DEV Community: Arne

Why good developers write

Arne — Thu, 19 Aug 2021 18:40:08 +0000

Public writing can seem like a waste of time: It doesn't really take any stories off your backlog, there is already lots of written content out there, it takes a lot of time to write something presentable and even then there is the nagging thought "Who would want to read my thoughts anyway?"

And yet, most of the really good developers I know write regularly and some of them I only know because they do: Kevin Simler, Sebastian Ramirez, and even the guy who keeps rambling about Lisp in {currentYear}.

Amongst non-technical people, developers generally aren't known for their ability to communicate. And there is some truth to the stereotype but only if you consider the spoken word as the pinnacle of communication: People don't become developers when they really want to host a radio show. But communication is more than making noise.

If you are see yourself on the introverted side of the spectrum, chances are that you are still an assertive person when given the time to structure and test your thoughts.

I'll take away the punch line: If you are wondering whether to write, you probably should. Now there are some things you might be wondering about:

What to write about?

People write for many reasons and depending on what you want to optimize for, there are different answers to this – all you need to think about is what you want:

Get rich or famous: Write things that people want to read and share. [Note: In that case, you might want to get someone else to write in your name – it's faster.]
Structure thinking: Write about what comes to your mind or to answer a question you don't have an immediate answer to.
Teach or inspire: Write about things you are excited about, that you learned – recently or tested through time –, or bad things that you have gotten past.

All of these motivations are valid, all you need to do is choose what fits you. And yes, switching is allowed.

Who should I write to?

The "market" for the readership of the above has the range(1, ∞) and bear in mind that it's generally not a bad idea to write for the few rather than the many, at the extreme even dedicating something to a single person. Imagine the joy of that friend when they learn that you sat down for two hours, simply to answer a question. And now imagine that person could even be you. Case in point: Writing this helps me better understand whether I should continue writing or drop it for something else even though I find joy in it.

With these things in mind, you don't need to fear that your stuff will be boring. And if few people care – does it really matter if the process taught you something valuable?

How to start?

Don't wait for an epiphany, writing is permissionless! Nobody will come to you and ask you to write a book or a blog any more than this post does. An added bonus is of writing in public is that it will speed up the learning process because you don't publish things with logic gaps in it.

Enjoy the write!

Since I haven’t written here in a while, chances are that it just disappears into the void. And then? Well, I spent two hours of my life on thinking about a question that matters to me and it was still a good investment.

How do mobile developers integrate machine learning?

Arne — Wed, 15 Jul 2020 17:07:40 +0000

Hey everyone, we keep running into cases where we think "That would be a cool case for a mobile app developer" at colabel.

Frankly, we don't know much about your space, therefore, I was curious to know how you integrate machine learning (in all variations, from "I ship around it" over linear regression to deep learning). Would be great to hear your thoughts on this!

You can go from idea to podcast within 2.5 weeks

Arne — Tue, 14 Apr 2020 07:39:10 +0000

I used to think that making a podcast takes a lot of time, money and some unknown "x" but I was wrong on all three.

This community has been really good to me and I know that there are some people here who seek to express themselves not only through code but other media. Most people speaking about making podcasts are already way into things and thus take their advice seriously. I don't claim that I found the perfect setup but I can assure you that the one I am presenting here works.

I have purposely listed the categories as well as all items within in their order of importance.

Finding a topic

First things first: You should only speak about a topic that you are interested in. In my case, that was automation. It is not the thing that keeps me up at night but I am genuinely interested in the topic and I could picture myself having a conversation with more than 10 people about the subject without getting bored. After all, you won't be making money for a long time anyway so you might as well enjoy the ride.
When it comes to competition, I would not worry too much about it. My field happens to be a niche that not many people care to make a podcast about but that also means that demand – well... matches that. At least temporarily. But even if you are in a crowded place, don't let that discourage you. Your (yes, your!) personal spin will attract those people who are thrown off by the others or are simply not aware of it. To keep me sane, I wrote these exact lines on the top of my notebook:

Feel pressured by the competition? Then ask yourself this: How many new fitness and lifestyle podcasts are being successfully launched each day?

So there's that.

Getting guests

If you're like me, that's the part that is probably most scary to you. But since you are reading this, you already have what is needed in order to find people: The Internet. I had some backfill friends and former colleagues but I knew that this was not going to make the cut in the long-run. So I reached out to people (e.g. here and here) and guess what: This is how I found two wonderful guests already and I know that more will come as we speak!
Another thing that was surprisingly successful was this: email about 10 people at a time. I have a few episodes with people now but once that pipeline dries out, I will definitely do it again. Bear in mind that those emails can't be templated – nor do they have to be – as people will find out about that immediately.
Bear in mind that people are generally open when asked if they want to join a podcast as long as you are not trying to get Kanye West on your microphone.

Software

Total: $30/month + $100 one-off

Here is all you need in order to get started:

Website & Podcast hosting: Transistor.FM charges $19 per month but offers you the whole package from podcast distribution to all possible channels, a bunch of automation and a first website¹ to get out there. An alternative would be Simplecast but I thought the other pricing mechanism was nicer.
Recording: Use a free tool! All it needs to do is record your audio, so Garage Band or Audacity will do just fine.
Interviewing guests: Zencastr does exactly what you want it to do – record your guest in a reasonable quality. Don't worry about getting a second microphone or handheld recorder – unless you are remote-recording bird noises, you won't need it for a long time.
Editing: Descript ($10/month) Their software automatically transcribes your recordings and you can edit audio (and video) by just moving around text – it does not get more simple than that. You can also go the traditional route with a tool like Garage Band or Pro Tools (or really any kind of software) but in most cases, Descript will be a 20x improvement.
Email automation: Mailchimp directly integrates with Transistor FM and you generally can't go wrong with it
Music (optional, $15): You can get a decent jingle from Audiojungle if you search for Podcast or Logo. But there are successful podcasts which don't have one so don't worry about it. And of course, you can make your own but again, consider time/value.
Domain (optional)
Notes: It doesn't really matter which one you choose as long as you keep all your notes in one place and accessible all the time. I use Notion but I could have used OneNote or even more obscure services, too.

Hardware

Total: $150

Laptop/PC (I assume you already have that)
Microphone (optional, $80-120): I use the Samson Q2U and it records all my uhms and aahs perfectly! But since you won't believe me on this subject anyway, check out this article.
Pop filter (optional but worth it, $10)
Quiet room

A word of caution

Just because you can, it doesn't mean that you should. But if you are inclined to do it and were feared that you couldn't do it: Do it. Things will fall into place once you get started. You can, of course, divert from everything that I have said in here but if you just want a working setup, feel free to copy & paste.

Don't procrastinate

Hours quickly turn into days when it comes to researching the "best and cheapest". Bear in mind that your first episodes will sound like crap either way and that this is rarely because you are not sitting in a Bugatti on a deserted island with a Telefunken U47 in your hand. It is because you are nervous and because you don't know the right questions to ask and because you don't know what you don't know.

I already have a list of things that I eventually would like to have but the things that matter most at this point are the following:

Find guests
Have an interesting conversation or solo episode
Edit one episode in less than 5 hours and
Get it out there

Being this harsh is not to disrespect you or my audience, quite the opposite: The first people who are jumping on your show are forgiving when it comes to new adventures, what matters to them is that you succeed. They don't just follow the herd but they are genuinely interested in (1) that topic or (2) you as a person and the best thing you can do is put yourself out there with what you have. And while you are at it, your wishlist will automatically increase but with every episode, you will know better what to look for.

Have fun!

In case you are a proud web developer during the day, don't fall for the trap of building a website for starters. Unless you are making a podcast on design but then audio doesn't really cut it. A podcast is meant for the ear and all you need to worry about in the beginning is the content itself. Everything else is procrastination at its finest. ↩

React dev urgently needed for Corona volunteer matching platform

Arne — Wed, 18 Mar 2020 20:49:28 +0000

UPDATE: We are not rebuilding Facebook and there is only so much dev work to be done. We have received over 30 applications, way more than we ever thought we could get and we will choose from that list. We are grateful and humbled by all the offers we have received from you. Thank you!

What's the deal?

We have been working on helping-hands.io for the past days and we have just launched the first version in Germany a few minutes ago. Our plan is to quickly expand internationally because of network effects, starting with an English version of the app this week still and then go into Italian, Spanish and other languages as we get translators in.

What do we need?

We are looking for a React developer. The basic features are already covered but as you flip through the screens, you probably already have some ideas going through your head – picture those ideas as features of the version that you help create!

We have received a first donation which goes straight into ads, because precise reach of people is everything. Therefore we can't pay you a salary. But:

What's in it for you?

You do the right thing. We all do this next to our full-time jobs and we are just trying to make it work.
You can add it to your portfolio. The project has already attracted interest from the media and we expect more as we grow – and grow we will: Other sites in Germany went well beyond 10k signups within a matter of days already but they are unable to process that volume (let alone go international) because they are essentially entries in Google sheets which need to be manually matched.
You don't have to commit long-term. A few days will already make a big difference.
The full startup experience: Slack, Trello, launch on ProductHunt this week, time pressure, fast growth. All of us are experienced with these things and we take this very seriously.
You can work from home. Obviously...

How to connect

If you want to join, write me here, via Twitter, LinkedIn or fill this form. But don't leave us hanging for too long – we are in a special situation that requires special people. And there are people who are depending on help from others who can't get it – right in this moment!

Thank you to Ben and the DEV team for boosting this post. We highly appreciate it and all the work you are continuously putting into this platform!

Becoming a full stack developer - Part 3: Closure & a new beginning

Arne — Mon, 10 Feb 2020 11:08:29 +0000

Life sometimes takes unexpected turns

Few months ago, I made a decision to set myself up for a different future. What happened immediately afterwards you can read if you’re interested in details. To cut a long story short, I was hoping to join a company around June this year. Well, Christmas came early in 2020!

What has happened? A timeline

Early November
Decided to end my corporate career and double down on software. Buckle up and do a Fullstack Nanodegree on Udacity and join a startup afterwards.
Late November
After my first DEV post had like 100 views, this one unexpectedly took off. One of colabel’s founders sent me a message showing a traffic spike on their website, originating from DEV. Got invited to their Slack, a bunch of tools and to their Github to have a first look around.
In all fairness I should mention that we were not strangers to each other. We met while still in university and I had been watching their progress for some time already. So there was a certain level of mutual trust already which definitely helped. However, I had not considered it a viable option and we never had “the talk”.
Mid December
First serious meeting with colabel. Realized that there were a few things where I could really help them out. Not on the tech side though.
Late December
Hackathon with @thilohuellmann surrounded by the worst Christmas holidays I’ve had in a long time. Was not mentally present, felt really bad for my wonderful girlfriend and family.
Early January
Second serious meeting. Put together a really solid strategy for 2020 with one of the founders. Not that they didn’t have an idea but it had to be formulated as clear goals and in writing. Sealed the deal afterwards.
Yes. That's where we agreed that I would be joining colabel. In case you have read my previous articles, that was part of the original plan, just a lot later down the road. So
Mid January
Read a bunch. Started to understand how SaaS works (excellent introduction, despite the focus on growth topics: The big book of SaaS, recommended to me by @reichhardtalex 🙏
Late January
Understood the actual magnitude of the product. Brought my affairs in order with my current employer. Developed go-to-market strategy based on the new(ly understood) product vision. Listened to tons of Techno in between all these insane conversations – hell yeah!

... but wait, what about the plan?

This is indeed a major deviation from my previously outlined plan: I have been hired primarily for business-related projects and this will likely consume the majority of my available time.

Having said that, I’ve spent a great part of the last four weeks in Webflow, making a bigger contribution software-related than in the last 6 months combined. And there’s more to come as we will tackle those topics that are most pressing on our plates. If this requires me to undust PyCharm: Humans of Stackoverflow, I am hunting you down!

Besides that, I really like the company (people-wise) and I strongly believe in the product's potential. Throughout the whole decision process, I have been repeating a quote from Sheryl Sandberg like a mantra once wrote “If you're offered a seat on a rocket ship, don't ask what seat! Just get on.” And as it turns out, I couldn’t be any happier at this point and that’s what it’s all about. No BS or fake assignments that reward me with another badge, just pure flow.

Why am I writing about this?

In all honesty, I was and still am so overwhelmed by all the positive and constructive feedback I have received on this platform. And since I’m a man who needs closure, I feel like I owe a few people a cohesive story that I have initiated a few months back.

Besides all the support I have received, there was a surprisingly large number of people who seemed to be in a similar spot as I was at the time I wrote a piece: Learning something new but not being into the task. I am in no position to judge, all I want to say is this: Listen to that inner voice. Is this resistance just a normal form of procrastination when building something remarkable or would you be better of doing something (slightly) different?

I noticed that the strongest when I worked on the Nanodegree. It’s still the thing that annoys me the most, in two ways. One, I really wanted to get through it because I had made the decision. Two, I despised it because I didn’t see the point in doing these exact projects from which I would not gain any substantial value. When I do something I want it to deliver value for someone. That’s where a large part of my motivation comes from.

That being said, I know that the program will do lots of good for many people and had that opportunity not come along, I would have still learned a lot of new stuff. But having worked on this one project - colabel - for a few weeks now, it has become ever so clearer how important it is to work on something that you deeply care about. WHATEVER ON EARTH THAT IS!

Apart from the task at hand, here is a bit more food for thought: Throughout this whole process I’ve learned for myself that it matters who you work with. I too had heard it a thousand times on the same podcasts you’re listening to and read it in Paul Graham's essays. So I knew what’s right, I just didn’t act in that way for too long. This is not to take away anything from my remarkable colleagues turned friends that I’ve made over the past years. But I’m simply observing what a difference it makes when you are shooting for the exact same goal with a bunch of like-minded people in a similar life situation.

What we are working on

To get that out of the way: DEV is not the place we want to go fishing for customers. So turn off your anti-spam-filter for a moment if you like. But since at least some of you were interested in the company, I guess it makes sense to speak a little bit about the present and future. Besides, it will simply take us some time until we get it all nice and clean in conversion-optimized marketing lingo on our website. So here is a first take:

We are building an end-to-end automation platform that essentially allows users to build complete processes inside of the platform, one neural network at a time and with business rules in between. This will allow users to "build one customized image classifier" to "chain seven neural networks with business logic in between" – all on one platform.

In our mind, this will greatly commoditize the technology underneath – and that's a good thing: We believe that non-technical people should to be able to realize their own ideas, even if they require the involvement of deep learning. Unless this happens, a large amount of smaller companies and departments will be left behind because hiring a deep learning engineer is something most companies will simply never be able to afford.

Sounds crazy? Well, we are not the first to come up with an idea in that space but the the race for real nocode / self-service automation hasn’t been decided yet. So it’s still a good idea to pull out of the pits. Two things get my hopes up: First, we have much of the really complicated stuff already out of the way – high performance models, super flexible data pipelines, about every cloud integration one can think of... Stitching all this together will be a hell of an exercise. BUT: Second, money is not an issue at this point – that gives us plenty of time to do what we want to do. The only thing we need right now is one more really good backend developer and if you consider yourself as one, let's talk. Python is the spoken language.

Resources

Almost entirely unrelated but I have been reading way more than average over the past 12 weeks and a few pieces really stood out.

Steven Pressfield: The war of art. If you are a creator, procrastination is probably a known topic for you. This book has become my definite go-to resource for dealing with that topic.
Jason Fried, David Heinemeier-Hansson: Rework. Albeit alreadya decade old, this book is as current as on the day it got released. I read it prior to joining colabel and was glad to find many principles already being applied. Especially for those coming from more traditional work settings who are trying to break into technology, this is a good starting point.
Ryan Singer: Shape up. Same Basecamp squad, different topic: This book is a great all-in-one tool for product development. Very execution-minded, no-BS approach to getting stuff out of the door. Refreshingly different in some areas.

Becoming a full stack developer - Part 2: Plan revisited

Arne — Sun, 22 Dec 2019 21:36:43 +0000

One big obstacle I often create for myself is not to get back to plans once they are made. I often get bored when I see something mundane for the second time. But it is also a creative way of saying "I don't follow through on all my commitments", which is true in many cases and that's dangerous. One of my resolutions for 2020 is to be more deliberate in what I am doing or not doing. Why not start before the year ends?

In my first article of this series, I laid out a few actions for myself. When I revisited them, I immediately realized a few things: (1) too many topics at once = lack of focus, (2) I have not been following through with all (which is partly a consequence of #1) and (3) some of the actions are quite fuzzy. Normally I would attribute #3 to getting my procrastination in place, except here I believe it is simply a case of excitement chaos - which is a good thing!

Let's look at how I have been doing and revise where needed.

Full stack web development

The WHAT

Databases

Building APIs

Docker & Kubernetes

Deployment

Make it look ok with React & Material

The one thing that sticks out is the last line: I know how it got there (hey there, herd behavior!) and learning these may be essential for certain jobs but at this point in my journey it is just giving me bad sleep. I view it as rather optional at this point and it is simply not a priority of mine. So long, React and Material! I'll stick with Bulma and plain JavaScript for a little longer.

Apart from that, the above is essentially the curriculum of my Nanodegree and the very foundation of where I want to go. I will share my gains and pains on the ND in a separate post but overall it is the right direction for me. What I will add is that I want to be finished by February 23. This is a tight timeline but mostly boils down to prioritization. And I do want to pay for the fourth month, so there's money in the game, too.

The HOW

Udacity Nanodegree

Own projects, such as my website

Free Code Camp

The ND is well-defined, not much to say about that. The rest was very fuzzy and I still have not made up my mind about what to do with my website. It is actually based on Django and not Flask and I currently do not feel inspired to put something meaningful onto it. What I've been wanting to do is to add Google Analytics, but again, this is optional and falls off table for the sake of staying lean.

Free Code Camp was meant to get my JavaScript game going. The term "basic knowledge" is a stretch by all means and I have been actively avoiding it for whatever reason (verdict: curly braces are annoying on a German keyboard). However, I am aware of the importance and I see substantial benefits for myself to get up to speed so I have decided to complete three lessons on Free Code Camp each day.

How I have been doing

'tis the time of reflection and the past weeks have been mixed in terms of progress. I have greatly underestimated the rigor of the Nanodegree and under my work circumstances, my focus has been simply too weak. However, I will not dwell on these because I do know that they were just part of it - the other half is mine. To be more concrete: I am about to finish the first section of the ND and I am just a bit behind schedule.

Plan going forward

My first two weeks had been great in terms of focus and progress and I want to get back to that state over Christmas break. Since the first section is comparably long (and not very exciting - databases!), I believe it is more an issue of planning than a real problem. The fact that I have dropped the JS habit after a few days is much more sad but I will simply need to pick it back up!

Machine learning

The WHAT

Bleeding edge of research (computer vision and NLP)

Keras & Tensorflow

Cloud deployment

Although the what is relatively loosely defined, I have a good understanding of what I mean with each. The only one that does not seem to fit in that space is Cloud deployment and, although it is important, undivided attention is more important.

Tensorflow is another case of important but not right now. While it is the foundation for Keras, one can go a long way with the latter before going one layer deeper. I like comparing the two to Python and C: You can spend all your life working with Python and get things done without ever having to worry about how it is implemented. This comparison is not perfect but it should prove my point...

The HOW

Unpaid internship at colabel

Read 1 research paper per day

Kaggle

... and the beauty is that these days I don't get to write a lot of machine learning code anyway! Kaggle is fun but when you can only sit down for 20 minutes you should not expect magic to happen. All that is ok: I already understand a good amount - definitely more than about web development - and the kicker comes naturally through working on a real problem or competition, which I currently don't have time for.

Regarding papers, I have read about 12 out of about 20 planned. Given my work schedule over the past weeks I am still happy with it even though I missed the ambitious target.

With regards to the internship, there is something cooking at the moment and I will share something on this early January - stay tuned! 😃

Plan going forward

Coming to terms with machine learning, and particularly deep learning, is a tough nut for me; I am realizing that almost every time I touch any of the two. Compared to web development, math actually plays a role and concepts can become quite abstract. Adding fuel to the fire, my objective was to understand "bleeding edge of research", which simply means that I need to deal with the brightest minds at Facebook, Google and the like. And I admit that these folks have done their homework.

On the paper part, I will keep pursuing my original plan. I can tell that reading a paper is much less of a strain for me today than it used to six weeks ago and I expect knowledge to compound every time. One thing I want to experiment with is to alternate reading papers and reading code. Going through good code actually has leverage effects on other areas (software engineering) and in most cases it is much closer to reality than a paper alone.

Regarding Keras, I am not sure if it makes sense to add it while I am working on the Nanodegree. Probably not. For fun yes, but those moments are rare anyway.

There are two ways how I can get things going, Pomodoro and locking myself out of society: Pomodoro is a popular technique for time management and also a regular in articles dealing with procrastination. I find it useful for both, and it is also a way of preventing my brain from boiling: I have no issue with reading a scientific paper for 45 to 60 minutes straight. However, mental strain over a long period of time comes at the cost of longer recovery time - time that usually must be spent mindlessly in my case. Pomodoro works for me, but only if I drop technology every 20-25 minutes for a moment.

Locking myself out of society works exceptionally well on trains and planes, where the internet connection is bad or nonexistent. I usually pick one thing that I want to get done on the trip and find it relatively easy to focus for several hours. For some strange reason, it does not work in buildings yet... 🤔

Conclusion

As you might have noticed, I only de-committed and there are reasons behind that: It is easy to just add more to a list, anyone can do that. Many people do it on your behalf, too, whether it is implicit or by telling you so. And because we are trained to obey authorities when it comes to learning, backing off is often mistaken for failure. Focusing on what matters is a skill that needs to be learned.

Everything that I have taken off the list are relevant skills, relevant for some people. But that does not mean that I (or you) have to prioritize them as well. It may be that this locks me out of my first discussions with prospect employers. But I rather choose to do that than get lost in what could be learned. That space is endless.

Bonus: Social Media

In the past, I used to get distracted a lot by irrelevant content on Social Media. In particular Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube were high up on my agenda. No need to explain what the problem is, and I somehow managed to cut most of these platforms for good and use them in a deliberate manner.

Knowing the addictiveness of these platforms, I stayed away from Twitter. During my only test in 2018 (?) excitement did not carry over, whereupon I mentally parked it as "the fast lane to Trump's brain for journalists".

It was not until a few weeks ago when I logged back into my dusted account and accidentally discovered the search function. As it turns out, computer people seem to be discussing interesting things online, with the whole world¹ watching!

In case you are not using Twitter yet, I highly recommend you have a look. I guarantee that there are some folks who are regularly posting content that exactly falls into your favorite space.

This article is part of a series. Here is the first one.

Well, part of it ↩

Becoming a full stack developer - Part 1: Fear

Arne — Tue, 10 Dec 2019 20:09:23 +0000

This is the second part of my journey. The start is outlined here. I need to figure out how to make these markdown tables...

"I don't have the programming skills. That lack will leave me end up on the streets, my family and friends abandoning me and being tossed out of society and ultimately I will be alone and nobody cares. And the worst part: Everyone will know and laugh at me!" Sounds familiar? Let's grab the bull by its horns then!

Wanting vs. deciding

There is a difference between wanting and deciding. Wanting goes a long way and is full of bliss. Wanting gets triggered through a tiny sensory input, happens in the undefined future, boasts with beauty and fame, and requires little to no thinking, let alone action. To be very clear: There is nothing bad about wanting. But unless you are betting on luck, you have to go one step further.

Decisions are a different animal and can get really dirty: They require you to sit down, make a plan and, probably worst of all, do what needs to be done. Whether that is learning a new skill or making sure that other people are doing what they are paid for, most likely you need to do something yourself.

Resistance

For a long time, I treated programming as a hobby that should eventually allow me to have a meaningful conversation with professional software developers. It did not take long for me to realize that I actually enjoyed many aspects around coding: The growth mindset, the idea of building something useful and thereby making lives easier, accelerated learning due to compounding effects and changing my IDE's font to Source Code Pro (mostly because it has "Pro" in it). Moreover, the Internet claimed that it was possible to become a good developer even if I had not done the "computer child prodigy" curriculum.

And yet, something was holding me back. In fact, I was thinking and reading about building valuable software much more than building it. In other words, I was still in dream land and not ready to make the leap. It took me more than two years in order to get from initial itch to my previous post and taking the corresponding action. This may seem short for some but on my own timescale it felt like an eternity.

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My first draft of this was elaborate on the details but I believe that each of us has plenty of own fears to choose from. If I were to sum up mine, most of them were and some still are related to me questioning my own capabilities, economics/opportunity cost and whether I would find purpose in doing that for at least a few years with joy.

Make a decision

At some point I realized that none of these questions could be answered by anything other than me setting new goals and walking towards it. My previous one had already dust on it and read something like "learn machine learning". Not very precise but I felt that I could tick that box.

Throughout a period of about a week I sat down a few times and defined my goals, how I would get there and how I would deal with obstacles. It was a hard exercise because I had to get real with myself and strip off many things that I would like to know, like a fancy front end framework or every single machine learning library. Besides, it would mean that I would have to scrap some of my explicit and implicit objectives and also explain my new path to friends and family.

While doing that, I realized that I would have to become a different person. Not in the sense of acting like someone else but as a different version of myself. The type of person that has certain habits that I do not have (yet). My management path has gifted me with a few valuable skills but clearly the binge-learning mindset was no longer useful.

You can't hit a target that you cannot see

Only afterwards I realized how much of a boost the decision had given me. Most people avoid being too concrete, and so do I. Possibly, that is carried over from manager-me but I believe that its roots go way deeper. Not committing to it leaves lots of wiggle room to remain comfortable in, at least for a brief moment. But the world around us keeps spinning and slowly but surely life is passing by, led by those who are taking ownership in and responsibility for their own destinies. And I wanted to be one of them.

Have I become immune to fear? No. The best metaphor that I have is this: it haunts me like a vinyl with dust on it where the needle keeps falling back into the same lane over and over again. I used to think that this revolving fear puts me at a disadvantage as it prevents me from mindlessly prosecuting new ideas that would indeed cause harm to me in one way or another. But there is hope that its purpose is a different one: Keep me at the pace that is right for me. What matters more than defeating fear is to understand where the feeling is coming from and then learn and plan how to deal with it.

It is up to you!

I started writing this piece because I believe that many people are held back by their fears, no matter what the actual subject is. Having said that, do not take this as a blueprint, sit down and make up your own mind! The pains that I am describing are subjective and could only be cured in the context that is unique to me. I encourage you to allow yourself the luxury of writing down your aspirations, maybe even publicly as I did. Maybe some people will think you are silly, but do they really matter that much to you?

Note: There are wonderful books about the topic of building habits (I really liked Atomic Habits and 4DX), so I did not go at distance on this again. If you are one stage earlier and struggling to get started, another book I can recommend is The war of Art by Steven Pressfield.

Bonus 1: My current top fears
Descending order from very frightening to frightening

Fear of unknown fears
I am not smart/fast enough
At some point I will not grasp something (recursion is a promising candidate)
I will not be as happy as I am now
I will get rejected
I won't be able to make (enough) money with it
Other people have been doing this from the age of 12
My solutions will be inferior to others

Yep, that sums it up nicely. And they all seem kind of funny as I am writing them down here and I have strong concepts against each of them now that I have set sails. But regardless, these are the evil ones that kept me from doing so much sooner. What are yours?

Bonus 2: Questions
This did not really fit into the rest but when I re-read my final draft I felt like I was compressing two years into a few paragraphs, which is not fair. In addition to the books I have mentioned, there were a few questions that I found very useful while battling the fears I described above.

Reading

Are you reading?
What literature are you reading?
How are you selecting the books you end up reading? Do you find them or do they find you?
Which issue would you rather not discuss with a friend, colleague or family member?

People you surround yourself with

Who among your friends/colleagues/family members is the best at x?
Have you ever asked that person about x? What is holding you back?

The Internet

How are you using social media? How much do you consume vs. produce?
When was the last time you thanked someone for x where x could be a great open source framework, tutorial or tweet?
Which are the best content producers for your specific field? Have you subscribed to their newsletters?
Why are you reading this article right now?

Goals

What are the two or three most important goals in your life that you will not compromise on?
Can you measure or objectively evaluate your most important goals?
If you happen to be in a dark hole right now (we have all been there): What is a small step you can take in the next 10 minutes that takes you closer towards any of your goals?

Capabilities

Which non-genius programmer has not started at a young age and still built something cool?
Can you connect with that person?
Do you need to know how C and Assembly work? How much better is your life going to be if when you do?
What can you already build with the tech stack that you know today?

Becoming a full stack developer - Part 0: Decision, plan, routines

Arne — Mon, 25 Nov 2019 14:29:34 +0000

tl;dr

I want to get hired at colabel as a software developer within 6 months. This series is to document my progress over time, and if you want, feel free to follow along!

The decision

The plan has been made: I have decided to switch careers from being a manager at a global logistics company to becoming a full stack developer. I am making the attempt to get hired at colabel, founded by the two fellows @thilohuellmann and @gerokeil. These guys are fantastic and I just love the product they are building. They can afford to set a very high bar for new hires, meaning that not only do I need to buckle up but I will be working with really good software developers - if I can make it on the team.

The plan

What?

I want to become really good at web development with all bells and whistles and machine learning. Hence, there are a few things that I want to be comfortable with. Here is a not-yet-complete list:

Full stack (web) development

Databases
Building APIs
Docker & Kubernetes
Deployment
Make it look ok with React & Material

Machine learning

Bleeding edge of research (computer vision and NLP)
Keras & Tensorflow
Cloud deployment

How?

Full stack (web) development:

Udacity Nanodegree
Own projects, such as my website (please don't run any SQL injections yet 🤫)
Free Code Camp

Machine Learning:

Unpaid internship at colabel
Read 1 research paper per day
Kaggle

Also, since I have been sleeping under a rock for most of my life, I also want to become more active on selected social sites. Just recently I started using my dusty-since-creation Twitter account @_ajascha (the first two weeks have been surprisingly informative!) and I found this fabulous community here.

... and most importantly: routines! More to that in a future post, but it all comes down to (spoiler alert) Four disciplines of Execution.

When?

Planning is guessing but by the end of May, I want to be fully employed - that leaves me with 6 months and 5 days. That timeline is ambitious but with more time I would simply procrastinate more. When I read Austin Tackaberry's great article on "0 to job in 9 months", I thought that my plan must be doable. Plus, with fast-growing startups the opportunity window does not necessarily become bigger over time.

Disclaimer: I am not starting from zero

... but neither are you if you are already on DEV. I have a business degree and no formal technical education. My first Hello, world goes back about three years and I have been treating programming as a hobby for most of it. I am able to build websites with Django and Bulma (I love it!), deploy them and recently got into building (working) machine learning models. But to put things in perspective: Whenever I see HTML, CSS and JavaScript as a prerequisite for something, my mind takes a quick vacation. But that of course should change now in a hurry!

Why DEV?

I want to give back to the community of developers that has made all this possible. Not too long ago, I used to think of software development as an entirely frustrating experience for regular people like I am. But thanks to countless people who are devoting their time to build fabulous things, those days are over.

Perhaps Medium would have been the natural habitat for this. However, I think that such articles should be free to read. I used to be a fan of Medium but now I think they are exploiting their market dominance too much, hence the party venue has changed to DEV!

To finish things off, a note to self: Now get back out there and code!

The moment that changes everything

Arne — Mon, 18 Nov 2019 15:43:07 +0000

Some people claim that enlightenment is often accompanied by lively laughter. If this is true, this happened to me on November 14, 2019. On that day, I decided to make software development my primary occupation and thus say goodbye to my (management-heavy) corporate job. It happened right after I came across FastAPI, which to me felt like a 10x improvement compared to any other framework I had seen before in terms of simplicity and documentation.

If you are just starting out, everyone is facing the same issues as you at some point: Whether it is finding the perfect editor (don't worry, your strong opinion will develop naturally), different programming languages, people not having solved the exact problem on Stackoverflow (or worse: the solution still not working on yours), keyboard symbols that have no use in the real world, a crushing feeling of cognitive inferiority or just generally the terrifying lows and dizzying highs that you face when something magically works or doesn't.

But then there will be the day when it "clicks". That moment will be different for everyone. If you are like me, you are so full of joy that you break into tears while walking home – as a 2m tall/29y guy, strange looks from other people included. But yours can be very different and if it hasn't yet, don't force it – just keep on working on stuff you find interesting. It will!

One more remark on what triggered my strong reaction: What many people do not know at the beginning is the meaning of open source. You may have read about it here and there and are excited that somehow magically stuff on the internet is offered free of charge for no obvious reasons. There can be a business case for open source but some people simply build insanely good stuff for fun, pride or discontent with present-day solutions. The latter must have been the primary motivation for Sebastián Ramírez when he developed said API framework and gave it away for everyone to use.

When I first saw it, I had about 2 hours of Django Rest Framework (DRF, also open source!) under my belt. But to be transparent here: that was six weeks before and on the "to procrastinate on"-list ever since, all negative strings attached. By the time I found FastAPI, I knew just enough about DRF to understand how simple it would be to build the API I wanted in the first place. DRF is a great framework, no doubt. But it can still be scary for someone building his/her first API on a shaky Django foundation.

Back to the beginning: I am writing this to you if you are still hot and cold about software and scared of "saying yes" to it. If you do not understand something in this article, go back again to the third paragraph – I didn't understand some of it either for most of my life. But every time you make a small step forward, it will likely give you a rush of joy and I can assure you that at some point you will be able to walk where you want to. And that is a lot of fun!

Social media is not my strong suit but I am happy to help someone in a similar situation. So if you are still unsure, feel free to connect with me here or via Twitter: @_ajascha.