DEV Community

Cover image for What was your win this week?
Michael Tharrington for The DEV Team

Posted on

What was your win this week?

Hey! 👋

You made it. It's officially Friday. 😎

Looking back on this past week, what was something you were proud of accomplishing?

All wins count — big or small 🎉

Examples of 'wins' include:

  • Starting a new project
  • Fixing a tricky bug
  • Going out to get ice cream 🍦

A claymation version of Patrick, the starfish, from Spongebob gorging himself on ice cream. He stops mid-bite and hangs on the side of the ice cream cone while swallowing ice cream satisfactorily. Notably he is out of the water and on a populated beach.

Top comments (86)

Collapse
 
bymarsel profile image
Marsel Akhmetshin

This week, I published a new article about macrotasks and microtasks. I also reached 1,000 subscriptions during the week.

Collapse
 
dsitdikov profile image
Daniil Sitdikov

Wow! You're a really promising and talented technical author. Have you considered writing your own book?

Collapse
 
bymarsel profile image
Marsel Akhmetshin

Thanks for the wonderful feedback! I might write a book about JavaScript in the future.

Collapse
 
anitaolsen profile image
Anita Olsen*°•.¸☆

HUZZAH! Well done! ✨

Collapse
 
bymarsel profile image
Marsel Akhmetshin

Thank you Anita 👏

Collapse
 
shcheglov profile image
Viktor Shcheglov

Congratulations on reaching 1,000 subscriptions, Marsel! Your article on macrotasks and microtasks in JavaScript is a treasure trove of insights.

Collapse
 
bymarsel profile image
Marsel Akhmetshin

Thank you! Feedback like this makes writing articles worthwhile.

Collapse
 
evilj0e profile image
Anton Konev

Legendary publication. Thank you for sharing!

Collapse
 
bymarsel profile image
Marsel Akhmetshin

Thanks, Anton! I hope it helps many developers write performant and optimized apps.

Collapse
 
michaeltharrington profile image
Michael Tharrington

Wow, this is wonderful. Nicely done, Marsel! And thanks so much for pointing this out to me. 😀

Collapse
 
bymarsel profile image
Marsel Akhmetshin

Thanks, Michael! Sharing our successes is a great idea—thanks for suggesting it.

Collapse
 
anitaolsen profile image
Anita Olsen*°•.¸☆ • Edited

📰 I published a new post on DEV! ✨


   

💟 I received a new badge on DEV! ✨
The Mod of the Month badge
The Featured Moderator of the Month article can be read, here!
 

💡 I learned about a cool HTML tag which was new to me! ✨
The <area> tag defines an area inside an image map (an image map is an image with clickable areas).
 
💻 I completed three singleplayer levels on CodeCombat! ✨
I also earned the following achievements:
CodeCombat achievements
 

💟 I received three new badges on Codecademy! ✨
Codecademy badges

Collapse
 
michaeltharrington profile image
Michael Tharrington

Wooohoo, congrats all around!

Sorry for the lateness in getting ya that badge, Anita — that was def my bad, haha. 😅

And thanks so much for all the awesome help you give us as a mod! 🙌

Collapse
 
anitaolsen profile image
Anita Olsen*°•.¸☆

Thank you so much! 😀

I even sent you a friendly reminder via email before I eventually took to Discord lol because I thought it took a little long. Aw, but it is okay. I get very excited about badges, I could hardly wait to get the Mod of the Month one! 😁

Thank you again! 😊

Thread Thread
 
michaeltharrington profile image
Michael Tharrington

Oh I'm sorry for that! I must've missed your email. Anywho, totally cool to hit me up on Discord!

Collapse
 
erinao profile image
Erin A Olinick

Nice work, @anitaolsen! Quite the badge happy week for you, and great discussion prompt, too. I see it sparked lots of good convo, and pics of penguins, too! 🐧

Collapse
 
anitaolsen profile image
Anita Olsen*°•.¸☆

Thank you so much! 😊 Yes, indeed! People seemed to like it! 😃

Collapse
 
bymarsel profile image
Marsel Akhmetshin

I'm very happy about your achievements. It's great to see your hard work paying off, and I'm looking forward to seeing what you do next. 🙌

Collapse
 
anitaolsen profile image
Anita Olsen*°•.¸☆

Thank you so much 😊

I think you will like the article I am going to post tomorrow 😊

Collapse
 
grimkillingbeck profile image
GrimKillingbeck

My win(s) this week :

  • I finally sat down and practiced scripting with Bash and found that I am happiest when I am playing around in CLI
  • After revising my resume for the umpteeth time, and using this iteration for 45 applications, I received 4 invites for interviews and two in person interviews (so far)
Collapse
 
phalkmin profile image
Paulo Henrique

Wow, that would be cool to write about both experiences 😀

Collapse
 
erinao profile image
Erin A Olinick

Congrats, @grimkillingbeck! That is a great response on your resume. Wow! Good luck on the interviews. ✨

Collapse
 
yowise profile image
a.infosecflavour

Congratulations, may you have positive experiences! 😊

Collapse
 
phalkmin profile image
Paulo Henrique
  • Published a new post on dev
  • Auty got good feedback after I showed it to some friends, a parent even praised how his kid with ASD interacted with it. After the challenge, I need to think about how to continue with it as a free product.
  • Updated my WP plugin and started working on the 2.0 version

  • Massive update on LinkedIn and UpWork profiles

Collapse
 
erinao profile image
Erin A Olinick

+1 to Auty -- super impressed with this concept -- and thanks for all the great content you've been sharing on DEV. 🙏

Collapse
 
michaeltharrington profile image
Michael Tharrington

Awesome stuff all around, Paulo!

Gahhh, Auty is such a cool concept for a bot. I'm glad to hear the reception has been so positive. 🙌

Also, big ups on the posts! You're sharing lots of good stuff.

Collapse
 
michaeltharrington profile image
Michael Tharrington

I’ve been working on a little trancey electronic track recently that I call House Party — that's a Google Drive link btw! 😀

Notably, I played this on different synths (Moog Grandmother + Moog DFAM) and a drum machine (Roland TR-8S) all in real-time (I made it the other morning and was basically twiddling a bunch of knobs on different parts that I sequenced ahead of time) — also the kinda airy, ambient guitar part that plays throughout is a synced loop. So yeah, there were some non-real-time aspects of it, but hopefully ya get what I mean that it's like a DJ performance.

I kinda wanna return to it and work on it more. Anyway, it’s been fun and is quite different than a lotta music I make!

Collapse
 
tyisi profile image
TyIsI • Edited

Ooh! You mentioned Jon Hopkins in the other comment. But I'm also getting some WhoMadeWho (and partly Bob Moses) vibes from this! It's just missing the vocals!

As someone who loves music (and DJs and makes music), I love this and I really hope you continue to work on it!

@michaeltharrington For context:

youtube.com/watch?v=fh-LJdvs1Ig

(I'm not telling you what to do, but I tried singing along with your track in their style and just saying that it could work.)

Collapse
 
michaeltharrington profile image
Michael Tharrington • Edited

Thank you sooo dang much for listening and appreciate the encouragement! 💚

Also wow, I'm honored by the comparison. I've never heard of WhoMadeWho or Bob Moses, but am absolutely loving this video that you linked to. 😍 This is def the kinda thing I wanna do and am going for!

So, I still really need to explore more music from this space. I've been leaning more into the whole electronic/house/techno music space these past couple of years, but I still don't know a lotta the groups that well. I reckon I do a lot of see-sawing back and forth to more traditional band-based music too. Just to say, there's still so much I don't know, but I really like this group you introduced me to and wanna hear more like'em. Thanks for the suggestion... it's good inspiration!

By the way, I'm def up for trying to put some vocals on top of my track. I love singing and it would be fun to try and find something that fits well! Will let you know if I make changes in that direction. Thanks all around! 😀

Thread Thread
 
tyisi profile image
TyIsI

No worries! I found myself headbopping along with your track earlier and imagining it with those kinds of desert rock vibe kinds of vocals was really inspiring.

Also the other way around, thank you for the inspiration! Now I'm wondering if I should get myself a guitar!

So, right back at you! No worries, thank you and you're welcome!
(And, yes! Please let me know!)

Thread Thread
 
tyisi profile image
TyIsI

Oh! The Bob Moses Cercle set before I forget!

youtube.com/watch?v=R3wwPJCDumw

Collapse
 
michaeltharrington profile image
Michael Tharrington • Edited

Alrighty @montyharper this isn't exactly the track that I was planning on getting your feedback on. I have other music that is more song-based with lyrics and singing... one tune I'm working on is kinda influenced by 60's Motown, so I def wanna hear your thoughts on that one.

But, for the time being, I'm curious what ya think about this (admittedly kinda odd) electronic track I'm working on linked above ☝️...

If you're curious about my influences for this one, it's John Hopkins. I wasn't necessarily going for that (haha, I didn't realize until after creating it) but it seems to be kinda in that realm.

Collapse
 
montyharper profile image
Monty Harper

Hi Michael, thanks for tagging me in on this.

First a disclaimer - as you hinted at, this is not my genre; I'm more of a lyrics and melody kind of writer. The music in this vein I'm most familiar with would be Paul McCartney's second Fireman album, and he's mostly dabbling around with trance/electronica as an experiment, so it's not really his thing either. But I'm a big enough Macca fan to listen and enjoy.

I watched the first Jon Hopkins track in the video before listening to yours, just to give myself the proper context.

So with all that in mind, I tried to come up with one or two worthwhile things to say...

I like your track. The different rhythms juxtaposed keep it interesting and hooky. It sounds well-balanced and I find it relaxing to listen to.

Since I'm not super familiar with the genre I will fall back on more basic music principals to try and make some constructive comments. In music there is always interplay between repetition and novelty, tension and release. I know repetition is a big part of what makes trance music "trance-y." So I find it interesting how trance artists manage to base entire pieces on repetition while also keeping them interesting. What I've noticed in general is that over the long arc of a piece, gradual change is one technique for keeping things fresh. Another is introducing and releasing tension.

In Jon Hopkin's piece, there seem to be two distinct sections to the music, and each section evolves over time, adding and removing different parts. He also introduces tension by cranking the pitch of the main synth sound up a notch so it doesn't quite sit harmonically with the rest of the track. This holds the listener's attention, creating a slight discomfort while the rhythms build, until he brings the pitch back down and you get satisfying sense of release.

Those techniques are not as apparent in your piece. New parts build in at the start, but once you hit your groove, I don't hear a lot of parts fading out or in. I hear a couple of sections where you play with (I think) an EQ filter that makes things sound thin, or underwater-y, then you bring it back to normal. That provides a bit of variety and tension/release, but it isn't as effective as what I'm hearing in the Jon Hopkins piece.

You said you want to play with it more, so I would encourage you to try some bolder techniques. Bring in new parts and fade out old ones so that the feel changes more over time. Bring in a part that's pleasantly out of key to create some palpable tension and release, giving the piece more of an overall shape. I think what you have is a fantastic basis from which to work and you could end up create something really compelling.

That's my two cents, for whatever it's worth. I hope it helps!

Thread Thread
 
michaeltharrington profile image
Michael Tharrington • Edited

Fantastic advice all around, Monty! 😀

Thank you for taking the time to listen and offer up such thoughtful feedback. Even though I realize this is a bit outside your regular listening and what you play, I think you've definitely identified solid areas for improvement and I'm feeling inspired to take another crack at it — adding in more tension and variation.

After playing this, I found a way to manipulate the guitar loop in real-time via Ableton (using even more MIDI cables, haha), so I think I'd like to try performing it again and wielding that to my advantage. Plus, the looper I'm using for the guitar (a Boss RC-500) allows for 2 different loops and I'm only currently using 1. Maybe I can get a separate loop in to create another distinctive section.

My only real limitation/goal is to keep it so that I can perform everything live — like the Jon Hopkins video above. But I've got ideas brewing now... 🙌

Anywho, thank you very much! And I'll keep you in the loop when I make updates. 🙂

Collapse
 
tyisi profile image
TyIsI

Such a great set!

Thread Thread
 
michaeltharrington profile image
Michael Tharrington

Right?! I love that set. Jon Hopkins is on fire. 🔥

Collapse
 
stefanmoore profile image
Stefan Moore

2 weeks and I haven't used my credit card(s).

Collapse
 
michaeltharrington profile image
Michael Tharrington

Wow! Good one, Stefan. That's quite an accomplishment and harder than it seems...

My wife and I did a no-frivolous-spending month for February (note that we chose the shortest month lol) and it was no joke. We allowed ourselves gas money (but really didn't travel far), ate all our meals at home, and cut ourselves off from online shopping (and IRL shopping). It was a good move though... definitely felt proud afterward and the bank statement put a big smile on our faces. 🤑

Collapse
 
stefanmoore profile image
Stefan Moore

Congrats on having a supportive wife. Mine just wants to spend and spend. Seeing that small growth shows there is hope.

Collapse
 
Collapse
 
michaeltharrington profile image
Michael Tharrington

Woohoo! Look at all those red moons in a row, haha. That's a lotta submissions — nice one(s)!

Collapse
 
yowise profile image
a.infosecflavour

Yeah, it's a great learning experience and exercise!😸

Collapse
 
fabrikapp profile image
Fabrikapp

Wrote 12 articles, made 1200+ views and 707 readers !
And also I dealt with LangChain/LangGraph doc and made a nice custom AI Agent.

Collapse
 
salika_dave profile image
Salika Dave

Made an open source contribution to LangChain
It was an update to the LangChain Documentation Page on PDF Parsing. PR

Collapse
 
michaeltharrington profile image
Michael Tharrington

Awwww yeah, Salika!! Major congrats on the PR.

By the way, in case ya didn't know, you can actually embed PRs (and other stuff) in comments and posts here on DEV... the way to do so is with this MarkDown - {% embed https://github.com/langchain-ai/langchain/pull/20723 %} which converts to:

docs: [Retrieval > .. > PDF] update package installation instructions for Unstructured and PDFMiner #20723

Description: Adds the command to install packages required before using Unstructured and PDFMiner from langchain.community Documentation Page Being Updated: LangChain > Retrieval > Document loaders > PDF > Using Unstructured Issue: #20719 Dependencies: no dependencies Twitter handle: SalikaDave

Anywho, just a fun little trick to have up your sleeve if you ever wanna embed things... you can use this method ({% embed https://... %}) with other places too like YouTube, Wikipedia, Twitch, etc.

If you have any questions about this, def hit me up. 😀

Again, major congrats on the contribution to LangChain and hope ya have an awesome weekend!

Collapse
 
salika_dave profile image
Salika Dave

Wow, I didn't know about this! Thank you, you are the best! 💪

Collapse
 
vulcanwm profile image
Medea

i've came up with a new idea that i now need people to validate:

so you can enter a prompt
and it will use music theory to create a 20 second intro to that prompt
will also help you build upon that idea
will have a credit based system (gotta pay to get credits)

so basically a music intro creator which uses purely music theory to create it

Collapse
 
tyisi profile image
TyIsI

What's your audience and are there any other tools in that space?

Collapse
 
vulcanwm profile image
Medea

my audience are people who are creating music and have a knowledge of music theory
but just don't have a starting melody
there are definitely a lot of ai related tools for music creation out there but none of them focuses on the theory aspect of it

Thread Thread
 
tyisi profile image
TyIsI

Honestly, I don't know if that's something that can really be monetized.

In my experience, the people who do music a lot will usually know their theory just fine, and the beginners who don't just want something that will "make it go" for them without regard to any limits in knowledge.

There's the Captain software by the Mixed in Key people. That's an offline thing.
And it would be relatively easy to write a VST that generates random melodies from some base key and tonal preference.

I could maybe see it work for those who make music for commercials/ads and if/when they're stuck for inspiration.

Let me rephrase all of that; there might be a market for it, but I have no idea if there would be a sufficiently big paid audience for it.
If you're thinking about making a product with the goal to make money, you should always have 1) a great idea and 2) a specific idea of what your customer base would look like. Because if you invest a whole bunch of resources into it without a good idea of your target audience, it's going to be an uphill battle.

Regardless, I would build something just for fun just to get a feel for it!

Thread Thread
 
vulcanwm profile image
Medea

that makes sense, thanks!

Thread Thread
 
vulcanwm profile image
Medea

okay i've got another idea

i'm a student who struggles to memorise things like quotations so how it works would be:

enter themes
for each theme have a few quotations
when testing for each theme:

  • Enter a quotation
  • If it is fully the same as another quotation in the list then it is marked as correct
  • If not then it matches how similar the quotation entered is with all the other quotations
  • The quotation with the closest similarity is assumed as the one the user is trying to enter
  • It tells the user the correct quotation and then will be repeated in the next round
  • Rounds will continue until all the quotations have been correctly guessed

Doesn't need to be quotations
just helps with memorising in general
could be for definitions so the quotation would be "[x] means [definition]"

my target audience would be students who struggle to memorise things

Thread Thread
 
tyisi profile image
TyIsI

Let me get back to you!

Because I feel I might be able to give you better advice that's better tailored to the underlying motivations for your requests for feedback.

Collapse
 
best_codes profile image
Best Codes • Edited

I did some 3D printing this week.
Also, I wrote my first post in almost a month, after returning from a trip to Iceland and Norway!

Mostly still recuperating from my trip. 😅

Collapse
 
anitaolsen profile image
Anita Olsen*°•.¸☆

Norway! 😯
Awesome, I have not tried 3D printing but it sounds cool! Grats on writing your first post in a while! You must have had an awesome trip!

Collapse
 
best_codes profile image
Best Codes

Thanks! I heard you got featured as a mod. 🤩
Keep up the good work, and congrats! 👍

Thread Thread
 
anitaolsen profile image
Anita Olsen*°•.¸☆

Yes, I did! Thank you so much! 😊

You keep up the good work as well! ✨

Collapse
 
integerman profile image
Matt Eland

I reorganized the bat cave to create a separation between my desk space and my reading / library space. This had a pleasant side effect of giving me a nice central standing area for talk rehearsals and video recordings.

Also, this is why they're called tech stacks, right?

Stacks of technical books

Collapse
 
integerman profile image
Matt Eland

Oh! And I hit 100,000 views on my YouTube channel, Matt on Data Science, making it officially eligible for monetization!

Collapse
 
schemetastic profile image
Schemetastic (Rodrigo) • Edited

I have been very much a perfectionist, and I always find really hard to finish the projects I start, so I decided to start with something small to cheer me up to do greater things... still then, even though it was small, I couldn't hold myself and what It's supposed to be like a 1-week project ended up being like two and a half week project.

The project in question:

A set of gradients, the first row says “CSS gradients” and has 4 samples of colorful gradients, below the words “CSS gradients” there is a label that says “Copy & paste”, the second row says “Mesh gradients” and next to it 4 samples of colorful gradients, below the words “Mes gradients” there is a label that says “1080x1080 & 1920x1080”

Collapse
 
manchicken profile image
Mike Stemle

I finally won the fight with my tmux.conf, and life is working much better. Keeping things simple is hard sometimes, but important.

Collapse
 
michaeltharrington profile image
Michael Tharrington

Keeping things simple is hard sometimes, but important.

Well said!

I'm glad to hear things are going well for ya, Mike, and congrats on the tmux.conf win!

Collapse
 
paras594 profile image
Paras 🧙‍♂️

Finally completed the new post on Caching concepts.
It covers key concepts and emphasizes the importance of analyzing requirements for an effective caching strategy. Check it out and share your thoughts!

dev.to/paras594/caching-in-depth-5abj

Image description