🧉 Martin So, what's everyone up to today? In my remaining few months of "funemployment", I'm working on a language-learning app idea and hoping to get something out there before I run out of time.
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🐟 Brendan Hammering out my custom notes/TODO system and optimizing an NGS protocol for cell-free DNA.
👤 Ritardando Learning DGraph after developing with Neo4J
👂 Sly Going through a fullstack engineer curriculum at c0d3, so far the community is very welcoming and everybody is nice and ready to help. c0d3.com
🧉 Martin Great, hope you're enjoying it. For me, it has (already) been a great career choice. There are definitely worse jobs in the world :)
👂 Sly Thanks! I just hope that starting at 30 isn't gonna be a big handicap especially seeing those already making it in their 20s.
🧉 Martin My advice related to that is to specialise (to some degree). There are lots of average engineers who can throw a basic web app together, but there are few that really understand a certain aspect deeply within the very broad field of software engineering. Become really good at one of those (ideally one not too esoteric, for obvious reasons).
👂 Sly So, being a fullstack isn't the best choice ? Should i just focus either on the backend or the frontend when i finish the curriculum ?
🧉 Martin It may or may not be, depending on various things... most importantly what you actually enjoy doing. I love being full stack, but my point is more that it's becoming easier and easier to do that... so what's becoming harder? Get good at one of those answers and you'll always find somewhere you can add value. Certainly for now focus on just being broadly effective, but perhaps later think about the kind of specific problems you want to be "the guy" people go to for.
👂 Sly That sounds like a solid advice, i'll take it in consideration while taking this career path, thanks, i really appreciate it!
💻 Kernel I can recommend you the book "So Good They Can't Ignore You" by Cal Newport, which goes into exactly this topic.
🗨️ Fui The same: getting ever increasingly sophisticated at doing everything else except that one thing I'm supposed to do. tl;dr: I procrastinate.
🎲 James York I'm both a language learner and teacher, so if you need better testers, count me in!
Aaron working on a very long product demo animation. tight deadline. not looking forward to a late night. I even woke up early (4:00am) to get a headstart on it and I'm not sure it'll allow me to get to bed at a sensible hour this evening
🧉 Martin I did something similar recently - a complex SVG animation - before realising I hated it and threw it away. Good luck, sounds like you have your work cut out.
Aaron it takes the patience of a monk. I have tons of respect for people who do it really well. hope you make progress on your language learning app too.
🧉 Martin Yeah, it's definitely a skill (that I don't possess). Thanks!
👤 Ganesh Khade Are you using flutter?
🧉 Martin No. When I say app, I mean web app. It's Preact + TypeScript, with Go on the backend.
👤 Ganesh Khade Oh. Got it. Do you mostly use Go, for your projects? Can it replace, a full fledged framework like Django, or Rails? I means for a solo developer without much overhead.
🧉 Martin It's my first choice at the moment for backend code, yeah. I like its simplicity and minimalism. On the other hand, you tend to do a lot more yourself compared to working with something like Django or Rails. If you want the easier route, go with a full batteries-included framework. If you enjoy dealing with the lower-level mechanics and want something small and simple, Go is a good choice.
‼️ Rob Gough Polishing up my new personal site that I'd put off building for many years! Then I've a few other ideas to try and get done before the end of funemployment!
😏 Yt L. Nice! I'm thinking of taking some funemployment myself. I want to take a break from work and feel like I need it before having kids, because it would be irresponsible after.
‼️ Rob Gough Mine wasn't so much my choice, though I could have "just found something" sooner. Truth is, I think it's really quite healthy and wish it was more of an option for people. If you can, I recommend it. Though when you know you've something lined up afterwards, that can definitely help you enjoy it more.
🧉 Martin High-five to a fellow funemployment member. The site (assuming it's the current one) looks nicely minimal, nice work.
‼️ Rob Gough it is, thanks! Even has a dark mode, I'm was feeling very fancy. I gave up trying to pick a colour scheme, and then realised I was very picky about my terminal/vim theme so decided to repurpose gruvbox to my needs. A designer friend described it as "looking like it was made by a developer" which in this case I'm taking as a complement, whether he meant it as one or not!
🧉 Martin Haha, I'd take it that way - looks good. Nice addition of dark mode. I did the same with my blog, but I didn't add the auto detect (because of OSs without it, etc), and I just remember your preference instead. I'll have to add the detect as well, at some point!
😾 Oskar funemployment, nice one. I am also funemployed, working on vertical search engine and web directory for technical texts. The 'fun' part seems to run it's course and now I am kind of struggling to finish project and not get distracted (thanks subreply!)
🧉 Martin That sounds interesting. The latter parts of most large projects are hard. You've normalised to the excitement of the idea. You've solved the immediately obvious/easier problems. Even from the artistic POV, the canvas is getting full and you've removed a lot of the "possibility" that's so wide open and exciting in the beginning. Still, the reward of getting something out into the wild and seeing people get value from it is so worth it in the end. Good luck!
🟣 Ox Working on learning Nim
🧉 Martin Nim looks interesting. It's as if I've seen it become much more popular in the last few years, but until I just checked, I had no idea it's actually 12 years old.
🟣 Ox It is pretty fun, similar to C++ or Go in function, but feels a little more "scripty" and less cryptic to write.
🧉 Martin Most of my backend code these days is Go. I like it because it's so minimal. While it's sometimes frustrating to not have various fancy language features, I like that it mostly stays out of my way and feels pretty "boring". Meanwhile my frontend's node_modules is a trillion GB and I feel compelled to keep a fire extinguisher nearby when I run the bundler :)
🟣 Ox Go is very handy, for that reason, because you can hand the code to someone without explaining and they know right away what it does. Boring is okay, I can agree with that, especially if the alternative is a sprawling tree of interlinked dependencies.
🧉 Martin Agreed. On the other hand, sometimes I really do just want more expressiveness. It feels weird to be using a modern language and not be able to (easily) write a simple map or reduce over some data. It's a tradeoff that mostly works for me personally, though.