant developers have spent years working on our field’s biggest challenges and have often created…

COVID-19 lockdowns have messed with everyone’s schedule. For parents of young children, it’s meant that there’s much more to do than usual, and less time to do it. These days I often find myself feeling completely exhausted and overwhelmed by four o’clock in the afternoon. And our kids don’t go…