Month: May 2018

Hey everyone,

I’ve had a shock last week!

One of my colleagues who is a designer does really good work. He now happens to be a friend of mine.

He tried to improve the process of how the designer team does their work. Part of it is sticking!

He’ll also find something that can be improved under his eyes since it’s made to work for that iOS or Android design.

This, however, made conflicts between the founders. And although he was really good, they let him go…

I’m not sure about all the dynamics going on, but I do know one thing. As most programmers are usually not so good at socializing, the number one thing needed would be people’s skills.

These essential skills help you to become a better person overall. It’ll also help you see things differently. It helps you to grow as well.

And if you’re not so good at it now, just keep reminding yourself to be more subtle as each conversation passes by.

If you’re a reader, then I recommend a book called Soft Skills – the software developer’s life manual, written by John Sonmez.

But if any reason you find that something is not stable in your life, then maybe something is knocking at your door trying to tell you a thing or two. If you’re at this point, do what’s needed, then move on.

Anyway, I do remember a person telling me this, which is you’ve done as much as you only can do. Trying to find a place and becoming set for life is almost impossible.

This only means that you can keep improving. Although there can be set backs, nothing can stop you in going further.

Anyway, let’s get to the point of people’s skills. Communicating with people is a must to do the job right. Also, don’t worry about over-communicating since everybody will need to clarify with one-another regardless. Plus, that is essentially what the word “team” means – together, everybody achieves more.

If you’re that chipper off the block, then hey, just keep communicating along! This ensures fewer problems to be made. And remember, if something’s happening, whether good or bad, it just means a new chapter is starting in your life.

And life is amazing! Sometimes, you’ll have to let life do its thing, and you’ll pull through it eventually. I know I have, many times, and I’m still pulling through it. But each part of this trip makes me see what I’m gaining, so that’s a plus side I’m sharing along with you.

As for my friend, I know he’ll pull through as well, and I also wish him good luck on his next journey.

Until next time!

Brian.

Hey there,

Are you currently trying to perfect that piece of code? If so, please give yourself a couple of minutes and read on before doing anything else.

First off, it’s really hard to perfect anything at all. You working for a company definitely involves talking with everybody that you will be working directly with. This means especially it’s not just yourself, but also your designers or the head of the company can request to make changes. Now guess what, you will have to redo that work which was beautiful, but now it’s worth nothing!

Now again, the first and foremost solution will be to always communicate with whoever makes the decisions in the UI/UX part. Then when an agreement has been reached, that’s the time to code it up. Also, please do it the easy way and don’t kill yourself with all the extra stuff you planned to do. I have done that, and I regret it. It’s already a lot of work to analyze what you’ve done a couple months before since you’re doing feature/bug after feature/bug.

Also, if something is not working out because the operating system’s UI components you’re working with are not designed with what your designer gave you, communicate that right away and do it “the right way” as it should be designed.

Also, if you think something seems wrong, double check with another person to see if there’s a counter-judgement. This might even save you more time, or although you’ll need to use time to get it done, you will not have to touch it for quite a while.

Think of it this way as well. When Steve Jobs was around, he made sure that the Apple products were ahead of everybody else, and he saw a great future. Every other manufacturer eventually followed along as well. This is the sign of quality and the leading type that carries along eventually. Also, all of Apple’s operating systems back then had what type of quality? Usability and simplicity. It took time to make one OS perfect, and then the next one perfect, and so forth…. It takes a lot of time to engineer along as a matter of fact! It’s even worse since there are hardware designers involved. As software developers, that is the type of quality that must be expected. That’s what you are paid to do!

So, perfectionism? Forget about it, especially when you’re in a team. Simplicity is the key to helping yourself and others with better code to understand.

Please let me know of thoughts, and until next time!

Brian.

Hey guys!

Do you remember that former boss of yours?

The one that even requested to add you on Facebook?

Get a chance to meet up with him or her!

Ask yourselves what you’ve been up to and catch up on any news you’d like.

For me, I like picking out ideas from what others have to say, and therefore I like asking questions about life goals.

Everybody has different plans, but that’s what makes all of us unique!

You may be a software engineer now, but eventually you’d like to reach some promotion I’m sure.

Therefore in the interim, learn and try to see how you can get there. Because in the end, life is a process, and you can make it better, or make it worse.

Therefore, you can always plan for the future, and then keep trying to reach those goals at the same time. Even try setting a deadline and stick with it. Because to become better within any profession, you must always compare yourself with what you’ve done in the past. There will be a certain level, but always keep going and keep progressing.

Very short post, but advisable. There’s no need to worry too much and being scared or afraid of anything. The only thing you need to be doing is to always be awesome!

Until next time,

Brian.

Hey everyone,

I just had a thought here.

I’ve talked several times about making code clean and readable, and at the same time trying not to make spaghetti code along the way.

Unfortunately, we still see other developers who will keep these habits because it will just “work” out of the box.

Therefore, friends, this is why software development is an engineering field. Okay, it’s not tangible like anything hardware or chemical related, but we still should be thinking how to make things work more efficiently.

Just like how in the old days, there would be circuits that would cross over everywhere. Then, you’d end up with a tangled mess that will be very hard to take out piece by piece. Well, underdeveloped third world countries do this. If we think the same way in code, then we should instead be better off tossing salad.

In America, our antenna wires look so clean in that whenever it needed any replacement, it would be easy to just take off the old one, put the new one on, and then let everything work. Time and money was put into designing and then engineering the outcome of the structure. This is how code should be.

Therefore, if you still don’t know what to look out for, here are some basics to get you started:
– Unless your public static variables will be in the shared code logic and without any good reason, don’t make them anywhere that is local to your own application.
– Always ensure that your class does only what it entails to do, and ensure the same is met with your methods/functions and variables.
– Always try to think for others and put yourself in another person’s shoes.

If you can follow these footsteps, then your code quality will most likely lie within the 95-100% range. The person who hired you will know that he/she made the correct decision in picking you!

Please let me know what you think. Until next time!

Brian.