The Pragmatic Programmer 20th-anniversary edition
Do I really need to read the pragmatic programmer 20th anniversary edition? I mean I read the original one years ago and loved it. So why waste the time? Well to be honest because I loved it! Why not see what I forgot and what is new?
Azure Services and Concepts
This is another notes dump. I'm working through a Pluralsight course called Microsoft Azure Fundamentals (AZ-900). These are some of my notes from doing this course.
Equivalent of a Computer Science Degree
Okay so I make no attempt to hide that I have no Computer Science degree. I am actually Law LL.B graduate. But why should a company hire me as their next developer when they have potential opportunities to hire someone who studied it at university? Well if this is the only criteria they can compare on then they shouldn't. Hopefully my years of experience as a developer where I regularly push myself to learn new technology should really be what stands me in good stead, but often that is hard to prove.
SRE
What is SRE?
These are just my notes about Systems Reliability Engineering. This is something I have chosen to study as part of my work for a company called BankBI. By all means read it if you will, but I'm not really writing for readability. This is just a notes-drop from various courses.
Training in Usability
Naturally for someone in my position where too often I find myself writing a web UI, it would be really useful if I could say I have some skills in Web UI Usability. I am hoping to achieve this through reading a couple of books and an online course. That should be enough to qualify me as at least knowing more than average Joe off the street. I will leave my notes here from my studies along with my own experiences.
Reading “Being Geek” by Michael Loop
So sometimes when I am reading a book I write a little review of it and summarise the information. For some of the books I'm reading they're just not relevant to the other blogs and page I write so, well they might end up dumped here for the sake of having some where to put them. Hopefully they will be relevant to what I am doing with my life and my career.
The student surpasses the master
Okay, he hasn't surpassed me just yet... but I wrote in March about having a junior called Gareth. I look forward to the end of the month, where I not only celebrate his birthday with him, but also his second month in a programming role! Well done to Gareth who got his first programming role.
I have a junior!
So You may have seen my "I made it" post in 2016 when I joined the ranks of programmers, something I had been trying to do for a while. Well, it is time to turn around and give back to the communities I have formed around me and give them the opportunity that I had to seize for myself.
Dragged Around London Ticket system
So as you may have gathered Dragged Around London is a company that I helped form, of which, I own half. It has lots of potential to put on the books and we hope to have more and more tours and events coming up.
I made it!
After a year of continuous work I managed to secure a job in IT doing what I wanted to do: development. The road isn't over yet as much as I wish it was. I just need to convince this company that they really want to keep me as a programmer and in order to do that I am taking a lot of work home.
Oracle Certified Java Programmer
So it doesn't sound exciting but it is more exciting than it sounds. Basically I've been coming home from work every night and working hard until 11 o'clock at night to pass this professional exam. Studying... groans... but the truth is, this course is harder and more intricate and more complicated than anything on a bachelor's IT degree and I am conquering it. My result of the first half were 93% when 60% was a pass. I am clearly meant for this type of work!