DEV Community: Utkarsh Talwar

Growing up, what were the most influential pieces of sci-fi media for you?

Utkarsh Talwar — Mon, 07 Sep 2020 14:18:55 +0000

I recently stumbled across this image of The Jetsons and it was like a blast from the past. I remember how much I used to enjoy watching this show on Cartoon Network as a kid. The future looked fantastic! Flying cars and robot maids and what not? I also absolutely loved Transformers when it first came out. It was absolutely mind-blowing to me!

Now that I look back, I realize how much sci-fi media shaped my perception of the future. There wasn't a lot of dystopian media back then, at least not that I remember watching or reading about. As I got older, however, I got into some dystopian sci-fi stuff as well, like The Hunger Games and Snowpiercer.

So what were your favorite pieces of sci-fi media while growing up? List your top 3 at least! How do you feel about them now? I'd love to know!

How Do You Achieve Deep Focus?

Utkarsh Talwar — Wed, 06 Nov 2019 19:14:18 +0000

I've been reading Deep Work by Cal Newport 📙 lately and the idea of "deep work" really speaks to me. Deep work is described as the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task for extended periods of time. ⌚

I often get distracted easily as I have a lot of browser tabs open, which is not surprising given the type of work I do. I know many other people face this problem too. 🙁

So I wanted to ask those of you who've conquered this. How did you achieve it? How do you minimize distractions and achieve your peak focus state? 💯

I personally try to use multiple browsers and/or context-based browser windows whenever possible. So, for example, I always have a few important tabs running on my main browser window. If I have to, say, write an article while doing research side by side, I open a new window and do everything related to that particular task (writing the article) in this window. 🤓 Once I'm done, I close all the tabs and go back to the main window.

That's just one of the things I do, but it's not a perfect solution, and it doesn't cover all types of distractions. I'm very interested in hearing what techniques you all use. 😃

Brogrammer - Our Contribution Towards A Fitter World

Utkarsh Talwar — Sun, 01 Sep 2019 09:23:07 +0000

Update

Hey! Thank you for checking out Brogrammer and giving us honest feedback. I just wanted to give you all a quick update. A lot of people felt excluded from the target audience because of the name and imagery of the product. I assure you all that wasn't our intention. Goes without saying that we will try to be much more considerate about these things from now on. Team XenoX has always been inclusive and always will be.

So yeah, we have decided to change the name of the product. How do you guys feel about "BrogrammHer"? Yay or nay? Let me know in the comments below! And if you have a better suggestion, by all means, please feel free to send them my way!

It's no secret that many devs work really long hours. Not only that, for many people, working longer hours feeds into their superiority complex. You don't need me to tell you that it's a sad state of affairs when people feel good about themselves by flexing on others how many hours they work. This isn't even something exclusive to devs or the tech space. Rather, it's an epidemic that has been plaguing most of the modern corporate world for a long time now.

In the recent years, there has been a lot of talk around the issue, and I am really glad that's the case. It's great to see industry leaders like David Heinemeier Hansson touch on the issue, and books like "It Doesn't Have To Be Crazy At Work" are much appreciated. But one big issue still remains to be tackled, and that is Fitness.

I know from personal experience that sometimes, it does get too hectic at work. It's an important project or a big client, you're working till late, and end up skipping gym for the day. One day becomes two, two days become a week. It's quite easy to go down a spiral. And in the process, your physical and mental health suffers. I've seen this happening to people countless times over.

So how do we avoid that? Well folks, that's the million dollar question, isn't it?

A while back, Sarthak and I were discussing this problem, and we brainstormed a lot of solutions. We decided to make a web app, but our primary aim was to make it as simple and easy-to-use as possible. We didn't want to include overly complex workout routines or use technical jargon that people wouldn't understand. We just wanted a super simple app that would keep people working out regularly, in their office space, even if they didn't have any equipment or more than five minutes at a time!

And that is how Brogrammer was born.

What is it?

Brogrammer is simple way to help people with sedentary office jobs maintain a fitter lifestyle. Brogrammer is for the busy bees. It lets you easily squeeze mini workouts in your busy schedule and keep your body moving, even if you don't have time to go to the gym.

What can it do?

It's pretty straight-forward. Depending on how much time you have and what you're in the mood for, you can pick one of two options:

1) Random Challenge
2) Custom Challenge

Random Challenge

With random challenge, it's a set-it-and-forget-it thing. You just start the challenge and as long as you keep the browser tab open, Brogrammer will keep sending you alerts every 40 to 60 minutes, challenging you to do different types of exercises with varying intensity. There are two types of exercises: time-based and rep-based. Brogrammer will give you a random mix of both.

It's quick and easy, especially when you have no time to customize your workout.

Custom Challenge

You can also choose to create your own challenge. You get to select the frequency of your mini-workouts (e.g. once/2hrs), set the duration of your work session (e.g. 8hrs), and level of intensity. You can even pick the type of exercises you want to do.

Brogrammer currently has over 20 different bodyweight exercises that can all be executed without any equipment. Go ahead and give them a try!

Where is it?

You can check out Brogrammer here!

We also just launched on ProductHunt and you can check it out by clicking the photo below! If you like it, please show your support!

Wanna take it to the next level?

The best thing about Brogrammer is that it's opensource, like all of our earlier products. It was made possible with the efforts of Team XenoX. If you have ideas for any cool features you'd like to see in Brogrammer, why wait? Just go ahead and build them yourself. I'm linking the repo below. Fork it, add stuff, and send your pull request! 😉

sarthology / brogrammers

💪🏼 Challenge your body while programming

brogrammers

💪🏼 Challenge your body while programming

Brogrammer

Screenshots

Prerequisites

Before running this locally you must have these installed.

Node

Installing

$ npm install
$ npm start

Development

It's really easy, just follow these steps below

$ git clone https://github.com/sarthology/brogrammers.git
$ cd brogrammers
$ npm install

Now to run Brogrammer, you can do npm start.

That's it.

Contributing

Feel free to contribute to this project and treat it like your own. 😊

License

MIT License

Author

Sarthak Sharma

Acknowledgments

Graphics used from icons8.

View on GitHub

If you want to be a part of Team XenoX and make the world a better place, one open source product at a time, just go to XenoX Multiverse and start contributing! It doesn't matter how much or how little experience you have. We welcome everyone with open arms. 😄

Thanks

We have so much gratitude for all of you who have supported Team XenoX 🔥 since we began. We keep growing stronger, all thanks to you guys.

If you like Brogrammer and think anyone you know could use it, please share it with them and help them be fitter! Big thanks! 🙌🏼

What We Learned By Almost Failing Our Product Hunt Launch

Utkarsh Talwar — Tue, 09 Apr 2019 17:49:19 +0000

"Anything that can go wrong will go wrong."

I'm sure you've all heard of Murphy's Law, the old adage that describes a certain capriciousness our universe exhibits. Our plans often get screwed up, no matter how meticulous.
Have you ever missed an important meeting because your car broke down? Been late for a job interview because you couldn't find a cab or the traffic was crazy? Missed a date with your crush because your dog got sick? The universe seems so unreasonable at times, doesn't it?

And sometimes, it seems so unreasonable that you feel like it's trying to send you a message, like it's trying to tell you it just won't let your plans come to fruition. 🙅‍♀️

That's exactly what my team and I felt like that day.

What We Planned 🤔

Let me begin at the end of February, when we had just successfully launched DEV-CLI on Product Hunt with the help of the DEV team. Big thanks to Peter, Ben, Jess, and the community at large!
Spirits were high here at Team XenoX HQ, and we were excited to launch our next product for the month of March, as we had committed.🙌💯

Sarthak soon started working on Dragula, our best and biggest product yet, and we started preparing for the third launch of 2019. This time, we wanted to get everything right. We wanted to continue our streak of delivering fantastic, free, and opensource products to the community. And we wanted Dragula to be #1 Product of the Day on PH, which was an ambitious goal, but we knew it was achievable since our concept was solid. So we looked into every little detail, right down to what day and hour we wanted to launch.📆
1) We decided to set up a Ship page for Dragula once we had the app close to where we wanted it in terms of functionality.
2) The next step would be to build an email list with early subscribers as we continued to make improvements to the app.
3) And then the next step would be to create some marketing materials like a video, some banners, photos and gifs.
4) Finally, we were going to launch the app on the 29th, the last Friday of March.

As it turns out, however, the universe had other plans for us.

What Actually Happened 😰

Tldr; shit happened, things broke, people might have cried, but we delivered nevertheless.
But if you really want the details, let me start with March 26th. We still had a few days with us, so we were feeling pretty confident. The PH Upcoming page had not really worked out very well so we didn't have an email list, but it wasn't a big deal. We could execute it better next time. We were still pretty optimistic about the launch. 😃😀
The real problems started rearing their ugly heads when I found out we didn't have any material for the promotional video. I had asked a bunch of my friends to use the app and send some self-recorded videos of them using it, but that didn't pan out. All of them gradually backed away for some reason or the other, and that too at a critical time.
We languished for another couple of days before the D-Day was upon us. It was the 29th of March, and we couldn't be less ready to launch. We didn't have a landing page ready, we didn't have a video ready, and even the app was suddenly having trouble running on Windows.
And to top it all off, our internet provider had suddenly decided they hated us.
We figured it just wasn't our day and agreed to launch the next day with everything perfect since we had some time before the month ended. But oh boy, we were in for more trouble.
The next day started also started with a series of unfortunate events. Things were breaking left, right and center, and it really seemed like we won't be able to launch that day. But there was no quitting now. We were going to release the app no matter what, so it only made us double down on our efforts. 🏋️‍♂️

Here are some of the scenes from the day of the launch.

Since the internet was still down at the office, we decided to take the whole team to Sarthak's place and work from there until we were done.

We pushed through with the power of junk food, Coke, and occasional cuddles from our local mascot and Sarthak's pet, Lovie 🐶. Check out how happy Ankur is in the picture 👆. You can't even tell he had just gotten an earful for making a silly mistake in his code. 😛
During the same time, Pawan, our remote ninja 🐱‍👤, was working on the Linux build for Dragula.
Finally, after 12 grueling hours, we launched Dragula on Product Hunt at 8:30 PM. And then we all went home.
It had been a really long day. Celebrations could wait.

What We Learned 🙇‍♂️

There's a bunch of things we learned from this experience. I'm sure I could go on and on about this, but here's the short version:

1. Manage external risk better!

There were so many external risk factors we could've minimized. We just had to be more aware of them. Some were out of our control(yes, I'm still salty about the internet mess-up!), but others could have been avoided with better planning.

2. Prioritize aggressively!

We were doing relatively well for the first half of March, but once we published the Upcoming page on PH, we kinda lost focus and couldn't prioritize well. This will serve to remind us that we always need to prioritize aggressively if we want to keep operating at the efficiency we demand of ourselves.

3. When pressed for time, don't experiment!

We could've saved a lot of time even on our launch day if we didn't try to experiment with stuff and had just asked each other for help. The product video is the best example of this. I wasted a lot of time editing and putting together an audio track that only got rejected in the end. I could've saved all that time and delivered hours earlier by just asking about it in the beginning!
Experimentation is great, but it's certainly not what you should be doing when you're pressed for time.

4. Don't give up!

The launch day was one of our most exhausting days at work, and we felt like crap, almost postponing the launch multiple times throughout the day. But nevertheless, we prevailed. With enough tenacity, anything's possible. Sounds cliché, but that's because it's true.
When the going gets tough and Murphy's Law jumps into action, the best thing you can do is stare the universe right in the eye and tell it, "Screw you. I'm gonna finish this no matter what."

In the end, Dragula was a big hit!

Even though we made a lot of mistakes during the launch and we know we could've done so many things better, we're happy we didn't give up halfway.
Product Hunt delayed the release of Dragula and pushed it to the next day, 31st March, but that worked out in our favor.

Our efforts were well-rewarded, and Dragula became #2 Product of the Day! In fact, for over 23 hours, it was at the top spot. I can't tell you how pumped we were! 💪

So many people registered for Dragula in such a short timespan, and it would be an understatement to say we were floored! We got more than 500 users for Dragula in less than a week! And so, we decided to celebrate in style. 😎✌

A team that parties together stays together! 🎉😻💯

So yeah, Dragula didn't end up being #1 Product of the Day, but it did come super close, and that is good enough for us, at least for now. We made a dream of ours come true, and we're really happy about it. Because that's what Team XenoX is all about. We're in the business of turning dreams into reality. So I'm gonna end with an open invitation to all of you. If you have an idea that you need help turning into reality, reach out to us. We'll make it happen. 😉🤘