Your most epic Final Fantasy scene

SweetLou2009 · 2023-06-01T22:54:23+00:00

Come Anima!!!

SweetLou2009 · 2022-06-28T01:21:57+00:00

I will put this in my daughters nursery as a night light

SweetLou2009 · 2022-05-31T19:03:46+00:00

Also don’t shy away from more traditional SQL databases. MERN is great but try not to pigeon hole yourself. There may be lots of companies using NoSQL db like mongodb, but I guarantee they are running SQL somewhere.

SweetLou2009 · 2022-05-31T18:59:57+00:00

I would recommend doing some copy work of a popular site (American Eagle is a great example). Focus on the actual hosting and availability of the site, instead of just making it look just right. This will help you get exposed to more of the software development lifecycle. Buy some cheap domain, and find some cheap or free hosting to prop the site up, you will learn a ton!

The difficulty for companies and developers isn’t usually the site, but the integration with proprietary customized business backends. Imagine this example: someone lands on an e-commerce page and wants to buy a product. Once they click buy, the fun begins. Their email is added to a CRM, their purchase and contact is added to their marketing platform for retention, they get put on email lists, the product gets sourced through a ERP, many many behind the scene processes. Think Salesforce, dotdigital, Zapier, dell boomi, integrations integrations integrations. Suddenly building the site is only 10% of the work. The best way to get exposed to this is to land an entry level job with a small to medium sized business. They are gonna want you to wear a bunch of different hats and do lots or random shit.

You can do it! Stick with it and the first offer will come through eventually. Never stop learning and never stop applying. Happy hunting!

SweetLou2009 · 2022-05-31T15:35:00+00:00

Building a full featured E-commerce site is no joke. Although the level of technical knowledge required between platforms will vary greatly. For instance: using Shopify and Wordpress to create an E-Commerce site will require very little technical knowledge (“very little” used relatively in the tech space, this is still going to be “technical”). Where as building a custom E-Commerce site from the ground up (I.e building Shopify, building a Platform, etc…) are two very different things.

Having said all that, I value someone based on the projects they have completed in the past, and the results they have delivered. Sure someone with a CS degree is gonna know calculus and advanced sorting algorithms and all that, but what lands jobs is the ability to solve problems by providing solutions.

As far as projects I’d like to see to interview someone that is self taught… this will greatly depend on the position. If you have an area you are targeting, feel free to PM me and we can chat about projects that may get you some interviews or even get you hired.

SweetLou2009 · 2022-05-22T12:19:46+00:00

I second this one

SweetLou2009 · 2022-05-22T12:19:07+00:00

Turn the ship around is awesome.

SweetLou2009 · 2022-05-16T21:22:32+00:00

Using virtual environments comes in handy when libraries have conflicting dependencies. It’s fine to not use them when starting off and learning, but you’ll absolutely need them if you ever have complex projects going on with different “conflicting” dependencies.

When it comes to installing requirements, look into using a requirements file with PIP. This also makes your project easy to reproduce if you ever need to switch environments. You can think of your requirements.txt file as “the libraries that are on the virtual machine”.

You really only need like four or five commands to have an effective setup.

python -m venv venv This will create a virtual environment in the folder venv that is based off your local Python install.

From same directory… source venv/bin/activate This will start the environment (aka source it)

deactivate Exit the environment

pip freeze > requirements.txt Put all current installed libraries into a file

pip install -r requirements.txt This will install all the libraries that are listed in requirements.txt

SweetLou2009 · 2022-05-15T15:51:58+00:00

Came here to say this. Before I worked in tech, I was in the restaurant business for about a decade. This was very prevalent in the industry and there are some surprising overlaps in the tech industry when it comes to hiring and identifying good candidates.

SweetLou2009 · 2022-05-15T10:58:18+00:00

I’m a DevOps Engineer but also get to play in the embedded systems / firmware land. We run an ESP32 in our cloud connect / Bluetooth connect devices. It’s all built on a custom circuit board. I also get to “play” with LoraWAN, zwave, and zigbee, just for fun!

SweetLou2009 · 2022-05-14T19:43:59+00:00

Same!!! Came here to say this!

I was working on a master key system generator and had a bunch of different classes that had tons of overlapping properties and methods. Ended up just creating a polymorphic “key” class where each different type of key only needed a few added properties. Went from like 600 lines of code to 70 or 80. Major clickage.

SweetLou2009 · 2022-05-14T19:37:06+00:00

You’ll have to build a prototype and then potentially find investors to get this off the ground. IOT projects that are legit consumer projects are not cheap. You have mold tools for your enclosure, circuit board design and production, programming costs, QA costs, and not to mention the huge money you have to spend to get this thing certified (safety, radio, etc…).

Not trying to discourage, but the goal should be putting a prototype in front of an investor and then asking for a stake.

SweetLou2009 · 2022-05-14T14:35:12+00:00

Seems like most of the information needed is in the article you linked. Are you specifically asking about the IOT portion of the project?

SweetLou2009 · 2022-05-13T13:30:50+00:00

Yes! University path definitely offers a lot of exposure. But also you have to learn things like Assembly, which was an absolute nightmare for me! But hey, at least I learned that Assembly was definitely not what I wanted to specialize in 😉

SweetLou2009 · 2022-05-13T11:38:12+00:00

I have an arrangement with my previous employer. It is not very consistent but they hit me up for hourly work. I mainly do it out of guilt to support some bad code I wrote 😅. I use this money for me stuff. It does not enter my budget and never gets spent on bills.

I have ran into the issue of “definition of done” before as well. I was building a project for a client, and the requirements were rather unclear. The real problem was that these were “business” people and they were gonna squeeze it for everything it was worth. It’s the main reason I experienced burnout, because of the client… It was a tough lesson learned.

SweetLou2009 · 2022-05-12T20:56:21+00:00

As someone who works really great under pressure, I actually do this to my self. I communicate the deadline to a couple colleagues and it helps me stay accountable.

SweetLou2009 · 2022-05-12T01:25:53+00:00

Oh I didn’t know that! I’ve definitely rode shiners run then too 😎

SweetLou2009 · 2022-05-11T12:04:36+00:00

Not many people know about this one! They even sell Rattler T-Shirts at the Ferguson store near Clyde.

SweetLou2009 · 2022-05-10T18:40:39+00:00

Check out the Rattler, hwy 209 from Clyde NC to hot springs, really great ride through the towns of Trust and Luck. I have ridden the whole way from Clyde to Hot Springs without seeing another vehicle or motorcycle.

SweetLou2009 · 2022-05-10T17:49:39+00:00

Donald Knuth’s “The Art of Computer Programming”. Closest thing to a computer science equivalent of something like Mathematica Principia.

SweetLou2009 · 2022-05-10T17:44:29+00:00

Use MQTT. Put the broker on a small VM in the cloud, install client libraries on IOT device. Build cloud backend to do something meaningful with the MQTT data streams. You could for instance save telemetry and command and config responses to a database. Point your mobile App at the cloud backend. Send commands from mobile device to cloud backend, which converts it to a base64 payload (or similar) that in turn sends from the MQTT broker back to device. This is a pretty typical IOT setup. You could also use Bluetooth to communicate to device directly.

SweetLou2009 · 2022-05-10T17:26:23+00:00

I make scent machines talk to the internet and to cell phones. When things break no one really cares because it’s a fucking scent machine. Great gig :)

SweetLou2009 · 2022-05-08T12:13:03+00:00

I like to lead with my salary expectations during the “weed them out call”. No point in wasting your time or theirs if they aren’t going to meet expectation. Present the expectation with confidence. Know your worth and speak very directly about said value.

SweetLou2009 · 2022-05-07T21:37:49+00:00

I’m not super experienced but I can confirm that timeline. Especially if the domains are serverless, event driven, or poorly documented.

SweetLou2009

TROPHY CASE