DEV Community: Aleksandr Skobeltcyn

How to automate AI video creation

Aleksandr Skobeltcyn — Mon, 29 May 2023 12:32:02 +0000

Hello!
You’ve probably already seen a bunch of AI-generated images and videos. Have you ever wondered how they’re created? Today, I will share with you the entire process of how you can create a similar video using just two free programs and your laptop.

In this article, you will learn:

What the results look like
How to set up and run the programs
How to control the behavior of the AI
How Instagram users react to AI-generated content Let’s also conclude with a full video.

Results of Video Creation

We have two different results.

Option 1	Option 2

Option 1 involves feeding video frames to a stable diffusion with a static prompt, essentially acting as an advanced filter for the video.
Option 2 involves feeding the freshly generated AI image as input for a new one and modifying the prompt on the fly. As you can see, the AI can go quite wild, so the parameters should be carefully chosen.

Setup and run

Before we dive into settings and code, let’s look at what to install on our local machine. I use a Mac M1, but this should work for Windows as well.

Step 1. Install AUTOMATIC1111 software.

Follow the Readme instructions and then run it locally:

./webui.sh --share --skip-torch-cuda-test --no-half

Now you have your local version of the Mid journey. Play with the UI, and whenever you’re ready, continue with Step 2.

Step 2. Clone and run the custom script:
I built a simple NodeJS program (GitHub) that takes a video as input, along with parameters, and produces a sequence of frames modified with AI.

# get copy of a program
git clone https://github.com/skobak/video-to-ai
# open the folder
cd video-to-ai
# we need to have node >17
nvm install 17
nvm use 17
# install deps
npm i 
# run programm with default settings
node main.js

Now, you can enjoy the process of creating your first AI video with automation!

Settings and Configurations

As always, the result comes with experimentation. For Stable Diffusion, two main parameters significantly affect the results:

CFG Scale Affects how wild the AI will go with a prompt
Denoising strength Affects how far it will deviate from the original image

You can play with these results by providing flags: -c and -d.

#example
node main.js -c=14.4 -d=0.5

Let’s look at how these properties affect the end result:

Original	Slightly modified	Go wild

c=0,d=0	c=7.5,d=0.3	c=25.4,d=0.6

Feel free to play with script parameters:

-v <video path>
-p <prompt>
-i <prompt input file path> !NB, this flag will run Scenario 2
-f <number of frame>
-c <CFG Scale, creativity scale 1-30>
-d <Denoising strength, 0-1>
-s <seed>

Example:

# This command will create an AI version of each frame of video.mp4
node main.js -p="Make it look like a painting in modern style" -v='./video.mp4'-c=14.4 -d=0.5

Or, go to ChatGPT and use the following prompt:

Make a 25 prompts, one per line separated by comma in CSV format 
that will generate the different style of painting of a cat in different artistic styles

Copy the result into prompts.txt file in a root of script folder and then run:

node main.js -i="./prompts.txt" -v='./video.mp4' -c=14.4 -d=0.5

Here we go, enjoy the result!

Look for reaction in Instagram

What about the product side of our experiment? We’ve been developing our cat’s Instagram account and uploaded normal and AI-generated videos as reels to find out how they perform:

I haven’t found a direct correlation — simple reels can go viral without any AI. However, AI can serve as a useful tool in your toolbox.

Conclude/Full Video

Today, we acquired knowledge on automating AI video creation, identified the tools necessary for the process, and learned how to construct a custom script. My main insight is that in the present era, we can swiftly develop extraordinary tools by merging AI with automation and scripting.

Next time, we will test and refactor our code using Co-Pilot and Chat GPT. Our goal is to discover methods of making our solution not only easier to maintain, but also thoroughly tested.

I hope you found this intriguing. Please feel free to provide feedback! I aim to delve deeper into AI tools, both here and on my YouTube channel.

Don’t forget to subscribe and share!

🐯 Cat account
Source code
My youtube

Best,
Alex

Interactive guide of How not to screw up your New Year's Resolution 2022

Aleksandr Skobeltcyn — Tue, 21 Dec 2021 07:37:25 +0000

Hi Devs! I am a software engineer, and my job is to break down big things into small ones and then implement them. My annual experiment proved that this approach works for reaching goals too.

Below you will find an interactive article (If you want to interact with article, we need some JavaScript, which you can find here) that will help you:

To define your goals.
To answer a question: what exactly to do.
To start: A free tool on a platform of your choice.

Try to fill all checkboxes so you will have the best possible outcome.

1. Set realistic goals for 2022

First, we need to understand the difference between goals and fantasies. A goal can be broken down into a subset of things to do daily and has a deadline, a fantasy — can not.

Good example: Read 30 books in 2022 and become a bit more educated.

Why good: It’s feasible, it has an exact date to measure progress and it can be broken down in a daily action: 30 books ~ 30 * 300 pages / 365 = ~24 pages a day.

Bad example: Have villa in Italy

Why bad: is too broad and probably not realistic in one year. Try to start breaking it down: villa price: ~1M$ -> 15% initial payment -> 150k$ -> save 12k$ a month.

2. Start breaking down

The next step is to find out daily doable actions. Don’t worry, this is an iterative process when you go back and forth to find your unique way.

Good example: I will read a book before going to bed for 20 minutes, approximately 5 times a week. I will listen to audiobooks during my commute to the work

Bad example: I will read 10 books a day, without breaks because I have a motivational boost right now

3. Simplify things

Doing the same things every day might be challenging and sometimes boring. But we can trick ourselves by running daily tasks into habits.

In addition to good books, I found two good articles that can help you straight ahead:

Good example: What: Read/Listen book for 1 hour. How often:5 days a week. When: before going to bed. Reward: finish the book, brag about it in GoodReads.

Bad example: Read books as much as I can

Conclusion

I know that things might look hard to do, but remember that ‘habits’ work in your favor.

Just start a few simple habits and stick with them for at least 2 weeks.

🎁 In 2022 we will introduce a Pro plan with a bunch of cool things.

Consider saving this promo code: available here and share it with your friends to get a special offer in 2022.

I wish you that your dreams(goals) will come true!

If you have any questions you can always contact me via Instagram.

Best and Happy New Year!

Alex

Reality about APP development with Flutter. Part 2

Aleksandr Skobeltcyn — Fri, 27 Aug 2021 08:31:34 +0000

Hi, it is the second part of the story of App Development (Part 1 here).

Like always, let’s jump straight into it:

What we have for today:

Key learning about Flutter (Framework to build for IOS and Android) 👍
How to significantly speed up your App development (First look at ML assistance: Co-pilot from GitHub and Vim)🚀
My IOS experience as a developer🤦
Business: How to build a funnel and make money?💰
Why and how to collect data and avoid hefty fines from GDPR/HIPAA compliance 🔐

1. Key learning about Flutter

Flutter and one-code base are amazing. But why?

Dart language — Typed language like TypeScript. In my opinion, types bring much more value now, with good suggestions system in IDE and significantly reduce the number of errors.
Libraries — It has popularity ratings, quick access to GitHub issues, and usually good ReadMe. It simplifies the choice of using open source in your project.
Toolings — It feels like Chrome Dev Tools, which is super handy in case you need to optimize the performance (check the video below).
Documentation — apart from the documentation you can quickly jump to definition inside IDE and gets all you need from comments.
Hot Keys and Plugins for VS CODE —The endless tree of widgets might look weird at the first glance, but if you know the hotkey: ctrl+., you can quickly break down into smaller widgets and keep it clean. Same works for wrapping/deleting widgets.

I set the following workflow that you might find useful:

Developing and testing with Android, because building bundles are just faster. After work is done, I just run the build process on a MacBook on the same codebase.
Interesting fact: when you download App from the Play Store, it works much faster when in debug mode.
Be careful when adding a new dependency, even though Flutter is cross-platform, sometimes it requires an extra hack for certain platforms. Read careful library readme about each platform adoption.

2. How to significantly speed up your App development

As you might know, Microsoft has acquired Github, so they developed a crazy tool called: Co-Pilot.

The idea is super simple: Rather than copy solution from StackOverflow, you can integrate it in your IDE and get a suggestion on the fly.

At first, it looked weird, but after a while, you will start feeling real help.

Not by creating a whole function as it is usually seen in use cases, more like finish the line of code based on what you have in your codebase.

And Vim on the other side is helping me to jump around the code quickly.

So I would say it can boost your development by 20% and an additional 20% with the Co-Pilot plugin.

Sweet, absolutely recommended (Before the global AI takes your job 😁)!

3. My IOS experience as a developer

It is 💩 .

It takes a lot of time to set the environment. But when it's done, you are good to go to build and update your app without too much hassle.

You need to have a real Mac, and iPhone to have an IOS version with Flutter, no workarounds.

And don’t get me wrong. Apple is amazing and secure for the end-user!

The council of cats below tells you a developer story:

4. Business: How to build a funnel and make money

Funny enough, but in 2018 I have done my Master thesis with a topic: How to increase revenue in Free-to-Play mobile games

yourhabit.me is not the game, but principles are pretty the same.

Let’s focus on 3 key components for the Mobile Apps:

4.1. Acquisition

You bring users to your App (key metric: Cost Of Acquisition)

Here the goal is to lower the cost by: viral marketing, internal sharing/invite programs, influencers, and so on.

I think the key here is your marketing creativity and established network. You probably noticed that Elon Musk played a key role in the acquisition strategy for the clubhouse, same as ‘closed club’ and ‘FOMO: fear of missing opportunity with invitation links`.

That was just brilliant.

4.2. Retention

You have to do your best to keep users engaged (key metrics: DAU/MAU (Daily/Monthly Active Users)

This is the tricky part, your product should have reasons to come back. Notification, Gamification can help you, but I believe that your product should bring real value anyway.

On the same example of the Clubhouse, if you do not store the conversation what is the point to come back?

4.3. Monetization

You have to make money, make yourself/shareholder/team happy, and pay the bills for the server and maintenance. (Key metrics: Revenue/Data)

This part is even more tricky! So, fasten seat belts!

4.3.1 According to the thesis you might have between 1–5% in-app-purchase of the whole user base. Ads can drivers revenue, but you have to be careful with it since it negatively affects the retention

4.3.2 And according to this article:

AppStore and GooglePlay will take from 15–30% of your revenue as a fee.

Your local taxation + your costs services that make your life easier like Firebase/AWS. So from 1 earn USD, you probably will be left with 30 cents in your pocket.

4.3.3 Based on this one, two types of research:

1,015 Apps publishing every day on AppStore and 1748 on Google Play respectively.

93% for AppStore and 96% for Google Play are distributed for free.

So the competition is pretty tough. Nothing new here, tooling development, ML, frameworks reduce the entrance barrier

But is it free for nearly 95% of the apps?

The answer in the old proverb: “There is no free cheese in a mousetrap”.

A lot of companies are not making money directly, they just collecting the data which is super valuable nowadays.

5. Why data is so important, and how to collect it with the respect (GDPR/HIPAA)

You need data to tune and improve your product, otherwise, it’s just a blind guess despite how smart you are.

5.1 How to collect the data

I used the following techniques to collect the information on the current stage:

Instagram surveys with ‘fake’ mockups.
After the first version has been published I seat next to my friend and just silently observe the behaviors, making notes. No comments, just looking, this is how many users will use it.
I am looking at the data, google analytics, firebase statistics, google and apple stores consoles.
Feedback from early adopters was super useful, “Thanks to the people who are open to sharing good/bad feedbacks or just text me to say thank you for your work”.

You can see how the product evolved based on the data analysis below. For example, the numbers system was clear only for me, so it has been removed and simplified:

5.2 What about GDPR/HIPPA compliance

My core business is built around privacy and GDPR, so I read GDPR twice and what is important is to understand here:

You collect the data that you only need and you are honest with your users about what data it is, and how you or your partners use it.
State it in your terms of use and ask for consent during onboarding. Remember “The GDPR requires consent to be opt-in.”
In general, respect user data. Treat it as your personal sensitive information that you don’t want to share with a third party, or explicitly understand how it will be used.

As I see it, all new apps should be developed with privacy-first in mind. But don’t go too crazy with it on a testing/validation stage. It is just one of the risks, so you have to carefully assess it at each development stage.

In my opinion, GDPR/HIPAA and other compliances are good things!

Imagine few big companies that know absolutely everything about you and have a tool for personalized propaganda…

Wrapping up…

I hope, today you learn something new and it was a fun read.

Please consider like or share this article if you find it useful. That helps me to keep sharing the info.

If you like/dislike the product itself, I would love to hear what you think in the comment section below.

Quick links:

YourHabit App:

Site, ProductHunt, IndieHackers, AppStore , GooglePlay

Part 1

With all the best,

Alex

Follow on Instagram / skob.io

10 Steps that will help you turn your idea into a product. Part 1

Aleksandr Skobeltcyn — Thu, 22 Jul 2021 11:50:41 +0000

Hi Devs!

Do you remember how you got the 💎idea and want to make it but don't know how to approach it?

In this series of articles (Part 1, Part2), I will share the whole process of it.

Let's start with Part 1, what we have for today:

Each step has a 🎯 end goal so it's easy to be laser-focused

1. Idea

🎯End goal: Clear vision

My idea is simple: Habit-tracking app.

After my one-year experiment I decided to create an app that will help me stick with good habits.

2. Motivation

🎯End goal: Motivational boost

At the start, the motivation level is super high, but based on my experience product development will take time.

So I decided to write down things that will help me stay motivated for a longer time:

New skills: Flutter/Firebase/Figma and improved CV
App that will help me and my close friends
Practice Vim

3. Mockup

🎯End goal: general visuals to understand the architecture

Here I decided to not go into details, only features that help make the job done: Create a habit and mark it as done.

4. Market research

🎯End goal: Update my knowledge in a field

So, I bounced about the idea with my friends first, to listen to what they think. A friend of mine already researched the topic so he gave me pretty good sources to scrutinize.

I have looked at 22 apps that exist in Apple/Play stores, noted the pros and cons of each to better understand the landscape.

And created the notion page with:

Features that are mostly in demand in such kinds of apps
What people don't like in rivals apps
The strong and weak sides of each app on the market
Keywords

5. Technology choice and Education

🎯End goal: Define a tech stack

I set two main criteria in order to simplify choice:

Speed and cost - faster and lower respectively
Feasibility - have access to devices API that app required

And what we have had on a table:

PWA - progressive web app
Phone Gap/Cordova
Native Android and IOS
React Native / Flutter

Let's look a bit in detail at how the decision here has been made.

PWA - Seems good, but after read this research
I decided to not go this way. The onboarding process for IOS users seems pretty horrible from a UX point of view, at least for now.

Phone Gap/Cordova - Same as start something new with PHP now. It works, but you know what I mean😁.

Native apps - Two code bases will be expensive to develop and maintain. And the benefits of the native approach are just overkilling for a simple app like mine.

React Native/Flutter - Both actually perfectly fit the task. After a quick look at the documentation, checked the GitHub trends, and available tooling I decided to go with Flutter.

Here is how made that decision:

Flutter has been developed and maintain by Google and I have experience in Angular. So should be easy to understand things from the same provider
As a backend, I decided to go with Firebase. Because it speeds up the process and seems like have good integration with Flutter

And I spent 1 day watching flutter crash-course, reading documentation, learning about Firebase basics.

6. Setting up the environment

🎯End goal: speed up the development

I wanted something that is already working, so I looked at the boilerplates, starters to bring myself as close to the working app as possible.

I found one, and in a few minutes, the simple app with authentication had already been on my phone. Cool, isn't it?

With a starter code, I am helped myself a lot since I am new at flutter:

I learned from other developers how to structure the code in a right way
I decreased the development time quite a lot

7. MVP and Feedback from Instagram

🎯End goal: feedback and extra motivation boost

Cool, after few days of modification starter I had a working app:

I uploaded a video of the app to Instagram with a simple question: Would you like to use such an app?:

The result was good, even though I knew I have to be careful with this data because of Ugly Baby Syndrome.

Anyway, it was good for the motivation, the public announcement created positive pressure on me and I had first feedback.

8. Proper UI/UX

🎯End goal: UI layout

I went to a dribble for the inspiration. Looked at how the designers show certain things in an app like mine, what color scheme is usually used.

So after one day of good flow, I got this in the Figma:

I did run the second survey on Instagram that showed that most people prefer grid view instead of the list. So I picked that one for the first version

9. Development

🎯End goal: Working App with new UI/UX

It took me 2 extra days to make it real. Some UI things have been removed to speed up the process.

Few key points here:

First I created a theme class with colors, styles, and fonts. That will guarantee the same style across the whole app
The rest is just coding and by having a complete UI, it is just a matter of time.
Using vim speed up that proceed for nearly 30-40%, despite the painful learning curve

10. First Release

🎯End goal: Google Play link to share

So here I chose the same approach as described above: Theory + Practice in 20/80 proportion.

I looked at how other app developers present their products in stores
Read the articles about how to make a better visuals, SEO and higher acquisitions rate
Made visuals in Figma and Photoshop
Wrote SEO description with wording from Market Research
Built a simple website to basically place terms of use and privacy policy which is required by App Store and Google Play

And after a 3 days (Google reviewed took exactly that time) I am finally got a approved app here: Google Play 🎉🎉🎉

What's next

Cool, I hope it was a fun read for you! Now the plan is to gain a small user base to test in a real environment, so you are very welcome to join here

After the testing process will be done, I will make a release for IOS so I could start more aggressive distribution such as Product Hunt, Google/Facebook Ads, and so on. About this, you can read in Part 2, which will be published after the work is done!

Subscribe to stay tuned!

And I really appreciate your negative or positive feedback in the comment section below!

Best,
Alex
https://skob.io

Reachable dreams. Step-by-step

Aleksandr Skobeltcyn — Wed, 16 Dec 2020 08:18:14 +0000

Reachable dreams. Step-by-step

What was your plan for 2020? Become richer, healthier, smarter, or maybe find love?

Let’s dive into my experiment of 2020,

where it’s brought me and how it can help you reach your dreams in the upcoming 2021

NB! Each of us in a different situation and has different abilities/opportunities, it is just my experiment of 2020 and I hope that you can find it useful✌

Today’s story is structured in the following way:

The trigger that pushed me to pursue a dream (not a fantasy)
What’s the difference between a dream and a fantasy
How I broke down dreams into a subset of goals
Example of my typical day
Results

🔫1. Trigger

There is always a trigger before each big change.

In my case, it was about my successful friends and my curiosity:
‘How you …? What are you doing to be…?’

and

Health problem:

Neck pain after intense swimming training
Stomach problem after eating a junky meal
Skin problem
Frequent flu/cold during 2019

✨2. Fantasy vs Dream?

What is the difference between a Fantasy and a Dream?

A dream can be broken down into goals and exact things to do daily, a fantasy — can not.

🪓3. Dream into a subset of goals

At the start of 2020 I broke down my big dream of being successful and happy into a subset of goals, and put them in the following groups:

Health, Family & Friends, Career & Finance, Personal development.

💊3.1. Health goals

Be healthy overall
Be more energetic
Look fit
Half-marathon

👬3.2. Family & Friends

Find a girlfriend
Find new friends
Keep in touch with my family and friends

💰3.3. Career & Finance

Have income from my company (investment, consultancy, company profit)
Become a better CTO (understand more about tech/people)
Understand technology such as Kubernetes, CI/CD, Machine Learning, and Security

🥇3.4. Personal development

Build a personal brand: -website , -podcast, -blog, -style
Read 12–15 books: 20% novels, 40% -IT books, 40% — business literature
Increase my professional network
Improve my Swedish

🔍4. Break down Goals into Daily routines

Here I have to recommend two books that can really help you:

— 📗The Slight edge:
This book explains how to break down big things into small daily tasks

— 📕The Power of Habit:
This book helps understand how to build habits for daily tasks

Let me give an example:

You want to be a better in businessman/businesswoman-> Try read 12 business books next year -> 1 book per month -> each book is ~ 300 pages -> ~10 pages per day.

The example shows that your real goal is just to build a habit to read 10 pages per day in case you want to be a better businessman/businesswoman

🤏5. Daily routine example

NB! Times can vary depending on many factors (summer/winter time, illness, night party and so on), but that was my daily schedule during 2020 that I tried to stick to it as much as possible.

Wake up.

I know my agenda for the day (that has been planned one day before), it helps to not snooze too much (Especially with remote work during Corona times)
Google assistant (smart speaker) plays music right after alarm ringing

Morning routine.

20 minutes Duolingo to learn Swedish (🥇Personal development)
10 minutes of yoga (📺Sun Salutation), and 10–20 push-ups (💊Health)
30 minutes for shower and light breakfast, a mix of fast and slow carbs (something sweet and porridge) (💊Health)

Day planning.

Checking the agenda, add new tasks from emails and Trello sprint backlog(💰Career & Finance /🥇Personal development)
Prioritizing tasks that will affect the annual goal in general (💰Career & Finance /🥇Personal development)

Working time

Commute to the office (pre-corona time) by bike or bus with audiobook or youtube(💊Health/🥇Personal development)
Coding or doing other related tasks with a lunch break(💰Career & Finance/ 👬Friends /🥇Personal Development)
Each hour I have a watch beep signal that reminds me to do stretching for a couple of minutes and keep the right posture(💊Health)
1–2 times a week I am running during this time (choosing the day with better weather) (💊Health). I also use Garmin Watch with an in-build 📺running program

Lunchtime.

Trying to cook or order something that follows the Harvard Plate suggestion(💊Health)

Harvard Plate

Eat vitamins : D, B, Omega 3, and Multivitamins. Especially D in the Scandinavian region (💊Health)
Serve or order a small portion (💊Health)

Chill and personal time.

Watching youtube, or doing any other non-goal related things 🤘
This is a crucial thing to not become a 🤖robot.
If have a special dinner or a party, sometimes I chose an alcohol-free beer instead of regular ( 💊Health). A friend showed me this trick an interesting way to hack your old habits
Prepare for bedtime ( 💊Health)
No TV-series after 11 PM

Bedtime(📘Why we sleep. An advice from that book below) ( 💊Health)

Be in bed before 11 PM
Keep room cold and fresh
Keep the room dark and silent during the night
Sleep at least 8 hours
Do not eat 2 hours before sleep
Do not drink alcohol before going to bed
Do not drink coffee after 3 p.m
Sleep on a comfortable mattress and pillow
Remove blue light from your screen 2 hours before bed (📖 Bedtime mode on Android)
Go to bed and wake up at the same time (23:00–7:00), even on the weekend

🧾5. Results

Read 25 books

Biked(503KM)/Run(301KM) and did a half-marathon in 🐌2:25h

Duolingo (Finished the whole course)

Built a website: https://skobeltcyn.com/ (don’t forget to click on a 🔴 button)
Did 7 podcast episodes (it didn’t take off, but it was a good experience) + one episode with me:

Wrote 3 articles on dev.to (include this one) ~ 4700 views

Stats from dev.to

Workwise, we rolled out the: https://sensivo.eu/ product, have several paying customers and are closing the pre-seed round🎉🍾🥂
I guess vitamins helped me to avoid the flu, and now I am recovering after COVID-19
I found new friends and acquaintances via volleyball meetups and participation in an open-source project. And I have been in touch with old friends and family via Zoom
I got rid of stomach pain by increasing physical activities. Still have skin problem but found a good treatment after proper check-ups
And I found a girlfriend (How — it is a different big story)🎈

That was just an experiment of 2020, hope it was a fun read.

UPDATE from 2021!
Recently, I build an app Yourhabit.me that helps me to track my progress during my 2021 experiment!

I appreciate your claps and please leave your comments below.

If you have a friend who is chasing a dream but without obvious progress please consider to share this post with him/her 👌

Stay safe and happy new year!
Best, Alex
Co-founder of sensivo.eu

What have I learned from 4 startups failures?

Aleksandr Skobeltcyn — Thu, 01 Oct 2020 12:18:32 +0000

Hej folks!

I am a person who always dreamed about building big things. That one day an idea will pop up in my mind and I will become a millionaire.

Nowadays, especially in the IT world, such dreams can indeed come true, but is your dream real?

Let's dive into my personal journey so I can share 5 key learnings that I have discovered so far.

Short story

After a few failed attempts at building big things, I decided to go back to school to understand the basic principles of Entrepreneurship and Economics. It was a really good decision for an IT guy like me, to understand the broader picture of the startup world.

After 1 year in academia, I found a co-founder and started a new venture. However, it didn't work out financially, and likewise another venture that followed shortly after.

Yet my current and relatively new venture seems to be going quite well.

By looking back I have recognized that my initial dream to quickly become a millionaire now has changed.

And here are my 5 key learnings that I would like to share with you.

1. Money is not the goal

Business is a marathon, not a sprint

Yes, we need to pay bills, buy stuff for ourselves and family, but when you start your own company making it successful becomes much more interesting than just consuming expensive goods.

Now I see money as:

Resources to deal with your basic needs (first two blocks in Maslow pyramid) and grow the business. Resource for a long run

Read more about Maslow pyramid
A perfect metric proving that your business is sustainable as it created something that people are willing to pay for. An indicator that you are running in the right direction

I think you can do business only chasing big numbers in your account, the question is for how long? What would be your motivation when you reach a certain level?

2. Theory vs Practice

Knowledge without practice is useless. Practice without knowledge is dangerous (Confucius)

You probably know that from your coding experience:

you are trying to solve a problem for days and making many mistakes until you reach the desired result.
you read the documentation first and then try to solve the same problem.

In the startup world that works in the same way: better preparation such a good school, Mentors/Experienced Business Partners/Ycombinator, or other incubators will not make you a successful entrepreneur but will increase your likelihood of becoming one if you will apply this knowledge in the real world.

3. Habits matters

Our brains are pretty lazy and they try to automate many things in our lives (brushing teeth, washing hands, handshaking, etc..) to reduce daily energy consumption.

The cool thing about them is that we can cultivate good habits 📚The Power of Habit, Charles Duhigg

The 5 core pillars that I see among all successful entrepreneurs: sport, sleep, food, books, and for sure: love.

Sport 🏃‍♀️.
- You will just feel better, especially in the IT world when you sit all day long in front of a laptop
- You will have your own time away from your business thoughts. During this time you can meditate or listen to audiobooks
- It will make you look better. People tend to trust more good-looking and fit individuals 📚The psychology of Selling, Brian Tracy
- You can meet many interesting people through sports
Sleep 😴
- Sleep is crucial for your recovery and efficiency during the day 📚Why We Sleep, Matthew Walker
- Usually, we need 7-8 hours for sleep and if we eliminate 2 useless hours before sleep (TV series or social networks) it should be relatively easy to get to
- How to sleep properly: a fresh dark room, minimum noise, comfortable bed, and less screen time before going to bed. No caffeine after 3-4 p.m.
Food 🥑
- You Are What You Eat.
- It is good to understand what is on your plate and do you need so much? I found the image below quite helpful Read more
- I am not counting each calorie, eat 'junk' food sometimes but in general keep the 'Harvard plate' recommendation
Books 📚
- I have found that most people stop reading books after university, they just lose the habit of reading. Youtube, news, social networks, and other types of content are in demand, but books are often the origin of that content
- I am trying to read ~ 30 books a year📚The Slight Edge, Jeff Olson. Check out goodreads.com to set your own goals and see what your friends read
- I am using audiobooks a lot, but I understand that for some people this format simply doesn't work. But, with a proper book, headphones, and the right attitude it's worth a try
Love 💘
- Work, money, business are important, but so are the physiological needs in the Maslov pyramid: intimate relationship and friends
- How amazing is it to share your progress in business with someone?
- Needless to say how important the support from your partner/friends and family when you just starting your own business

4. Time and luck

I guess the founder of Uber was inspired by the moment in the James Bond movie above. Back in the days, the internet was becoming faster, screens and batteries becoming better - it probably felt like a good time to start Uber 📚The Upstarts, Brad Stone

We often try to understand the reasons behind any major success, millions of books were written about becoming rich.

From my experience, the timing of starting your venture is super crucial: investing in remote education makes much more sense in Corona times rather than when the internet has just been invented.

And luck, that's just luck. You can bump into the right person in a coffee shop in a queue, nobody knows, that's just luck.

But you can stimulate that luck by being in the right environment: the chance to meet someone in a desert is much lower than in the middle of a big city

5. Grit

Business is hard, you are taking more risk, you live pretty poorly in the beginning and you don't know when the money will come into your pocket.

Things take time, some of them you can't speed up: paperwork, vacations of clients, Corona, or any other things.

Needless to say that you have to be prepared for the long run.

The hardest part is not going back to corporations for a good salary, especially when you already know the taste of it.

Pressure from peers that you are doing something wrong and nothing will work 📚That will never work, Marc Randolph

You will be facing all those things during your entrepreneurial journey, and you need grit to get over them!

Conclusion

How the first startup usually look like👆

As I found so far, entrepreneurship gives you a broader vision of the world, good habits, smart people around you, and maybe a little bit of 💰

Stay safe,
Best, Alex

And please don't forget to like or leave a comment below if that reading was interesting for you ✌

10 insights I wish I had known as a junior full-stack developer

Aleksandr Skobeltcyn — Fri, 06 Dec 2019 14:32:25 +0000

10 insights I wish I had known as a junior full-stack developer

At Sensivo, we constantly try to improve our work, work methods, and work surroundings. Today I will share the top 10 hacks/tools that we use every day. Let’s jump right into it.

1. Be organized

You can build millions of features, but don’t forget about two terms:

Efficiency and effectiveness. Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things. In our team, we use Trello as a tool for project management, but it’s actually doesn’t matter which tool you choose. The golden rule with any project management tool is consistency. It is like going to the gym, should be done regularly.

2. Spend more time on tooling

20 years ago it was cool to write your website in notepad, but not so cool nowadays. Our most important resource is time. Use it wisely.

For our MEAN stack, we are using: VScode as IDE. This IDE is great but the extensions are awesome:

TSlint/JSlint
Code Spell Checker
Auto close tag
DotEnv
Prettier Code Formatter
Beautify
Debugger for Chrome
Angular 8 Snippets / For React or Vue
Auto Import
Auto Rename Tag
CodeMetrics
Git History
GitLens — Git supercharged
npm
Paste JSON as Code
SCSS Formatter
SFTP
TODO Highlight
Trailing Spaces

3. Tooling outside of IDE

Coding is just a part of the full-stack journey. Here are some tools to speed up our work:

https://zeplin.io/ — Speed up your process from sketch to HTML/CSS
https://squoosh.app/ — Decrease the size of all images on your website/app
https://bundlephobia.com/ — Keep bundle small, but don’t get crazy. Business needs — first
Postman — testing your API and auto-documentation
Chrome extension such as VisBug, WhatFont, Ruler Measurement, Full Page Screen Capture
Lighthouse / Performance — use only fonts that you need, compress images, enable gzip and all other things that will boost your site speed

4. Security

Nowadays — security is a hot topic. Let’s see what we have to assist us in that area:

Detectify — automation security test
https://observatory.mozilla.org/ — a great tool to check your site
OWASP top 10 security risks.
Tool for generating ‘safe’ config for your Nginx
Npm audition — use libraries wisely
Don’t trust input from frontend
Two-step authentication is always better than one
Force user to use strong passwords
Data protection at rest/In Motion
Access Control/ Role-Based-Access-Role
Disaster recovery
Backups
GDPR / HIPAA compliance
100% of breach protection? Nope, it’s about risks and costs

5. Hardware and how we work

Your computer, monitor, mouse, working space — with all of these things you interact most of your day time. It is a good idea to invest a little bit in your professional tools.

What we use:

Fast laptops and external monitors. I am using a DELL laptop with i7/ 16 GB RAM
Headphones with noise cancellation for better focus, like Bose Quiet Comfort.
I found that working standing some part of the day works pretty well for me, my back and neck. For sure standing all day can be challenging, however, the mix of standing and sitting position works perfectly well
Space between laptop and surface. Get some fresh air into your laptop fan
Hot Module Replacement in an angular, auto-page refresh, auto import, auto fix, prettier on save. All things that can increase the speed of development and be automated
Avoid distractions. On average it takes 10 minutes to get back into the ‘flow’ of peak performance. Turn the phone off, Switch Slack, and other chats to ‘do not disturb mode’. For some developers, music can keep you in flow for a long time. Try to achieve and stay in flow for an hour, then stand up for 5–10 minutes for a small break, check social networks, do a small exercise or take a walk and then go back.

6. What about Code management?

Code is basically what you produce every day, let’s see how we can improve here :

Git — nowadays must have
Clean message commit style — learn from Angular team
CI/CD — automated integration and delivery processes
Extensions for VSCode such as CodeMetrics/TSLint/Prettier — let’s keep our code clean and easy to read
Look at the best practices in your environment. Good article for Angular
Don’t forget about the huge complete solutions at github.com and npmjs.com. Choose wisely, look at the list of contributors, starts, issues, date of the last commit, is it has a passed test badge.

7. Are you business-friendly? What about soft skills?

We are trying to build things to solve real business needs first. Not too many optimizations at the start. If the feature works, when we can optimize/refactor, test (if you are not in TDD), and add documentation on it.

Need to build Landing Page? Perhaps an online site configurator is enough and it’s no need to build SPA with State Management with 100% test coverage. The right tool for the concrete task.

No matter how smart you are, be friendly to other people with different experiences. Sometimes it can be destructive to hire the brilliant geek into the team.

8. What is your source of information?

Keep yourself updated about the industry. The new version of Angular? How can we improve our efficiency? This section is really personal, but I will share what is in my channels:

Youtube:

Podcasts:

Codepen Radio
Syntax

Medium.

Books and official docs of libs

In my experience, these sources are unfortunately neglected.

Really good article about 'must have' books for software developer

I also found https://www.goodreads.com/ where you can organize your readings and see what other people read in your circle

9. Server technologies and DB

Even though full-stack has become more frontend orientated, with tools like Firebase, Nhost (Graphql), AWS lambda, it’s still good to know your backend stuff. Here is what we using:

One of backend language and framework: Laravel/PHP, Nodejs/Express, Python/Flask or .Net/Java depend on your skills and project requirements
Putty/Terminal to connect via SSH to a remote server + WinScp for file transferring
SQL/NoSQL DB and when use one other another
Redis or Memcached
Unix basic commands/ crontab
Vim/Vi — for file editing or advance coding :w!
Git commands
Telegram bots for notification
Virtual machines / Docker containers

10. Be open for discussion

Fullstack is a hot topic, and new libraries, extensions, and best practices appear everyday. I would like to invite you to the discussion in the comment section below, share your hacks, tools or tips. ✌

p.s
It's my first experience writing an article here.

In the next article I would like to share insights about building own startup as a full stack developer, please don't hesitate to 💖 or share - that is really good motivation✌