DEV Community: Ellie Huxtable

Don't forget the human

Ellie Huxtable — Mon, 27 Jul 2020 17:14:25 +0000

Computers are cold and heartless. They don't lie, and they don't care if you scream and swear at them. You can abuse them all day long, and they'll still efficiently flip bits and push pixels.

But... people aren't. Behind every piece of software, there's at least one human. Who has a heart, and who cares what you think. Who has hopes, and dreams, and fears. Who feels.

This is something I've been wanting to write in one form or another for quite a while now, and I've been rewriting this post for a little too long.

Sometimes it seems like we forget about the humans. Either we forget that there's a human behind the software we build, or we forget that we're shipping software for people.

It seems to me that more and more, especially recently, nobody can share their work or their ideas without someone stepping in and criticising their ideas. Maybe they could have written it in a language that's faster, uses less memory, something about bloat or native code. Maybe it doesn't have a feature that another project does, so why the hell should anyone use it?

I remember earlier in my career, every time I opened a PR, I'd have a small feeling of anxiety. Was it good enough? What if I'm bad at programming? Would people hate it? What if I'm wrong? Fear of failure is one of the biggest obstacles to success, and all too often it stops people from sharing or achieving what they could. The feeling of "this isn't good enough to share" goes along with that.

Even while writing this, I couldn't help but feel like it isn't quite perfect, isn't quite good enough to share. But that's the point of my blog; I want to make myself put things out there, even if they're not 100%.

We should feel like it's ok to share work that isn't finished, that doesn't use the fastest, cleanest, most optimal approach. If I've made something for fun and want to share it, why not? If it doesn't use the technology you prefer, and you haven't paid me to build it, why would you shit all over someone else's work?

Better yet. If you care that much, make your own. Instead of pulling down something of someone else's', build your own thing up.

To some degree I understand people not being satisfied with professional software, that they have paid for, and that doesn't meet their expectations. But if it's open source, free, and available for all? Why would you ever complain about that? If it's not for you, just... move on.

Friends of mine won't share their blog posts to HN, Reddit, etc, because they feel like their words aren't good enough. Or like people there are going to tear them apart. Or because they might have made a small mistake somewhere.

The main thing I can see fuelling so many arguments is an inherent need to be right. It's been written about so many times before, but for some reason people can't bear the idea that someone on the internet is wrong.

Except, when it comes to the preferences of which tools or technology someone wants to build something with, in their own time, can you really be wrong?

There's a stereotype held about people in tech, that we're all that super nerdy person who struggles socially, can't talk to people, and hide all day in the basement programming. And that somehow, this is excusable if you're really good at writing code. But is it? If you're writing code for people to use, and you're working on it with people, not having people skills isn't really an option. Much like technical skills, it isn't an innate quality - you can work on improving your people skills, much like you can your tech skills.

If you take anything at all from my post, hopefully it's this; if you really must say something, and you really feel like someone made the wrong choice, maybe think about your phrasing. Eg

Hey! Nice work. I was curious though, why'd you pick over ?

Ugh, this would be so much better if it just used . I hate the way modern tech is going

Let's make our industry a much more friendly and welcoming place 💖

How do you keep track of what you've learned?

Ellie Huxtable — Tue, 14 Apr 2020 17:11:51 +0000

I know that some people have a giant txt file, some have paper journals, some use note apps

But what about you? How do you keep track of new things you've learned? How has that helped you as an engineer?

I've started a personal wiki

Ellie Huxtable — Fri, 10 Apr 2020 13:45:29 +0000

You can find it here!

I have lots of projects, some are work, some are for fun, and in all of them I spend a lot of time learning new things

Frustratingly, I can't remember them all :(

I've read a lot about the value of keeping an engineering notebook/journal, and it's all something I agree with! I've attempted this in the past, but never really got anywhere with it.

I've tried keeping a notes.txt file, but eventually I find organisation becomes a bit of a hassle. Plus I like nice shiny things with emojis and images, my text editor isn't great for those ✨

I've tried paper notebooks - much as they appeal to me, I'm a disaster with them. I lose them, forget them, spend ages finding the perfect pen and paper combo, and then in the end I end up sad because my handwriting is comparable to the death spasms of a spider after falling in an inkwell.

I love looking at the fancy bullet journals some people have, but I have neither the neatness nor the patience to do something like that for myself. Plus I can hardly paste a code snippet onto paper

Really, I want 1) markdown and 2) a nice way of rendering my markdown

So, I've setup a little personal wiki! I'm keeping it separate from my blog because I'd rather have somewhere I feel ok to dump random shitty code snippets without caring too much. Maybe eventually things from there will make their way over here

It's running on my lab (something I'll explain another time), and is basically just a hugo static site. You can find the git repo here - https://github.com/elliebike/wiki

I'll see how it goes, because generally for writing I prefer to have a web UI that I can access from any device, really easily. But I suspect I'll mostly be wanting to write to this when I'm at a computer anyway. Plus, I've been playing with some mobile SSH clients that are... surprisingly nice 🤔

Let me know if you have any questions

My tools are going Rusty

Ellie Huxtable — Sun, 29 Mar 2020 01:07:31 +0000

Recently I've been taking a look at replacements for common command line tools (and coreutils) - ls, cat, find, grep, etc. I don't really have many issues with the older tools, but I like shiny things. Turns out, people have been rewriting a lot of them in Rust

lsd

lsd is a replacement for ls. It adds some nice colours and icons to your output, like:

exa

exa is also an ls replacement! It's fairly similar from what I can see, though it doesn't do the fancy font icons. However, it does display some info from Git, and has some other features. Both are worth looking at imo.

u/milliams and @hoop33 have pointed out that exa will do icons with the --icons flag!

bat

bat is like cat, but with colours, line numbers, and a few other things. It has syntax highlighting, shows git changes, and also automatically pages with less (which I love).

Sure, cat is intended to con*cat*enate files, but it's also really commonly used to just dump a file to your terminal. bat does that, and makes it pretty :D (it can concat too)

ripgrep

ripgrep is one of the first I installed! It searches code really, really nicely. .gitignore is followed by default, it recurses files and directories by default, and it's very fast. I think the output looks pretty nice too!

there was also only one todo

There are a few alternatives here, but this is the only one I've used

fd

fd is like find, but in my opinion more convenient. fd .py is fast to type, and fd is also very fast to run. By default .gitignore is followed – a trend I'm very much liking. Regex is supported, and the output has colour!

dust

dust is a tool I only found very recently, but it tries to make du nice. By default I don't find the output of du to be very helpful, and it's usually combined with at least -h, and maybe some sort as well.

dust will automatically sort, create graphs, and generally answer the "how the hell am I out of disk space already" question. For when the answer isn't docker images, anyway.

coreutils

Not something I'm using, but there's an attempt to rewrite all of coreutils in Rust going on over here. It's pretty cool and worth a look

That's pretty much it for now! If you have any other suggestions, feel free to contact me on Twitter, or via email

I built a new keyboard

Ellie Huxtable — Wed, 26 Feb 2020 21:35:56 +0000

Today the final components arrived for my keyboard build! I've been waiting on these for quite a long time, as some were custom made + all came from abroad. This isn't actually my first Planck build - the first was lost to a spilled energy drink.

If you're new to mechanical keyboards, a Planck is a "40%" keyboard. It is very small, with only 48 keys. The lack of keys is made up for by having extra layers! For example, the "q" key can function as a "q", a "Q", a "!" and a "1". That's shift+q, lower+q, and raise+q.

It was originally designed by Jack Humbert, and you can buy components from OLKB (many places stock components though). If the Planck is too small for you, there's a Preonic as well - it's a little larger. Other than the size, the other selling point is that all the keys are arranged in a grid. I guess this is either something you love, or something that you hate. I actually tried an ErgoDox for a while, but I think that the Ortholinear layout is something that I prefer.

It runs the QMK firmware, and is totally reflashable. So, if you want a different layout, or some other functionality that doesn't yet exist, it's easy. So long as you can write C, anyway

Some pictures here will be relevant to the writing, some will just be photos I like

The first thing I had arrive was the PCB. I ordered it from UK Keycaps, as it was in stock and had fast shipping!

After that was the case/box. That came from Datamancer, and is made of Walnut. I went for the taller case, as I like SA-profile keycaps. It took a little while to arrive, but I'm very very happy with the quality. The bottom and top are lined with magnets on the inner edges, so the lid "snaps" into place! It also dual functions as a wrist rest, thanks to some more magnets.

The case, closed. Note the magnets on the lower edge

Otherwise, I went for Halo True switches. This was a bit of a gamble, as I've never used Topre switches (supposedly similar) and I normally go for either MX Clears, Zealio, or something similar. I love them!

I was very tempted to order something nice and clicky, but seeing as I'm planning on carrying this board around with me (hence the size), I didn't think people in coffee shops would appreciate the clicky-clacky as much as I do.

The cool thing with the latest Planck PCB, is that the switches are hot swappable. Maybe sometime in the future I'll want to try something new, and that's totally doable and wouldn't even take very long.

I also needed a top plate. Originally I was going to order from OLKB, but there's a pretty large waiting list/delay over there. I was also considering getting one made from something other than steel.

I ended up ordering from Laserboost, and went for a shiny brass plate. I was pretty torn between brass and copper, but definitely don't regret my decision

Top plate, with switches in place

Finally... the keycaps! I've ordered from Pimp My Keyboardbefore and been very happy, so I thought I'd do so again. I ended up going for SA 1976, and I'm very happy with my choice. The keys feel solid, I like the colours, and I think it matches the walnut finish of the case pretty well too.

I actually use this on top of my laptop keyboard, with the internal keyboard disabled. That way I'm not tethered to a desk, but I still get a nice keyboard :D

If you have any questions for me, or just want to say hi, I'm @elliebike on Twitter! Otherwise, "ellie at "