From 1e7af891736408a0306b7bb2ad3eba35aa17065b Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Felipe Martin Date: Wed, 21 Dec 2016 18:39:13 +0100 Subject: [PATCH] +post: A week for personal development --- .../contents.lr | 99 +++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 99 insertions(+) create mode 100644 content/blog/2016-12-26-a-week-for-personal-development/contents.lr diff --git a/content/blog/2016-12-26-a-week-for-personal-development/contents.lr b/content/blog/2016-12-26-a-week-for-personal-development/contents.lr new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b980e8c --- /dev/null +++ b/content/blog/2016-12-26-a-week-for-personal-development/contents.lr @@ -0,0 +1,99 @@ +title: A week for personal development +--- +_template: blog/post.html +--- +comments_enabled: yes +--- +pub_date: 2016-12-26 +--- +body: + +Sadly, over time, my programming time at work is becoming less frequent. Doesn’t mean I don’t do stuff it’s just little by little most my time is spent on management things. Since I don’t want to get stalled and to give myself focus into other things I got last week off to see whatever I was capable of making. To my surprise it was time well spent. + + + +> Side effect: instead of five or six days it was down to four or less cause you know, everyone is busy these days ;) + +So, what did I do? + +## Used Lektor to build this site + +[This site on github](https://github.com/fmartingr/fmartingr-lektor) + +I finally managed to rebuild my site from scratch with [lektor](https://www.getlektor.com). Already wrote about this [in a previous post](/blog/2016/12/21/new-site/). + +Summary: +- :arrow_up_small: Read other people's code, which is nice. +- :arrow_up_small: Made some goodies with Make, Gulp and Bash to automate stuff. +- :arrow_up_small: Discovered that ARM servers are ~~not so~~ fun. +- :arrow_down_small: It wasn't coding. + +## Natif + +[Natif on github](https://github.com/fmartingr/natif) + +Simple app to use a website as a desktop application. + +I wanted to do something with [electron](https://electron.atom.io) for some time now and since I use some webapps that I wanted outside of my browser this was a simple yet powerful ally for me. + +I wanted it mostly to create a *Netflix app* because my main browser is Firefox and Netflix isn't working on it but [I came into *trouble* when trying it out](https://github.com/fmartingr/natif/issues/1). + +Summary: +- :arrow_up_small: Tried electron. +- :arrow_up_small: Simple code, good results. +- :arrow_down_small: Widevine. +- :arrow_down_small: Packaging automation on release for every operating system without a decent server will force me to use jenkins, and I don't want to. + +## SymbolDoc + +[Symboldoc on github](https://github.com/fmartingr/symboldoc) + +Print a simple docstring based on a given python module and a symbol name. + +I wanted to use [abtract syntax trees](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstract_syntax_tree) for something thinking it was more difficult than it really were, and it came to a simple script that print a docstring for a symbol that also could be easily integrated into my emacs setup, forcing me to document my projects more. + +Summary: +- :arrow_up_small: Used AST! +- :arrow_up_small: Made tests. +- :arrow_down_small: Understanding the AST wasn't as difficult as I expected. + +## Nout + +[Nout on github](https://github.com/fmartingr/nout) + +Maybe in the future a note taking app. + +After trying almost every note taking app out there mine are just files on a `Notes` folder written in markdown syntax. Thinking about what I needed, it came just to a couple features, so I thought that creating an index of my notes in a sqlite database would be enough. Parsing files to normalize the information and using simple queries to look up for the data. + +Right now I only made the file watcher and the database storage, there's a pull request on the works with some tests. It's not usable yet. + +Summary: +- :arrow_up_small: Forgot how fun was working with multithreading. +- :arrow_up_small: Getting the mindset to start bigger projects. +- :arrow_up_small: Now I know that [fnmatch](https://docs.python.org/3.6/library/fnmatch.html) exists. +- :arrow_down_small: Got the feeling that the components are not as modular as they should be. +- :arrow_down_small: Not enough testing, solving it now. +- :arrow_down_small: Not documented, but time was scarce. + +## Other stuff + +Other things I did: +- Started reading [the pragmatic programmer](https://pragprog.com/book/tpp/the-pragmatic-programmer) and started to feel that it was money really well invested. **Highly recommended to every developer out there**. (Thank you [@RusEu](https://github.com/RusEu) and [@MiguelGR](https://github.com/miguelgr)) +- Made a few Pull Requests to [i3pystatus](https://github.com/enkore/i3pystatus). Minor things but it felt rewarding. +- Made [a simple plugin for lektor](https://github.com/fmartingr/fmartingr-lektor/tree/master/packages/emojify). Not published yet. +- Built a list of stuff to automate my laptop provisioning with Ansible even more. +- Tuned a little bit more my i3 configuration. +- Found out tools like codecov, scrutinizer and gemnasium. +- Learn things about open source projects (guidelines, contribution, CI, ...). +- Moved my site from a custom server to [Firebase](https://www.firebase.com). + +Things I miss: +- Doing something in another programming language. Not so long ago [I tried golang](https://github.com/fmartingr/goshare) and I got the feeling that I should have invested more time in this or a new one. +- Lack of documentation but you know, when there's not enough time... +- Focus on unit testing more than I did. +- Related with the above, should have tried to use [TDD](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Test-driven_development) or another different development process. +- Not having a boilerplate to create projects and its integrations and base file tree, spent a lot of time doing it. It's silly because you're not creating tons of projects in a short period of time but it's a task that could be automated somehow. + +Overall it felt really rewarding. I encourage everyone to get some time off to create new stuff, maintain your projects, create that tool you always wanted, research about that subject you read so long ago, etc. + +I don't know when but I will surely repeat this.