Posted on Sun, 13 Aug 2017 in Reviews • Tagged with branding, book, industry
Personal branding isn't a thing that is discussed much in a programming world. Actually, I know very few guys who have strong personal brands and only two guys who can explain what personal branding is for software developers. One of them is Frederic Harper with his book “Success in Programming.”
Posted on Fri, 23 Jun 2017 in Reviews • Tagged with java, lafore, algorithms
For me, the main advantage of "Data Structures and Algorithms in Java" is the language author uses to describe algorithms. He doesn't use overcomplicated academic language with tons of math. No. Robert uses plain English and tries to give an as simple explanation of an algorithm as possible.
Posted on Sat, 10 Jun 2017 in Editors & IDE • Tagged with emacs, layout
You are lucky if you need to use standard English keyboard layout only. I use Russian layout as often as English one. Everywhere hot-keys work OK, except Emacs. Maybe because it has an ASCII-is-enough-for-everybody legacy or other reasons, Emacs uses own weird way to switch layouts (or Input Method in Emacs terms): C-\. Instead of using that "standard" way I found another option.
Posted on Tue, 30 May 2017 in Python • Tagged with python, property
It looks obvious that you can override the property in a child class, and call "super" within it. Sounds OK? Yes, it is. However, when my colleague asked me about this behavior, I was confused. Maybe because I am a bit suspicious, every time I saw a magic thing of any kind in a code I expect a trap. What's why I decided to write a simple example to prove myself that it works as it should.
Posted on Fri, 19 May 2017 in Python • Tagged with python, pyenv
It can be painful to manage several Python versions on one laptop. However, it is a very common situation. Usually, developers have many projects that require different Python versions. There are a couple of variants to deal with it. My favourite is pyenv with virtualenv plugin. I used to use Homebrew itself to do that, but it wasn't so flexible.
Posted on Fri, 28 Apr 2017 in Other • Tagged with big data, coursera, quora, education
Big Data is a kind of buzzword nowadays. However, it looks that having skills in it can make a huge influence on a programming career. At least, it's true for me. That's why this list appears. It's a unsorted and unfiltered bunch of resources covered "Big Data" topic.
Posted on Sat, 15 Apr 2017 in Reviews • Tagged with book, soft skills
When I started reading "Soft Skills" by John Sonmez, I didn't know what to expect from it. On the one hand, as software engineers, we think that writing beauty code is much more important than knowledge of how to promote and market ourselves. And it is true. Although, It is extremely hard to find an interesting project without marketing and self-promotion. I doubted that someone could explain this thing to developers. I can't say that John does it ideally, but he does it quite well.
Posted on Wed, 05 Apr 2017 in Other • Tagged with mooc, coursera, stepic
There are a lot of massive open online courses (MOOCs) today. Some of them are free, other paid. Such courses were all hype couple years ago. Now when we all come down to earth, there are some questions about that courses: how to add them to my education plan and how to choose the best one.
Posted on Sun, 19 Mar 2017 in Reviews • Tagged with book, operating systems
If you want to know how modern operating systems work, you should read Modern Operating Systems written by Tanenbaum and Bos. It is a well-written book full of actual information about its topic.
Posted on Fri, 17 Feb 2017 in Python • Tagged with enums, python
Enums are less used feature in Python. We as programmers prefer to use weird dicts or lists where enum should be used. Why? Because it is rather new feature and you have to install back port library if you use Python 2.7. However, it's better to use them in many cases.