DEV Community: poudyal_rabin

Improving LCP in webpage with this extension

poudyal_rabin — Sat, 02 Jul 2022 02:36:23 +0000

Debugging LCP in webpage is very difficult especially when you don't know what to optimise next. Total LCP time can be broken down into 4 different slots and measuring that will help to find the bottleneck.

I have recorded a video which will help to debug the LCP in your webpage with the chrome extension.

Ruby on Rails will be dead soon!

poudyal_rabin — Tue, 26 Oct 2021 14:22:41 +0000

Yes! I was also surprised and a little bit agitated when I saw similar headlines on tech blogs and magazines few years back. I thought maybe that's right, I don't see much people learning Ruby On Rails these days neither I see much job posts for Rails developer position. Maybe I should learn django? Or maybe I should learn nodejs(express)? If you are also on your early stage of career, these questions must be itching your bones too. And especially, if Rails is the first framework you are working on, you must have been dealing with few more issues too.

For example, people say that Ruby/Rails ecosystem is not really the future because it does not have Machine Learning Capabilities and it is too slow. Some also say that Rails is not that scalable giving the example of Twitter. I also think to some degree that they are right. But should you be worried about it and start learning something else?

Actually you don't need to. If you are learning Rails then you must have shaped your future into being a web developer. So why should you even worry about Machine Learning when you are learning web development? You are worrying then, you are on the wrong path. If you really want to learn both then you can still learn it side by side. What really works according to my experience is that, Rails has the convention over configuration ideology that gives you the bird's eye overview of overall web development ecosystem which you can transfer to any another framework of choice.

A lot of technologies evolve over time but Rails has been there for a while now as a mature framework which has answers to most of the problems faced by web developers. So if you are learning/coding on Rails, then you don't need to worry now. These technologies that have been around for more than decade will take time to die.

Don't forget to share your thoughts too.
Happy Coding!

Pivotal tracker - how i manage tickets from terminal

poudyal_rabin — Fri, 22 Oct 2021 01:56:55 +0000

Pivotal tracker is one of the task management platform for the teams. If you also use the same for managing your personal life or your team then you might have faced the hassle of going through the browser to manage your tickets. I also faced the same issue and created one command line app in python to fit my basic needs.

Here is how you can get started with it:

Let me know your thoughts on the comments below.
Happy Coding!! 🎉

Competitive programming - Should you be doing?

poudyal_rabin — Wed, 20 Oct 2021 08:29:01 +0000

Competitive programming is slowly getting popular to all the programmers around the globe. This type of programming is mostly targeted to practice for the programming contests but also popular among the people who are trying to get into a job market as well.
So if you are already working as a software engineer and you feel that your problem solving skills are not that great, it would be very beneficial for you to spend few hours everyday trying to solve the competitive programming problems. It not only improves your scores on the competitive programming platforms but also enhances your problem solving skills.

Codeforces is one of the popular competitive programming website where you can find the problem sets that are sorted by level of difficulties. You can first try to approach those and gradually move towards more complex problems.

More details are also shared in the video below using which you can make your first submission to codeforces. Good luck!

10 reasons why programmers suck at relationships

poudyal_rabin — Tue, 05 Oct 2021 01:38:30 +0000

This is not actually a happy post. This is a sad post ☹️ I regret you clicked on it. What made you click on this post?

Let me make a rough assumption. You are among those two people who landed on this post because:

😲 You don't want to get sucked at relationship in future,
😕 You already sucked multiple times & looking for some advise

Life is a complicated journey. Let me explain you in programmer's language why. Say you are a single person and you have 10 things going on in your life. Say out of those 5 of them are important things such as life, career, degree, relationships etc. To have a fulfilling life, you need to have all of them right. If you cannot perform good at one, you won't get much out of it. All of them does not need to be perfect, but at least they need to be having deep dependencies among themselves.

What I mean is that your career should not be dependent on the relationships you are having. This is because the above principle I talked before fails in that case because out of 10 things if 2 things are dependent and you made a mistake in one of those, both 2 things suck.

The problem starts when among those 10 things, the most crucial one - the relationship starts to suck 😥. The reason is that building a relationship requires time and energy. It takes a big investment to create a healthy relationship. When you are in a relationship, there are now not only 10 things in your life, it actually becomes 10(you) + 10(other person) = 20 things. For a good relationship most of them needs to be performing good from where the risk seem to be maximised ⚠️. Investing a good amount of time in relationships is good but it also comes with a cost because of the amount of resources invested.

Roughly, here are the 10 things I think it is hard for programmers to perform good on relationships:

⏰ Time management:
Especially when you are just starting out, learning programming takes so much time and energy besides your work schedule so at this stage, the relationship starts to suck.
😩 Struggling to find a boundary between coding and building relationships:
Even after few years of experience, it is still hard to manage time because if you are working on a startup, you need to wear many hats due to which it takes continuous amount of energy to research on new topics and implement them.
🤔 Realization that cultivating knowledge is better than investing in someone who might turn at any time:
Mostly, programmers realise this at the early stage of their career when the relationship already started sucking a little bit. That bitter experience teaches a lesson that investing in learning and growing yourself pays off better than worrying about other person.
👎 Degrading soft skills - you became more and more introvert and your circle shrinks continuously:
Programmers also suck because after few years of coding in small startup, they have a limited circle and due to some reasons they cannot also build the new relationships which means they are not much social. This in some degree impacts the interpersonal skill too.
😶 If your relationship is already going bad then programming can make add more more reason to worsen it:
Just like I previously mentioned, programming is not an easy task and requires avid enthusiasm and healthy mindset. Naturally, our brain can only perform well if we can keep it calm and relax.
🫂 Loyal partner:
If the partner is not loyal it even sucks more and you won't be able to focus on your programming career.
🌏 Long distance is even harder to make it work:
If the relationship is long distance, it is even harder to make it work because you don't know much what the other 10 things are going through and are beyond your access.
🧠 Programmers are logical:
Sometimes it happens that programmers are extremely logical about relationships. But sometimes you need to keep the logic aside and do what the situation demands. Failing to do that leads to an unhealthy relationship.
😣 Eyes stress:
Most programmers I personally know face this problem, due to long hours of programming, they get an eye stress and it is hard for them to keep looking on screen. So it is difficult to have a online conversation for them. They actually go to sleep rather than chatting with the partner which actually makes the other person think you don't care them.
❌ No outer world experience:
Generally due to work from home and programming job, most programmers are behind the four walls alone coding. Due to this they have very less experience with the outer world. In the healthy relationship, what happens is that we basically share about our day, we share about what we did all the day but for programmers, it is just saying "I did work all day!" and that's it!

I am sure not all of the readers of this post will agree on what I mentioned above and that's okay because everyone has a different experience and opinion based on what they went through. There are actually many ways to overcome the above issues too. The motivation behind writing this post is a little bit of experience of myself, little of observation, and more to write things coming straight from the heart.

One tech guy once said that life, career, relationships, health are like the glass balls but the career is a rubber ball. If the career falls, it can still bounce back and get the same momentum but other balls, if they break, can break you internally too 💔.

Of course, investing in right person is always the best thing you can do - give your 100%. But if it is not worth it try to stray away from it ✋.

Also let me know in the comments below about all the experiences you had and how you are managing this crucial dimension of life.

Recipe of healthy life for programmers

poudyal_rabin — Sun, 03 Oct 2021 01:06:05 +0000

Being healthy should be the first and foremost goal of any human being. As a programmer, it is even more crucial. Keep aside all of those tasks like building a hobby app, learning new technology, and all. If you are not healthy at all, nothing is going to matter. If you don't have time to invest in your health now, be prepared to waste a huge amount of time and money in the hospital in near future.

I am also still developing this habit of following a healthy lifestyle. After eating frequently in restaurants and processed foods, I feel like lot of money is being invested in making myself unhealthy. It is quite hard to cut yourself away from the processed foods but you can still try to minimize as much you can. Sometimes during hangouts or parties we consume some food that are really unhealthy for our body and brain. There are few solutions I generally recommend programmers or any professional who work from home to follow. Here are some of the tips I find are useful for me and hope it will be useful for someone else:

(30mins-1hr) long workout,
Try something like yoga,
Practice gratitude (for mental health),
Cut off negative people,
Work in chunks - 60mins followed by 10-15min break (but don't use social media on those breaks),
6 days healthy food,
Intermittent fasting,
Drink enough water,
Protective glasses for screen,
Some push ups after long time sitting in chair,
Some back exercises to prevent back pain,
To avoid burnout you can try something that is different from what you generally do for example learning music,
Try to cut off sugar if you can,
Avoid screen 1hr before going to bed,
No phone after waking up (you can use if after you are done working for sometime on the most important goal of your life)
Do something quick and easy in the morning to keep you motivated
Practice katas everyday. It can be programming kata, guitar kata or anything to be more dexterous.

There must be more than these that I would love you hear from you guys. Let me know what you do to keep yourself healthy and motivated. Thanks for reading this post.

How to have a meaningful weekend as a programmer?

poudyal_rabin — Sun, 11 Apr 2021 01:56:02 +0000

Human life is a precious incarnation. Being born has a probability of about one in 400 trillion. So trust me you are special and you should try to get the most out of your life. Living with the scarcity of sunlight, dry eyes, back pain, imposter syndrome, anxiety, and depression is not what you want as a side effect of being a programmer. I want to share some of my tips to have a beautiful weekend.

Most probably you are reading this post because you also want to make your weekends meaningful and memorable. Of course, having a meaningful and productive weekend is a subjective thing for different people of different age groups. For some, it might be getting a travel experience or reading a book or watching a movie or working on a side hustle, or just doing nothing. But for some, it might be having family time as well.

No matter in what stage of life you are now, you should try to have a wonderful weekend. Just like everything in life, it doesn't happen without taking any action. To take an action, you need to take a break for some time from your career and retrospect your life as a whole and brainstorm what you want out of your life.

The hack is to allocate one weekend for yourself. Think about what you want to do in your life. Think about if life is going in the direction you wanted or not. Think about what matters most to you at the current stage of your life. Is it a relationship? Is it traveling? Is it acquiring knowledge? Is it working on your hobby project? Is it cooking?

Once you have that idea in mind, the next step is to make an actionable plan that could be carried out in 1, 2, 3, and 5 days. Of course! They are Fibonacci numbers. I am picking those because they are also used for task estimations. After picking the task and weights, use google calendar or something similar to mark dates. Execute your weekends and leaves for those plans. And that's all.

So what is the advantage of doing this?

Since the weekends are short and come after a long tiring week, sometimes we don't have any energy left to plan our weekends. Another advantage is that if we plan ahead, it would be easier to make group plans.

Depending on the current situation of the pandemic in the place you are living, please follow the safety precautions too.

Here are a few things you can try if you have nothing to do this weekend:

0. Hold a yard sale
1. Host a movie marathon with some friends
2. Have a jam session with your friends
3. Learn to sew on a button
4. Learn Morse code
5. Learn how to whistle with your fingers
6. Learn about the Golden Ratio
7. Memorize a favorite quote or poem
8. Go to a concert with some friends
9. Go swimming with a friend
10. Make homemade ice cream
11. Take a class at your local community center that interests you
12. Learn about a distributed version control system such as Git
13. Fix something that's broken in your house
14. Go for a run
15. Learn how to french braid hair
16. Catch up with a friend over a lunch date
17. Learn calligraphy
18. Research a topic you're interested in
19. Give your pet ten minutes of focused attention
20. Rearrange and organize your room
21. Learn Javascript
22. Plan a vacation you've always wanted to take
23. Wash your car
24. Bake pastries for you and your neighbor
25. Go to a local thrift shop
26. Pick up litter around your favorite park
27. Write a poem
28. Look at your finances and find one way to save money
29. Start a daily journal
30. Clean out your garage
31. Learn to play a new instrument
32. Write a handwritten letter to somebody
33. Have a photo session with some friends
34. Play a game of Monopoly
35. Learn how to beatbox
36. Make a simple musical instrument
37. Learn Kotlin
38. Write a song
39. Teach your dog a new trick
40. Make tie dye shirts
41. Learn how to make an Alexa skill
42. Patronize a local independent restaurant
43. Do something you used to do as a kid
44. Learn woodworking
45. Learn how to use an Arduino
46. Cook something together with someone
47. Meditate for five minutes
48. Catch up on world news
49. Find a DIY to do
50. Organize your basement
51. Go to the gym
52. Go see a Broadway production
53. Start a garden
54. Create a cookbook with your favorite recipes
55. Create a compost pile
56. Go stargazing
57. Take a hike at a local park
58. Organize a bookshelf
59. Visit a nearby museum
60. Go on a long drive with no music
61. Think of a new business idea
62. Take a spontaneous road trip with some friends
63. Create a personal website
64. Make a budget
65. Pot some plants and put them around your house
66. Plant a tree
67. Play a volleyball match with some friends
68. Go to the library and find an interesting book
69. Clean out your refrigerator
70. Start a family tree
71. Solve a Rubik's cube
72. Study a foreign language
73. Watch a classic movie
74. Prepare a 72-hour kit
75. Make a bucket list
76. Learn the periodic table
77. Draft your living will
78. Volunteer at your local food pantry
79. Improve your touch typing

Let me know how you make your weekends meaningful. Have a wonderful weekend!! 🍻

How to avoid flow zone — a false sense of hyper-productivity

poudyal_rabin — Fri, 26 Mar 2021 13:48:28 +0000

Flow zone(aka Zone) is that state of mind in which a programmer is highly focused on solving a particular problem. His brain is fully concentrated on solving the problem and he is disconnected from the rest of the world. When he gets out of the zone, he gets the feeling of getting things done. He also gets an immense feeling of being hyper-productive and wants to get into the flow zone more often.

Being concentrated to solve a problem is the most important thing that programmers should do. But what is wrong with it? According to Uncle Bob, the flow zone is a trap. It is a trap that can diminish the big picture of the problem you are trying to solve. Let me make that simple for you.

Do you remember the last hobby project you started and you stopped working on it after a few days, weeks, or months? Your hobby project was a cool idea to build a trading website but you spent hours choosing a good font for your website instead of writing an algorithm. You checked one font, the recommendation system suggested similar other, you kept on trying one and another. You entered the zone and got lost there. After an hour you realized no real work is done. Maybe at the end, you chose one descent font but the zone made you lost and you did not realize the actual problem you had to solve.

Another example of getting into the zone is that. You were asked to write a module of software and in the middle, you did not know how to handle one strange exception. You started surfing the internet and did not find anything, you started checking Github issues and didn’t find anything there either. You decided to create a new issue asking for help. You already entered into the zone and you didn’t even realize. You did not ask yourself if handling that exception was important for your use case.

Does that mean getting into the zone is no good at all? In fact, it depends, sometimes if you are in the zone for short period it can be good but for long period it is bad. It might give you a sense of being more productive but in most cases, the code written when you are in the zone will be needed to be re-evaluated and refactored later.

So how can we avoid the zone? To avoid it you must know you are in it. After reading this article, it will be easier for you to know you are getting into the flow zone. Try to avoid it after that.

You can read some tweets or surf Reddit or check my articles in dev.to once you start feeling you are getting into the zone. You can also try pair programming which does not let you enter the flow zone since two people communicating cannot get into the flow zone at the same time.

Let me know what you think about the flow zone.
The idea and reference of the above content are taken from Uncle Bob’s Clean Coder book.

Should I listen to music while coding?

poudyal_rabin — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 14:08:20 +0000

When I was a teenager, I used to be a die-heart fan of 80's rock and roll music. I had maintained a handwritten lyrics book of all popular rock songs back then. From AC/DC to Eagles, Bon Jovie to Led Zeppelin, and Metallica to Guns N Roses, I used to have my phone loaded with hundreds of rock ballads.

I was quite obsessed with rock and roll. It used to be a source of dopamine to me. I used to get motivated and energized by those songs.

Now the time has changed, there has been a shift of paradigm. But the love for music is still the same. Starting my day with a simple workout with beast mode workout music is my hack to keep myself motivated to do more exercise. Even during the day while programming, I mostly wear headphones to keep myself focused and to stay away from disturbances.

But a few months back I stumbled upon an article online explaining why listening to music while coding is not a great idea. The logic is that when you are coding you are using your energy on different things - staring at the screen, solving a problem, and listening to music. You are losing energy through the eyes, ears, and, brain. You cannot close your eyes and neither you can turn off your problem-solving background job. One thing you can do is stop listening to music.

I advise using noise-canceling headphones if you want to get rid of background noise. Avoiding music while coding will help you put more energy into solving a programming problem and will make you more productive. If you do not agree with me yet, think about why people meditate with their eyes closed? They save energy doing so; which helps them to use that energy in the brain.

Trying to solve every algorithmic problem in O(logn) is not only the trait of a good programmer, trying to optimize your everyday algorithm crucial too.

How to know when to quit as a programmer?

poudyal_rabin — Sun, 21 Mar 2021 04:05:19 +0000

Being a software engineer is a fortune in this digital age. Having an opportunity to work from the comfort of your home and getting a handsome paycheck is not only the upside. Solving the unsolved problems and giving exercise to your brain every day to stay relevant and up to date is like winning a thousand miles marathon.

Besides having all these benefits, sadly every software engineer needs to quit one day. Either the reason is personal or professional or emotional, choosing the right time to quit is actually an advantage to venture into the unventured part of life.

Just kidding... :D I am not talking about quitting the software engineering profession. I was talking about quitting to beat the imposter syndrome. Sometimes the problem just doesn't solve. You will feel like the end of the world and you can't see the road ahead. Quit that time. Quit for a day. Quit and go home, cook dinner, watch TV, relax and sleep. Let your subconscious crack the problem and hunt for solutions. The next morning wake up and take a shower.

Although this is not the direct solution to your problem, it works like magic for most people. Creativity and intelligence are fleeting states of mind. They are not there when you are tired, exhausted, and bored. If you try to solve the problem in that state, you will create a mess for yourself and your fellow programmers.

So quit. Quit every once in a while, quit when a problem doesn't solve. Quit intermittently, venture into something you never ventured before, and excel in your programming career.