Hashnode Weekly 002 by Miki Szeles
I am an enthusiastic developer since my childhood. I have started with Plus 4 and C 16 machines programming in Basic. I still remember when we were jumping on the bed with my brother, and accidentally saw the Commodore 64 computer on the top of the wardrobe, which was planned to be a Christmas gift for us. I don't have to tell you that we couldn't wait till then. :) I will never forget this memory. Of course in the beginning we only played on the computer, but later I became interested in how can I make my own programs. I have to tell when I first faced the binary number system I did not understand it, but I was still able to draw some sprites on the screen. :)
I continued learning software development during grammar school. I got my Masters degree at the Budapest University of Economics and Technology where I learnt many languages and also learnt a lot about general software development theory and practice.
I have started my professional career as a C++/C# developer, but I switched to Java after a few years. I've visited many meetups and Code Retreats during this time and I've learnt and introduced Agile methodologies in our company. During the years I lead the development team in close cooperation with the product management and testing department.
In 2020 I felt I need something new and I turned towards test automation both API and UI. I did not regret my decision. Since then I tried many frameworks like RestArrured, Selenium, Protractor, Appium, Selenide and Karate.
At the moment I am working as a Senior Software Developer in Test using Selenium and Selenide for UI testing and Karate for API testing.
I believe knowledge sharing is very important, so apart from helping my colleagues work I started my technical blog recently: https://mszeles.com Sharing your knowledge provides many ways for your own development. Whenever I write an article many questions come into my mind which might be interesting for the readers, so I try to answer all of them in my posts. Doing this I learn a lot about the subject. In additionally sharing your knowledge gives a good opportunity for feedback based on which you can further improve.
It is Saturday again, so it is time for Hashnode weekly. I collected again the articles which were most interesting for me.
As usual, I highlight one article which was the most insightful for me from this weeks list. This time, it is Ahmed Ramy's Mindset Books: The 5 AM Club post. I can highly relate to this topic.
A few years ago I also followed Robin Sharma's method. I was doing it for months (with a few days exception). That period was the second most productive of my life (I am currently living the most productive period 😊). Getting up at 5 am and doing the mentioned steps till 6 am gives such a huge motivation boost which is not comparable to anything. On the other hand, it was very tough to get up at 5 am, no matter whenever you went into bed. 😊 In the end I gave up after a few months. Recently I am getting up again around 5 am, but without using any alarm clock. If if it 5:20 or 4:50 it does not matter, I still receive the huge boost for the rest of the day 😊
I also documented my days with the 5 am club, on my former blog. It is in Hungarian, but you can translate it via Google Translate if you are interested.
After this introduction, it is time to start with the collection. Enjoy. 😊
Software Development
- In his article How to Make the Step up From Intermediate to Senior Engineer Ilija Eftimov shared his thoughts about what are the steps needed to advance from medior to senior. It is a very useful topic. I also added my thoughts in the comment section, I advise you to do the same, so we can have a more complete view about what it takes to be a senior developer.
- In the article Make your first Open Source Contribution Utkarsh Nagar's Blog provides some hints about how to start contributing to the Open-Source community. A also shared my advice to start writing your open source project, as I did with Selenideium Element Inspector and many testing frameworks built on top of Selenium, Appium, Karate and RestAssured.
- Atharva Shirdhankar shared his method to boost your learning speed in his article How I m Learning new Technologies so Quickly and how you can do it too(Open Source Way)?!.
- Maxi Contieri wrote about a code smell in which I have to admit was guilty. So after reading his article, I immediately went to the code of Selenideium Element Inspector and replaced each var with let.
- Vectorly listednot less than 20 books that should be read by all software developers. In my opinion, it is not needed to learn so many different languages (of course it is not a disadvantage), but instead of that get in-depth knowledge about at least one language. I have read 4 of the books on the list. How many of them you have read?
- Syed Fazle Rahman offered to give away 25 copies of the book The Standout Developer by Randall Kanna. You still have 2 days to participate.
- Mohit Yadav introduced the Top VS Code extensions only 5% people know about. As I use carbon, I really like the extension Polacode with which you can generate images about code with syntax highlighting. In case you know of a similar plugin for IntelliJ IDEA do not hesitate to share it with us.
- Oladetoun Gbemisola gave advice to Taking a break from coding. Read her article in case you are interested in the whys.
- Chindukuri Pavan in his article explains the difference between Authentication and Authorization.
Writing, blogging, journaling
- Ukeje Chukwemeriwo Goodness compiled an awesome list of useful tools for technical writers in his writing Visualization Tools for Technical Writing. I am also using many of them already.
- Ebere Vivian shared her thoughts about the Gig Economy, which was a completely new term for me, in her article Navigating the Gig Economy in Tech.
- I really love Victoria Lo's writing about writing. This time she posted an article with the name My Top 6 Strategies to Overcome Writer's Block which can be really valuable for any Hashnode members. I also added my thoughts in the comment section.
- My Technical Writing 'Tech Stack' (and How I Work) article is written by Dappa Dan. You can find many useful tools and advice to aid your writing. I personally use Notepad++ backed up on GitHub for collecting my thoughts and Hashnode to write my articles and repost them at other platforms like dev.to and medium.com.
- Chris Bongers had an astonishing achievement of writing 700 articles. He shares his experiences and learnings in his article How writing 700 articles changed my life.
Self-improvement, psychology, productivity
- Empathy Plan is a very short but meaty post by Kenya Carl.
- Adrian Zinko shared 3 tools with which you can highly improve your productivity. I used Anki in the past, but at the moment I am using better methods to memorize things. One of them is articulating my learnings in articles. I also regularly use the Pomodoro technique about which I will also write in one of my upcoming posts.
- The psychology of color in web development is very insightful writing about colours from Mwendwa Bundi Emma.
- Alex Schiessl wrote a very interesting post with the title Love to fail (at work) or fail to love (your work). He is working in a very toxic environment. I can highly relate to this article. I had depression for years cause of not being able to achieve something meaningful. In case you cannot change your work environment, change your job. That is the thing that worked for me. Since then I am thriving, the depression is gone and I never was as happy and productive as now.
- Guilherme Macedo Cestari collected a list of important things that you should consider when choosing your first workplace.
- Tosin Adewale brought up a very important topic the balance between life and work in his article The Severance Between Life And Work In Tech. In his writing he mentioned a very interesting book and a movie. I have added them to my reading/watching list.
Data analysis and machine learning
- Data Analysis, AI, Machine Learning and Everything in between - PART 1 is the first article of a series from Amr Khaled about Data Analysis and Engineering. I am highly interested in this topic as I just started a university course at the Budapest University of Economics and Technology (BME) which is my alma mater. I already started to write some articles about my journey in the field of Data Analysis. I will start posting them soon.
- Maybell Obadoni wrote a great introduction to data science in her article Data Science In A Nutshell.
Cyber security
- Alyssa Drum started her whitehat hacker adventure with the post Hacking Adventure Begin! and a few days later she continued her series. This is one of my favourite series at the moment. She provides hands-on examples starting from the beginner level moving slowly towards advanced techniques. I highly recommend reading it, even if you are not interested in cyber security, as being a user we are constantly the target of potential attacks: TryHackMe Writeup - Blue.
- Jinesh Shah was working for big companies like Google and Microsoft shared. In the article The ultimate guide to land a Software Engineering job at Big Tech he shares his advice on how to land a job at big tech companies. I highly recommend reading it.
- Purple Panda gave his (or her) advice about How to Start a Cyber Security Career in 2022?
Search Engine Optimization (SEO), internet and social media
- Péter Teszáry shared his favourite SEO tool Screpywhich is an AI-based solution. I had some prior experience with Semrush but I immediately fell in love with Screpy. However, I still have not checked how much it will cost after the trial period.
- Shreya Sahani wrote a very interesting article with the title Social Listening Tools: Everything you need to know and the best tools to start, but unfortunately, the article became unavailable at the time of the writing. I hope it will come back as she listed many useful tools, which I would like to try.
- SnowBit introduced a tool URL Revealer with which you can find the real destination of any minified URL. The tool was actually developed by himself.
Newcomers
- Ryan Barnes from Oklahoma introduced himself in his post Hello World. Due to the pandemic, he turned towards software development in December 2021, since then he is walking on his journey.
- Denis Cabrera just finished just received his Bachelor's degree in Computer Science and he decided to start blogging here on Hashnode. You can read his introduction here.
- Favour Okunowo just started his software development blog. He had no prior background in software development, but in his third year at school, he took Application Development which he did not regret. You can read his first post here: My Tech Journey.
- Usama Khan just moving from medium.com to Hashnode. He already has a huge amount of articles, so he was interested in what are the limitations of Hashnode blogging platform. As far as I know, there is no limit, but in case you know it better, share your thought under his post.
- kire brenda is working as a Systems Administrator at one of the hospitals in Uganda. She just posted her first article Why I choose to become a software developer 6 days ago.
- Amit Sharma is a DevOps engineer who is learning Go Lang at the moment, and he just started blogging here.
- It took 5 years for Chris Nunez to convince himself to start a coding BootCamp. You can read more about it here: First day of coding bootcamp...
- Daphne Link just started blogging to solidify her knowledge. Give some supporting words to her on her site.
- Dinh Mai shared his feelings about his self taught coding journey. He got stuck and has many doubts. Follow me and give some encouraging words to him.
- Roseline Bassey started her blogging here at Hashnode with the article My Technical Writing Career Journey As A Beginner.
- Phillip Johnson is not new in writing, he already wrote for a couple of years on medium.com. Read his story here.
It was quite a dense post, thanks for reading. 😊
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