DEV Community: miku86

Series about cryptos: Intro

miku86 — Wed, 10 Nov 2021 16:33:37 +0000

Hey folks,

I'm into learning a whole new topic in-depth: cryptocurrencies.

In public. #learninpublic

I like to learn, I like to explain.

It helps me to deepen my knowledge.

That's why I share this stuff with you.

So this will be the first post of a series.

Why?

In the last few months, a lot of my friends have been talking about crypto.

But when I ask them questions about it, because I want to learn from them, they literally know nothing, zero, niente about it.

Q: Oh cool, why did you buy this cryptocurrency?

A: A Youtuber talked about it.

Q: Which consensus mechanism does this cryptocurrency use?

A: Eehm, what is a "consensus mechanism"?

Q: What is your investment strategy (1, 2)?

A: I don't have one.

So most of the time I think they just want to ride the hype-train. Some uncle's step-daughter's friend become a millionaire, so maybe there is a lof of fear-of-missing-out involved.

"I have to work 9-5, and this non-intelligent guy made some 10.000 bucks, I don't want to miss this next opportunity!"

Don't get me wrong, this is a normal human emotion, so it is not bad. I just think making bad decisions based on this emotion is not so fruitful.

Actually, I think this is very dangerous. Because this nurtures a very dangerous habit: acting based on bad decision-making patterns.

And I think one of the worst decision-making patterns is: not knowing the fundamentals.

This is why I want to talk about the basics of cryptocurrencies - as a software developer.

Our objectives

Which problems do we want to solve with cryptocurrencies?
What is a ledger (e.g. a blockchain)?
Who decides what the state of the ledger is?
What is a wallet?
How does a transaction work?
What is a cryptocurrency?
How do I buy cryptocurrency?
...

One simple disclaimer : Always double-check your informations, also my posts - everything. If you don't understand it, read up about it, ask questions ("What does X mean?"), paraphrase in your own words ("So this means, that ...?"). Don't act like a fool, always understand the underlying fundamentals.

See you in the next post! :)

If you want to join forces, hit me up at: michael@miku86.com

Password manager housecleaning

miku86 — Mon, 08 Nov 2021 20:02:47 +0000

Last year, I migrated all my passwords from Firefox to KeePassXC to have my passwords just saved locally, not in the hands of a third party.

Yesterday, I had a look into the database - 115 entries.

So looking at this data, I saw a lot of unused stuff, e.g. Zoom, some email accounts, some old tools and so on.

So I decided to do some housecleaning by deleting some of these accounts.

Before deleting the account, I set the account email address to something like zoom-2021-04-06@mydomain.com to have an unique address for each account.

Why? Because I hope to see, which company sells/leaks my email and/or doesn't delete it at all. This company will go to my personal "black list" of not trustworthy companies.

Some companies are already very sneaky:

clicking on the deletion button doesn't work, even in different browsers
the captcha isn't solvable, even after trying it for 10 minutes (no joke!)
trying to nudge me with a blue, bold button to cancel the deletion and a just slightly-visible button to accept the deletion

Whatever, I managed to delete 13 accounts.

2021-04-07 | Facebook leak

miku86 — Thu, 08 Apr 2021 08:05:10 +0000

You probably already heard about it: 533M Facebook users' data leaked.

So the Wikipedia articles about Critism and Privacy concerns of Facebook are already very long. One new chapter added.

In May, WhatsApp will update their terms of service, so Facebook will get your WhatsApp data.

Data of a mass surveillance tool (WhatsApp) in the hands of a company (Facebook) that sells and loses your data.

I think it's time to make a decision.

I made my decision some days ago, but it was in the making for a long time:

2021-04-06 | Password manager housecleaning

miku86 — Wed, 07 Apr 2021 08:54:24 +0000

Sorry for the delay, I mostly forget to crosspost, you can find all diary entries on my blog.

Last year, I migrated all my passwords from Firefox to KeePassXC to have my passwords just saved locally, not in the hands of a third party.

Yesterday, I had a look into the database - 115 entries.

So looking at this data, I saw a lot of unused stuff, e.g. Zoom, some email accounts, some old tools and so on.

So I decided to do some housecleaning by deleting some of these accounts.

Before deleting the account, I set the account email address to something like zoom-2021-04-06@mydomain.com to have an unique address for each account.

Why? Because I hope to see, which company sells/leaks my email and/or doesn't delete it at all. This company will go to my personal "black list" of not trustworthy companies.

Some companies are already very sneaky:

clicking on the deletion button doesn't work, even in different browsers
the captcha isn't solvable, even after trying it for 10 minutes (no joke!)
trying to nudge me with a blue, bold button to cancel the deletion and a just slightly-visible button to accept the deletion

Whatever, I managed to delete 13 accounts.

2021-03-29 | My shortlist and riding my bike

miku86 — Tue, 30 Mar 2021 09:17:21 +0000

I have a list with short tasks I want to work / research on. From time to time I give myself some hours to do this stuff.

It's mostly simple stuff like "Have a look at website X" or "Do laundry".

So why do I have a list for this stuff? I mean most people probably don't have a list to remember doing laundry, but they do it anyway.

I do this to keep up my focus.

Sure, I would do it at some point, e.g. when I would feel like doing it. But this is also how binge-watching and social media madness creeps into life, "I currently feel like I should spend 4 hours on reddit to watch some funny memes.".

So I plan this shortlist stuff, I give it a dedicated place in my calendar.

I also do this with exercising. I have an appointment with myself each day at 3PM to ride my bike. Yes, sometimes I can't make it at 3 or I simply "forget" it, because I don't look into my calendar. But these days are rare. It's not about perfection, it's about the trend & creating a habit.

2021-03-25 | Being in public like a pro

miku86 — Sat, 27 Mar 2021 09:22:24 +0000

Yesterday I published my first daily post again.

This feels like a commitment to do this in public.
I've always kept up the habit of writing, but I didn't publish it.

Maybe some fear of being not interesting enough while people on Instagram or TikTok do all this fancy stuff. But this is probably not reality and I very rarely check these platforms.

To get news, I use Friendica, where I subscribe to accounts on YouTube, Twitter, RSS Feeds, Mastodon etc.

If I want to write on Twitter, I use Tweetdeck, so I never see trends or other outraging stuff. I try to use it like a professional.

How do you handle social media?

2021-03-24 | Daily diary again

miku86 — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 09:04:17 +0000

I will restart my daily diary again.

I think I answered some of my questions.

My mind is interesting. Biased all the way.

My diary is a way to look back and check reality.

Is this how it was back then? Are my memories exact?

Writing is some sort of meditation. While writing this post, I let my hands go and my thoughts flow. Some of the stuff feels "weird".

Like when I wake up at night and think about stuff that matters to me. When my conscious mind is not a filter to my inner me. These moments are rare.

Why do I even write this daily diary?

To get in touch with myself.

#100DaysOfHaskell: Start

miku86 — Tue, 16 Feb 2021 16:50:27 +0000

When you have a look at all my post, you can see that many of them are about JavaScript.

The more I've grown as an engineer/developer, the more I've moved away from caring too much about implementation details.

Tools like languages, frameworks and libraries come and go, but ideas, concepts and patterns stay way longer.

This is why I'm very open-minded towards learning new concepts.

Functional Programming is one of these concepts I find very interesting and intuitive.

Nowadays I'm more into mentoring, especially about ideas and concepts, so I don't program that much.

What do I do? So I already did a lot of functional programming in JavaScript and TypeScript, because this is what you use when you do a lot of React stuff, but I want to fully immerse into functional programming, not just when I need it.

This is why I decided to have a look at Haskell and I just started a #100DaysOfHaskell challenge. Because I want to see these new concepts in action, I try do some programming with Haskell every day.

You will see my progress from time to time on my blog and live on twitter.

Currently, my code is on repl.it until I'll find a better solution. If you know about a better solution (the code breaks when you hit the run button), let me know!

Send me a tweet or a message if you've got some ideas or questions!

How I learn

miku86 — Tue, 26 Jan 2021 12:05:24 +0000

One of the most popular questions I get as a mentor is "Why do you know so much stuff and how can you learn stuff so quickly?".

I also often see people who struggle with learning, e.g. on the FreeCodeCamp forum and on Twitter.

This is why I want to write down my thoughts and experiences about this topic. Especially because I think about this a lot lately and I want to practice what I preach.

First things first: This is a lot about self-awareness and trial & error. These are just my ideas. I invite you to show me yours.

Formats

Video

Everything seems to be video (courses) nowadays.

I also used to like video courses. I could do this while travelling by train, lying in bed etc.

But this is also the biggest problem. It's just consuming. I just consume information. Sometimes even if I'm distracted.

And that's the deceptive and very problematic issue with video for me. I do stuff, but it seems to be mostly useless. There is no active thinking involved. It's literally: watch, memorize (short term), vomit.

And afterwards there is some sense of accomplishment: I did do something. It feels great. Until I have to repeat the video, because I didn't understand that much.

That's why I've quit video (courses).

Text

Sometimes, I think I am the only person who reads hard paper books. So even if I just have the digital book, I print it.

Then I sit down at my desk and use pencil & paper.

Now here is the important part: I do not mark the text excessively. Why? Because I don't want to read, memorize, vomit.

I want to understand. That's why I read a paragraph, try to rephrase it and write it down. I also write down questions about the paragraph.

One of the biggest pros: I actively practice critical thinking. When I have problems to rephrase it, I probably didn't understand it. So this is a great feedback loop.

There is one additional big advantage: I can skim over the book to get a first overview of the content and read very selectively. No, I don't have to read the whole book. I can't bill by hours.

Getting in overview is only possible in video or audio if there are timestamps (most sources don't have them).

There is also the idea, that writing with pencil & paper uses the body memory.

Audio

Audio is somewhere in between for me. Probably because I know that it is pretty useless, because I mostly do this while doing other stuff. So there isn't this deceptive trap of thinking that I was so productive.

Sources

Blogs

It's simple: The hardest part for me is to find good quality. This is actually a lot of work.

Especially in tech, where the world is turning fast, search engines show a lot of old blog posts and articles. So this creates uncertainty and more work.

Questions to ask:

JavaScript post from 2016?
Is this still best practice?
Has something changed?
How can I find out?
Is the content even correct?

This leads to the next source.

The Creator

This is a big one and I think beginners do this far too rarely.

Let's say I want to understand React, what could probably be the most reliably and correct source? Yes, the creator of React - Facebook and their React Docs.

The creator of something is probably the most reliable source for the history of stuff. And if I know the history and why something was created, I can think more critically about it.

Neutral Source (Wikipedia, Stack Overflow etc.)

I go to Wikipedia when I'm really new to a topic. I skim over the page, especially the Table of Content to get a good grasp of what this is.

I try to connect it to my existing knowledge and guess how this could fit in.

But I'm always very critical, because some editors get paid, especially in the business world.

TL;DR

As you can see, for me it's a lot about probabilities. Are there awesome blog posts? Sure. Are there shitty docs? Yes!

Formats: I read text in the form of hard paper books. If there are no books, I at least print it, even some programming docs. I rarely use audio or video.

Sources: I first check the Wikipedia page to get an overview, then I hit the creator's page to understand the concepts and whys. If I have some questions, I search them on the Github Issues or Stack Overflow.

Interesting Questions

How do you approach your learning?
Do you even think about it?
What are your pros and cons?

When to write a blog post

miku86 — Mon, 25 Jan 2021 11:49:12 +0000

Swyx published an interesting post about his Three Strikes Rule.

I'm struggling with this a lot.

My flow of thoughts is mostly like this:

"Oh cool, I should write about this!"
"Hmm, it should meet my minimum requirements, e.g. backed by science."
"Grr, it's complex. I should do more research."
"Wow, this should become a whole series. Or a web page."
3 weeks later: "I had a lot of other stuff to do, maybe I should trash it."

So it boils down to high requirements, high complexity and procrastination.

Dr. Pychyl emphasizes the importance of concrete and tiny.

That's why I will change my approach and streamline it:

When I read something interesting or create a new idea, I will add it to my notes app (just in the title).
When I talk about it again (e.g. with a friend), I will add the details into the note of step 1.
When I talk about it the next time, I will add [Publish] in front of the note.

We will see how this goes!

2020-11-18 | Thoughts about Daily Diary

miku86 — Thu, 19 Nov 2020 08:41:33 +0000

This is meta.

On dev.to I have 12.700 followers. Since starting the daily diary, the number decreased.
Each post has some 30-50 visits.

Looking at this, I ask myself some questions:

Should I care?
Is the content "useful" or "useless"? Does it matter?
Do people care more about my old stuff, mostly tiny tutorials? Is this something I want to contribute to - "tutorial hell"?
Is the habit more valuable than the actual content?

A lot of questions.

To answer them, I need to get in contact with my core values. Why do I even write this daily diary?

2020-11-17 | Big Debugging Session, JS Workshop

miku86 — Wed, 18 Nov 2020 08:36:53 +0000

I worked for some solid 4hrs on the course platform. Most of the stuff was debugging, because literally everything crashed. The debugging tasks are getting easier, because I learn the tools and created some aliases, mostly for the long Docker commands.

In the evening I hosted a JavaScript workshop. Our app is evolving and the folks' skills are improving a lot.