Category: off topic

Life Sucks! Notes To My Younger Self.

Life Sucks! Notes To My Younger Self.

As a developer, especially as a junior developer things can take a turn for the worse and you probably won’t have seen the blinding obvious coming right at you… Life can seem to suck at times, but like everything, it depends what you take from it.

This is part 2 from the React JS/Finland talk that I had the opportunity to give on the 14th Sep 2022 (https://youtu.be/zE8PDM_7xoQ?t=11416). This sections goes to show that even though I had what seemed like the ideal first job, it really wasn’t.

My first role was to help with the creation of this game! 😎

First Job

So after a year of job hunting, I got my first role in a AAA games company. Exciting – yes, very much so. A large company with 3 separate games being made (in conjunction with other studios). Each team had around 30+ people in it. The place had it’s own arcade booths, we got fresh fruit every day, people would play online games during lunch. Variety of the latest consoles laying around the office. What wasn’t their to like!

Downhill

So in the door and on the whole, people were busy, very busy. They had headphones on and coding away – in the zone so to speak. I recall being shown a list of literally 1000’s of bugs that needed fixing before the game was suitable for release. Of course in those days, you couldn’t update over the internet. What shipped on the disk was what shipped into peoples homes and of course if the game didn’t make the Christmas deadlines for being created that was not a good thing!

So with everyone being so busy, support was next to nothing. I only recall a single meeting with management to see how things were going, and that was early enough for me not to really give a good opinion in it. Recall many times scratching my head, wondering what was happening with the code, but everyone had headphones on and ‘in the zone’. As a junior, certainly didn’t feel like I could/should be interrupting the other dev’s to ask ‘silly’ questions. None of the senior dev’s would ask how I was going, or if I required assistance.

Could it get worse?

Yes it could! Due to the main team being in the states (we were based in Scotland) and infrastructure issues (20 years ago, transferring 2-3GB of data nightly was problematic at best) the whole team had to fly out to the states in order to complete the game on time. But I was about to get married, so I couldn’t go…

So now I was working US hours, essentially on my own in a mainly empty office. But I was getting free food/dinner as I was working late, and I was still doing some dev work, just nothing really meaningful. Trying being a jnr in a code base many 1000’s times bigger than anything your experienced from university, it’s not documented in any way, PR’s and unit tests were not a thing, even source control was very sketchy.

Coasting

But did I see any of the above as an issue – NOPE! Why not, well I just didn’t have the experience. I thought once the team get back from the States, I’d get properly into the code, be able to ask questions, do some learning etc.

I knew things weren’t great, but at the back of my head, I was sure it would pan out and be fine!

Did that happen, nope… Redundant soon after Christmas 😢

Hard lessons

Looking back it was clear from the start that the company wasn’t interested in me. I was a number to allow them to get what they wanted. A decent company that hires a junior dev will never just leave them to flounder on their own. They will mentor and guide them. The simple fact that there was zero support was a simple and clear warning. So if this is your experience right now or at some point in the future – what to do?

You need to invest in yourself. They will not care, so you have to make the time to pull apart the code base. Dig into it framework, put tests around items and generally if anything looks different/new learn why. This is hard, but take it in small chunks. Create a small app and slowly copy parts of the larger code base into it to get them working in a context you know and control.

Managers

Always support a junior developer. If you happen to be a workplace that loves music to code (most of us do). Then make sure that you take off those headphones to ask how it’s going. Don’t just accept a – ‘yeah all good’ response. It’s easy to do so, as you’re busy and if they say they’re fine, then great, you can carry on with your important jobs… Make sure that they are good. Junior dev’s are the people that come with energy, enthusiasm, new ideas etc, you need to channel that into something meaningful.

As an aside, over the years I feel that the gain you think you get from being in the zone with headphones on and banging out code – is actually a downside. Yes being focused is great, but often being out of reach regularly from your fellow developers is not good. One place I worked got the balance right, but that will be explained in part 4 of my talk review.

Junior devs

You can’t learn effectively in isolation. You need a team around you, you need a variety of experience. If that isn’t there then it’s time to look for an exit strategy. Be preparing your CV, go looking to see who’s looking to hire etc. Get preparing small demos, learn the usual interview questions as so on.

At the same time you should and need to be more vocal in asking questions. Never stop asking questions, don’t keep asking the same questions, but do keep asking questions. It’s not only good for you to learn, but at the same time those you’re asking the question off will also learn. If something isn’t clear – is it a good bit of code? If it isn’t, then perhaps it needs refactored. Sometimes it’s good to discuss an area of code that hasn’t been touched in years as you’ll have forgotten it’s purpose. Either way it’s not a one way street when you ask questions. So as a senior developer, I welcome questions.

Bikes and Munros

Bikes and Munros

Top Munro hikes that are aided by taking your bike!

This page is for my own reference mainly, and of course at the same time if you find it and see it’s helpful great 🙂
Generally when looking for my next little walk up a hill if I see one with a long flat walk in, then I’ll bookmark it here so I remember it as I’m more likely to do a cycle/hike during the summer months.

Disclaimer!
I’m not a biker or a keen cyclist. My bike generally only gets used for those handful of days each year where I take it up a hill. This should give an indication of the level of ability required for these cycle/walks!

Bike walks completed

Bike walks still to do

Verify the checksum of an installer file

Verify the checksum of an installer file

One of those regular items you see when downloading a file.

What’s that checksum, how to I check it?

Quick solution if you are on a Windows machine.

  • Open the folder that you’ve downloaded the file to – probably the download folder
  • Inside the path bar, type cmd, then press enter
Enter cmd into the path bar
  • You will now have a command window open that is already looking in the download folder.
  • Now type the following certutil -hashfile {file name you are checking goes here} {check type, as in MD5 or SHA1 for example}
  • eg certutil -hashfile myDownloadedFile.exe SHA1
  • This will now output something like the below with a SHA-1 check

You can now compare the long number with the number on the download page, if they do not match DO NOT INSTALL.

Other checks you can do depending on what the website is asking for are these –
Hash algorithms: MD2 MD4 MD5 SHA1 SHA256 SHA384 SHA512

React Finland – post conference breakdown

React Finland – post conference breakdown

Time flies on, can’t believe its a month already since I attended the React Finland conference for the second time. Yes a second time, I took a fair amount away from the first one, so when I had the chance to go back again I definitely took that chance.

So why?

Friendly

Programmers and techy folk aren’t exactly the most chatty people, so when you are traveling on your own you’re always wondering how it will go. Will it be a case of turn up, enjoy the various talks then head back to your hotel after speaking with no one?

Nope, not here, at least not from my experience. Of course you need to be willing to speak to people, but the set up was great. Breaks long enough for people to grab a wee snack/drink and also visit the sponsors lounge area to chill.

I’ve been to enough conferences to know this isn’t easy to pull off. For example the ones in say London – complete opposite!

Sponsors chill out area
Sponsors chill out area – look at everyone talking! 😛 (They did actually)

Evening events

So you’ve a super friendly crowd and now they organise evening events.  For example after the workshop day a sizeable number of people headed over to one of the sponsors offices – Reaktor. I met with some great people and discussed lots of ideas, work and non-work topics. Had some friendly banter, food, drink and of course the obligatory Finnish sauna. Top hosting by Reaktor, again this was the same experience I had the previous year as well when I visited the Fraktio offices.

Reakor office chill out area

After day one of the conference, there was a comedy night. Yip comedy, in the same hall as the talks – and you know what it was actually rather good 😊 

Then you have the main after party event on the evening that the conference finished. Nothing too fancy, hall, food, music, drink.  Time to wind down, relax and cement some of the friendships that were made over the previous days.  Of course all these events just make the whole experience very enjoyable. Learning, sharing, and enjoying yourself at the same time.

BONUS

Due to the time it takes to get from Scotland to Finland I turned up a day early, no way I could have turned up on the Wed morning. Couple of weeks before (yes could have been arranged earlier but this wasn’t really part of the official conf) got the announcement that there was going to a pre-conference meet up! Great. It was held in one of the local companies offices, and maybe because it was unexpected, I thoroughly enjoyed it and it contained the talk that matched my company/team/project layout the most which made it the most appropriate. Getting into the mood of learning from others experiences. Only two talks, but both very good, especially the one from Smartly. Think it shows what the overall scene in Helsinki (Finland) is like. Very professional and well set up.

Bonus 2!

The organiser (Juho) had set up a slack channel for those wanting to meet up outside of the conference, to see a bit more of Helsinki if they wished. So on Sat after most people had left and flown home myself and Juho took a stroll around one of Helsinki’s nature reserves. Beautiful, weather really played its part and if anything was a tad hot for my liking – yes really. To hot in Helsinki! Never thought to bring shorts with me.  If you wish to see what it’s like I’ve got an album of just the walk – https://flic.kr/s/aHskQQsHuk. We must have walked 26-28km during the course of the day.

Squirrel

But what about the conference???

Sure, so I enjoyed myself, but that’s not the point of going to the React conference.  Well the conference didn’t disappoint either. The schedule for the two days were split into themes, so that you got back to back talks on say architecture, accessibility, styling, testing etc. Of course not everything will please everyone, so should you have had zero interest in styling/css then you headed out, had a shoulder massage, played some games in the sponsors lounge and had a chat with the sponsors or other attendees. Then you could find out about things like the micro satellite that they (think it was Reaktor) fired into orbit to photograph the forests! 
Think other than one talk, I stayed in and listened to every one of them and I’m glad I did.

Top talks for me –

Now for the ones I’ve not listed, doesn’t mean I didn’t like or didn’t take anything from them. Most were very good, only a couple I wasn’t keen on.  The above were the ones where I took something from and then able to use in my day to day role.

Was anything not so good?

Yes, unfortunately there was.  The workshop I attended wasn’t what I thought it was going to be and it was a super rushed course that finished approx. 1 ½ hours earlier than it was meant to. There was perhaps a reason for this in that the original trainer had to pull out, but the description of the course didn’t quite fit in with my expectation. https://react-finland.fi/workshops/#advanced-performance-tuning-for-react-applications  I was hoping for some performance tuning around the running of the application. Spotting common issues, what’s making items re-render needlessly, what takes up the most processing time, bad and good practice when dispatching events, that sort of thing.  The actual course was around start up time and getting the existing starter app down from say 4MB to a handful of KB’s.  For me, that’s not so much of an issue. Working only with internal customers I’ve never yet heard anyone ask for something to be smaller or faster at loading.  Sure we shouldn’t bloat our apps, but I’m not creating web pages so no one really cares. It did cover lazy loading and Service Workers which was great as well as other topics that I could take away.

So not a bad course and I did learn from it, just not what I expected and definitely too rushed. Unless you were very quick at touch typing, so you could watch the trainers screen and type at the same I don’t think you’d have been able to keep up.

Will I be back?

Sure hope so! I hear that the plan is to have two days of workshops! Sounds good 🙂

React Finland :D

React Finland :D

2nd year at React Finland, almost underway but what a bonus I’ve had so far!
I will be tweeting (@_delp_) live from the event and all going well covering all the best bits – which hopefully will be quite a lot.

It’s almost underway, but even before the conference has started I’ve been to a meet up at Smartly.io where there was a great talk about on Micro front ends. Same thinking as mirco services, but for the front end – makes sense, yes!

Had a workshop day yesterday which quite literally flow past with NikkitaFTW Some great insights into cutting down payloads and start up times. Perhaps best piece of information came in chunk on Service workers.

Service workers are dangerous – yet powerful!


https://developers.google.com/web/tools/workbox/modules/workbox-webpack-plugin#injectmanifest_plugin_1

Reaktor

Yeahhhh, they host a great meet up.
Check out the food on offer. Chatting for many hours to dev’s from all over Finland, Canada, France and even Vietnam!

React Finland ReactJS

And of course it wouldn’t be Finland without have a drink or two in the sauna. They love sauna here – and why not!!! The world needs more of them.

Desktop backgrounds – Random non code post

Desktop backgrounds – Random non code post

Yet again I give my blog so little time, but during my coding I see my desktop wallpaper which I think is dead nice – well I did take the picutres 🙂

So I’ve bundled some of them (13 images) up into a theme pack for windows machine –

Thistle at Ben Lawers
walk through Ben Lawers national nature reserve

Garbh Uisge Mor (NE of Ben Macdui)
Garbh Uisge Mor (NE of Ben Macdui)

If you like that sort of pics them feel free to grab the theme and use it. themepack link
If you really like it you can follow my pics on Flickr
IF YOU REALLY like then 🙂 then you can even buy them!!! (only just start putting some up on to Redbubble so not many yet – need to get my walking shoes on a bit more) Redbubble

These were just taken as part of my drive to get out from my desk… so enjoy and feel free to comment and share if you like 🙂

Double click the theme pack download file and windows will do the rest.
Then go to your Control PanelAppearance and PersonalizationPersonalizationDesktop Background then tell it to ‘FIT’ and not ‘FILL’ as that’s what seems to be the default setting.
fit

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Email settings with a Buffalo linkstation NAS

Email settings with a Buffalo linkstation NAS

So I got myself a new Buffalo Linkstation for backing up a heap of data and part of its software features give you the option to send an email in case of hard drive errors or failure.

Fail, Fail, Fail again…

Well going through the options and trying every possible combination failed.

Double checked email ports/passwords/auth settings etc with my mail client settings and with the Godaddy help – nothing worked. Every test email failed.

Eventually I figured it out so thought I’d put this post up as it was a really simple solution – DO NOT EMAIL YOURSELF.

So I was sending the email from say [email protected] and sending it to [email protected].

This failed to send! No idea why but it did. After a while I decided to send it to another of my emails at a different domain – [email protected]. THIS WORKED!

I then added both email addresses to send to – [email protected] and [email protected]. This also worked.

Most odd, but hopefully this will help someone trying to figure it out.

Good day in the office – 1000’s of mobile apps built in a few hours!

Good day in the office – 1000’s of mobile apps built in a few hours!

Yeah its been ages since I’ve last blogged any code articles (got a few 1/2 done – honest!). Just been very busy in the past several months working with the crew from Jampot. Anyway check out this article where we headline in Engadget. Shows off our new product which can let you build an app in minutes and get it installed on your phone.

Jampot crew

Check out the actual Engadget article here.
Check out the fab Jampot team here 🙂
And of course check out this to build an app and get it on your phone in minutes.

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Flex Collection – Google search

Flex Collection – Google search

Totally off topic this. But I had quite a bit of hassle trying to find info on how to do what I just did.

So if you look to your right you’ll see a nice search box with the Google brand inside it 🙂 Nothing special there you may think… well.

Well it’s a custom search box from Google, and I’ve customised it by adding all of my favourite and preferred flex, AIR, and flash sites. So should you need to search on anything related to the mentioned categories just use the search box to the right.

 

How its done

If you are interested in adding something similar to your blog or web page then there is very little information out there about Google’s custom search page. 

There seems to be 2 ways to add it to wordpress.

1)       Add it as a page within your site so that it retains your sites look and feel, in order to do this you can find a plugin for custom google search and depending on what theme you have have this may or may not work. I tried out http://aleembawany.com/projects/wordpress/google-custom-search-plugin/ which as it happens didn’t work with my theme.  But I wasn’t really trying to get it to work inside my site, I wanted the custom search to retain the Google style as that is what people are used to when using Google.

2)      Add it as a hosted Google custom search. Now on this method I found absolutely zero information (actually the info I did find on the wordpress site said it wasn’t possible).  Not to be put off by this info as anything seems to be possible with wordpress (I’m just learning it really, my blog is only a few weeks old), I decided to hunt through the various php files etc that come with wordpress.

The file that is required is searchform.php and this can be found inside the theme folder that you are using ( something like ‘wp-content/themes/{your theme folder}/searchform.php’)

Open up the file and inside that you should find some php and some html code (a form).  Replace the html code with the code that Google has given you for your custom search.  Or if you would like to have a search that just does Flex, AIR and flash sites then feel free just to use the following code.

 



When the user searches in this form then it will look up just a list of sites that only contain information on Flex, AIR, actionscript & flash.

You can also bookmark the following link

http://www.google.com/cse?cx=partner-pub-7396620608505330:xjbbr6-w0cu&ie=ISO-8859-1

This will link up to the specific Google search that I’ve set up just to look at relevant Flex, AS3, AIR & Flash sites.

 

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