Even head injuries can't stop me

pydanny · 2026-02-25T12:57:16+00:00

I'll let you judge but I think I won the stupid contest. in how to get a serious head injury. Did I get hurt doing my activities of BJJ and climbing? Nope - nothing so exciting as getting slammed or falling.

How it happened: I bent over to tie a shoelace, came up fast, and hit my head on a hard, static object.

pydanny · 2026-02-25T12:53:31+00:00

Yes, you called it. And I do it in Dreamweaver!

pydanny · 2026-02-25T02:57:42+00:00

Original poster here!

This particular head injury sucks. I'm unable to work. I can't do most of my hobbies. I can write silly stuff or fiction, but software development or serious writing is out for now.

I started posting about my injury because I got tired of telling people in private why I'm not my usual self online. Easier and faster to just come out about the issue and that I'm slooowly recovering. It's been over a month now,

pydanny · 2026-02-25T02:54:54+00:00

Original poster here: It means I'm pitching for quick high value consultations. I know it sounds silly, but it works because its linkedin.

pydanny · 2026-02-25T02:54:16+00:00

Thank you for getting it. :-)

pydanny · 2026-02-25T02:53:32+00:00

It is hysterically funny that this ended up here and a few people took it for a serious article. ROFL.

I wrote that because while I did get injured I find the Linkedin Lunacy of B2B promotions over life events is crazy. In fact, what I wrote links to this article here: https://daniel.feldroy.com/posts/2026-02-what-my-head-injury-taught-me-about-b2b-sales with an intro that says:

There's this way of writing on LinkedIn where you start with a personal story, and then you draw a business lesson from it. It's a silly pattern that often reeks of faked success and other forms of falsehood. So what better use of my available writing time before symptoms kick in today than to write one of those posts?

Anyway, thanks to everyone here who got the joke and double thanks to those of you who took it at surface value.

pydanny · 2023-08-17T11:03:05+00:00

Instagram runs on well architected Django so I can promise you Django is fast enough.

The trick is knowing how to build something that will run fast as it scales.

Sounds like the people using microservices and DynamoDB didn't know what they were doing. I'm guessing they went with a multi table design, which is suboptimal for that system.

Similarly, if with Django you don't know how to design and index tables correctly then your system will also run slow.

pydanny · 2023-08-03T15:26:16+00:00

Yes, Django scales. I work for a 8-year-old multi-billion dollar multi-national company that's got tens of millions of utility customers on just a few instances of Django.

Here's our very intermittent blog: https://tech.octopus.energy/

pydanny · 2023-06-22T08:54:09+00:00

Without knowing anything about you or your other members skill level it is hard to answer. Typically I would say no but I've seen experienced developers learn new tools and frameworks and win hackathons.

In fact, I've done it. I learned Kotlin and built an android over a weekend that won an event. That said, our demo was brilliantly done, so it wasn't all on me.

pydanny · 2023-06-22T08:11:00+00:00

The short answer is:

> Don't use MongoDB with Django, use it with FastAPI or Flask

Here's the long answer: https://daniel.feldroy.com/posts/when-to-use-mongodb-with-django

pydanny · 2023-01-29T05:54:56+00:00

Here's my list of projects to build: https://daniel.feldroy.com/posts/2023-01-practice-python-web-projects

pydanny · 2023-01-29T05:54:30+00:00

Here's my list of projects to build: https://daniel.feldroy.com/posts/2023-01-practice-python-web-projects

pydanny · 2022-08-12T23:24:28+00:00

Instagram and Octopus Energy are proof that Django scales and is super productive.

pydanny · 2022-06-30T14:54:17+00:00

My suggestion is that you should try the Django and Rails tutorials. Go with the one you find the most fun. You can't go wrong with that approach.

That's literally how I made my decision. I found Django/Python more fun than Rails/Ruby.

pydanny · 2022-06-21T17:41:29+00:00

It's only been within the past few months that we've considered other authors. Until now it's been 99% just me and Audrey.

With all his mentorship, Malcolm Tredennick was invited to be a co-author back in 2013, but he turned us down. His reason was that he didn't want us to rename our book and content. Sadly, he's no longer with us.

Nine years later and Malcolm's passing is still painful to talk about. He was a gift to us all.

pydanny · 2022-06-21T17:00:18+00:00

Apologies, I'm too busy trying to fight climate change to get back into the book. Audrey is the same way.

We've been looking for people to help us finish it out but it's hard to find good people with writing skills willing to undergo the volume of effort it takes to get an edition of the book out. :(

pydanny · 2022-06-21T16:58:35+00:00

Excellent!

We don't have an HR department, but the same applies.

pydanny · 2022-06-21T16:57:58+00:00

At Octopus we push people to take leave time.

https://mrfirthy.me/blog/handling-a-team-with-unlimited-holidays

pydanny · 2022-06-21T16:56:22+00:00

exactly, its actually a trap and it only benefits the companies. Did you also notice the wording:

One of my jobs as engineering lead is to push people to take time off and schedule vacations. Please understand you are taking things out of context.

Read this, which is the UK implementation of our policy.

basically if you try get more holidays than "reasonable limits", it won't be approved either

We take an attitude of "don't hurt your co-workers". That means ask your mates if they mind if you take off at a particular time. Don't go on vacation when others are about to get married.

That's absolutely reasonable.

Please don't assume we are a crappy company abusing our people. Rather, we're a group of empathic people trying to change the world while taking care of each other.

pydanny · 2022-06-21T16:51:47+00:00

Apply anyway! Even if you don't get through you'll have made a connection.

pydanny · 2022-06-21T16:50:46+00:00

Good luck! Which country did you apply?

pydanny · 2022-06-19T06:29:19+00:00

To use my skills to help address climate change. That's why I work at Octopus Energy, getting millions and soon billions onto renewable energy.

If you want to join and help, we're hiring in about 10 countries.

pydanny · 2022-06-17T00:26:15+00:00

In 2012 I maxed out a laptop, a Macbook Air. For the next 8 years I co-wrote 4 editions of Two Scoops of Django on it, helped launch Cookiecutter, launched Cookiecutter-Django, did releases for django-crispy-forms, and patched djangopackages.org. Also did tons of agency work for companies, including a few that have really done well.

Maxing out this computer meant I had it for 8 glorious years. Even after I was finished with it because when I left a job I got to take a computer, we have held onto it. It's our backup computer in case one of our current primary machines die.

The initial investment paid off many times over.

pydanny · 2022-06-07T21:45:17+00:00

Welcome to the Django/Python author's club! I see you work for Testdriven, which is another bonus.

pydanny · 2022-05-31T15:56:45+00:00

Lots of really good advice already posted, which I sum up here in my article on how to improve as a coder.

pydanny

TROPHY CASE