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?
Correct English
I have recently taken action to improve my English. It has been a few weeks of work and for my own sake, it seems worth recording here, why not? A huge part of my spirituality is my obsession with self-improvement and communication is a skill that everyone needs to work on. So here, I am learning about English.
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.
Assembly Language
So if you couldn't tell I'm actually a computer programmer by day. By night I'm a bit of a drag mother, who loves board games, mysticism, mystic artistic expression and to engage in philosophical and religious study. (Yes I am all over the place.) But ... computer programmer.
Adding Azure App Insights logging to Durable Functions
Firstly, when I approached this my question was "what are durable functions"? That question is best answered by beginning with what are Azure Functions. I need to prefix this with I am not someone who is in the know. I am making these notes as I learn things and I am no expert. It is likely this will contain information that is outdated or just plain wrong. Also I don't plan to keep it up-to-date, this is simply a dumping ground for my notes.
Primitive Obsession
I just learned this expression... I was complaining about the code using only basic datatypes and my boss agreed that it looked like "primitive obsession". My reaction: What??? there's a term for that???
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.
Couch to 5k
I didn't really want to post about this until it was showing some signs of success. But I began to work through Zombie Run 5k. I found it hard, to say the least. I began to cause knee injury and cause some muscular issues. But that's not stopping me. I have given myself space to recover, while maintaining a regular brisk walk daily for 30 minutes and I am about to get back into the saddle. It's been going on and off for months now. But having only done walking for a couple of weeks I am ready to go back to running again. However in doing so, I must recognise that my body is very unfit, I have high blood pressure and I need to take the course at a slower speed than most people because I need to achieve more changes in my body than most people do.
Singing Course
So anyone that knows me. I sing... a lot. But my singing is mostly average. I find I often get moisture in the lungs, probably from being overweight and the impact this has on the heart. So I have to deal with a few issues. I hope to use this article to record my work as I go and keep me aware of whatever the last thing I was doing when I come back to the course. I find blogging helps me keep focused somehow and I like to be open with people about myself so I might as well publish the results.
Human Computers
I have always been fascinated by the novel and the universe of Dune by Frank Herbert. One of the concepts in his novel is that a long time ago AI rose up, enslaved mankind and mankind freed himself. So it is based in a time where computers are banned. Interestingly enough human computers exist called "Mentats". These are people expertly trained to do calculations.
Reading Dune Prequels in Spanish
So I learned some Spanish when I was young. I used to be quite good at it, thanks to Michelle Thomas Spanish and the odd bit of practice with my Grampa who retired to Spain. I would like to chuck out all my old learn Spanish books and to do that I want to officially say "I speak, understand, read and write Spanish as well as I could ever want to". I think that if I could say I have a 10,000 word vocabulary and I have read a few novels in Spanish then that would do and would help me clear out some of my old books, CDs and cassette tapes (yes I've had some books for learning languages since when Cassette tapes were still a thing).
Machu Picchu
Me and my best friend Charita are up for climbing Machu Picchu we have set our sights high and it's quite a lofty goal to go along the Incan trail. We have never done anything like it before. In the mean time we are looking at climbing in the UK starting with Box Hill on 22nd March 2020 and Blencathra on 3rd April 2020.
Third Kung Fu exam
So I completed my Third major Kung Fu exam on Sunday 2nd February 2020 and passed! I'm very glad. I am mostly impressed that I have kept this up consistently and I'm now well into my third year.
Learning Arabic
I always wanted to learn Arabic which was a family language as a kid. I had great difficulty learning the Arabic spoken by my family as a kid. Everytime I had a book to help me learn, my grandmother would always say the same thing "no that's not proper Arabic. The Egyptian Arabic is the proper Arabic." She was mostly wrong, but the truth was I didn't really want to learn MSA, I wanted to learn my family's dialect so I could speak to my cousins and family.
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.
Arduino Programming
Most of the coding I do is very high level and so far removed from the physical technology I often feel like I don't actually know the basics of what my code is doing on system level. I feel like I want to round out my programming knowledge so I'm working with a fun Arduino and I bought a collection of LEDs, resisters, capacitors, a bread board, a motor, a sensor and I think I'm going to have a little bit of fun!
Kung Fu Foundation Complete
After months of hard work I finally managed to get my red belt. That means sparring and harder work to come. We are all very proud of ourselves and I want to take this moment to state no matter what someone's size or physical fitness if they truly want to they can set aside some time to learn a sport. Even someone like me!
Psycho spender
I am looking into the psychology of money. It's an interesting minefield which I don't know why no-one looked at this before. A silly movie called Confessions of a Shopaholic briefly touched on the subject, but didn't look at it much at all. I feel like this is something that should be taught at schools. I know people with real spending problems. I'm a major psycho-spender at times!
Learning to Drive!
Finally I have passed my text. 10 years ago I failed and now I have conquered.
Yale Old Testament course
I am currently working through an incredible course published online by Yale University. It appears to be mostly the efforts of Christine Hayes who demonstrates a vast understanding of the culture within which our western religions grew up and matured. She balances many different views concerning the origins of biblical texts and presents views that many religious zealots avoid. These views often seem potentially heretic or deviating from standardized Judaism and Christianity but they are views based more on archaeological discovery than most other forms of religious doctrine.