Sunil Shenoy

What did I do yesterday? Yesterday felt like a blur. When I started to think about everything I have done in the last ten weeks, I don’t remember most of it. I should start to journal my days.

New South Wales in Australia has been under lockdown for ten weeks now. I remember having grand plans when the lockdown started. I wanted to build an app. I wanted to create an API, and I wanted to launch a small app by the time we got out of lockdown in two weeks, then. In the tenth week and with three more weeks to go, I still have not made much progress. I got distracted. Other things took priority, and working on the app was no longer on top of the list.

We all have twenty-four hours. Sleep, food, work takes out sixteen to seventeen hours on most days. There is exercise and then catching up with friends and family. To get to something outside of these top 5 activities means that I need to be extra cautious of my time scheduled for other activities. Maybe I don’t want it as badly. If I did, it would be part of the top 5 activities. We all have that twenty-four hours in a day. What activities are you giving priority to?

I remember recording my first podcast episode last year. I re-recorded at least ten times. I knew you could edit podcasts, but I did not know how to. I wanted to get it right and get it right without having to edit.

After the second episode, though, I knew the number of retakes was just not going to cut it anymore. I had to learn how to edit. I spent one weekend going through a few tutorials on editing podcasts, and I was ready to record again. This time, I could make mistakes while recording. I could blabber, I could tell myself that I needed to edit this part out. I was talking to my future self, and my future self would thank me for learning how to edit.

Sanat and I recorded again yesterday. Sanat has gotten good at editing podcasts now. Power of iPad and Ferrite descript from what I am told. We made many mistakes. Lots of ums and ahs and … “I got nothing”… “I lost my chain of thought here”.

This morning, it got me thinking how difficult it is to record live or present in front of a live audience. When you don’t get a chance to leave notes for your future self. Where losing chain of thought is not an option. But, for those who present to a live audience and do it well, I have a newfound appreciation for that skill.

You don’t have to take action on every idea. You can make a decision without knowing every last detail and option. It’s okay if you don’t finish every book you start. You don’t have to respond to every email you receive. There’s no need to push every project to the max. Having breathing room — a little bit left over — is perfectly acceptable. In fact… I would argue that it’s preferred.

Shawn Blanc - 2x2: Do Less

A much-needed reminder for today. Rather than planning something for every day, have off days. We all need to have some off days. Not think about work. Not think about exercise. Days when we Move away from Focus mode and switch to “Do Not Disturb While Driving” mode.

Until a certain number of items, lists are helpful. Are you launching something new or moving something from one place to another? Create a list. It helps you ensure that you don’t miss things critical on that day. On the D day, when there are many thoughts in your mind, lists can be the calm you need.

To capture data to day activities, lists are not always helpful unless you have a system for when things go out. Unless you do, I would not recommend using a list-based system to track your to-do list.

If the rate at which new items are added to the list does not match the rate at which things are ticked off, lists can be a daunting place to return. That is why most to-do lists app fail for me. That is why most bug tracking apps have failed for me.

a friend asked me this yesterday. “why are you learning a new programming language?” I had to stop and think about this for a while.

I have been working with the LAMP stack from the time I started building software. I have tried different languages in between. Ruby(on Rails), Python, Node.js and a few other flavours of JS frameworks are other languages I tried in between based on project requirements. I never got a chance to spend a lot of time with these other languages, though.

There are quite a lot of programming languages available to learn out there. Should I deep dive into Python or Ruby that I have spent time with before? or learn something new? These questions have been a question on my mind for a few weeks now. I never really liked the other languages that much, though. I enjoyed working with C and C++, and PHP was a natural extension to these languages.

Go from what I read online, “is modern C language”.

Why learn something new, though? To break away from the routine. To decide if the next language is something I also want to spend more time with. After spending more than nine years with PHP, I now feel ready to pick up a few other languages that I want to learn. Keep the brain active.

I look forward to the next challenge. PHP will always be a language that I spend a lot of time with(for now), but from now on, I want to challenge myself to learn a new language every year. This year is the year of Go.

If your profession or passion involves writing code, this thought has entered your mind sometimes or the other as you shared the code you wrote with your colleagues or pushed the code onto Github as a public repository.

I have never participated in a pair programming exercise so far. From what I heard from a few people who have participated in pair programming exercises, the experience has not been good. After the activity, they felt that even though they got the solution right, the person on the other side judged them for how they went about writing the code. The code compiled well and worked but was not written the way the other person had expected it to be written.

“You did not use the right design pattern”, “did not abstract the code well enough”, “did not use an inbuilt function and went about duplicating an inbuilt method”.

Reviewing code well is challenging. Writing code well is challenging. But, we are all getting better at the craft the more time we spend at this.

“Code is Poetry” — WordPress coined this phrase and has it on its website. Code is indeed poetry. Some people are spending a lot of time getting better at writing poetry. Some write poetry to make a living and not because they feel as passionate about it.

How many blog posts did you publish this week?

How many steps did you walk today or this week?

How many times did you exercise today or go biking?

How many hours did you spend at work this week?

How many bugs did you fix this week?

How many tv shows did you watch this week?

How many meetings were you part of this week where you did not speak?

How many hours did you spend on Instagram or Facebook this week?

How much screen time did you have this week?

There are so many things to measure on a day to day basis. Maybe we could also start working towards measuring these:

how many people did you talk to today or this week?

How many people did you make smile today or this week?

How much time did you spend today or this week working on things where time felt like a blur?

How many times this week did you say no to the extra sugar/fat you have been trying to avoid?

Can we start measuring and spending more time on these too?

Maybe these don’t need to be episodes. We never thought about the podcast having a season, yet we addressed the first two recordings as episode 1 and episode 2. episode 3 is where it stops. Just conversations. we still need a name for the podcast, though, or maybe we can call it “Sanat and Sunil’s Podcast”

We spoke about “mutton curry” - The best thing that happened to you this week, Deep Work, Maker’s Schedule and iOS 15 focus mode.

Sanat also updated the recording to now have an Intro 🎉

It keeps getting better.

I sent this word to a friend twice yesterday as I saw a video he had sent. The video was of a person refusing to get out of Uber car when instructed by the driver, who felt that he was being scammed.

I have always been interested in human behaviour. I could spend hours reading and learning more about human behaviour.

What do you do when you are no longer in control of the environment you are in? The example above was the Uber drivers car. It could be your workplace, a meeting you are part of or at a party. How do you deal with the situation? Do you walk away, confront or stay silent?

Depending on the kind of person you are, your reaction to the situation would vary. Likewise, depending on the place you are at, the response to the problem would vary. After a few years of being in cases like this, I would recommend dealing with the situation the way the driver did. Stay calm and walk away. It’s seldom worth going the other way of being angry and getting into an argument/fight.

I have been reading Atomic Habits for a few weeks now. If you are deciding on which book to pick up next to read, I would recommend reading this one.

Goodreads has this paragraph about the book.

If you’re having trouble changing your habits, the problem isn’t you. The problem is your system. Bad habits repeat themselves again and again not because you don’t want to change, but because you have the wrong system for change. You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems. Here, you’ll get a proven system that can take you to new heights.

As I read through the book, the advice felt familiar to what I had read earlier. In other books and online articles. “Want to build habits? Make it part of your schedule. Daily or weekly. Stick to it”.

Want to get better at writing? Write every weekend or every second day. You don’t have to publish everything that you write. Write. You don’t have to write a few paragraphs, a few words perhaps.

Want to lose weight? Cut out a few calories from your diet every week. Start exercising for ten minutes, three days a week, maybe two days. Commit to this cut calories/exercise routine.

These are general advices. But if you have a system around your goal and stick to it long enough, you will slowly inch towards your goal. Takes a while, though, and that’s a significant problem.

A follow-up post what I wrote yesterday. When I started writing down my thoughts yesterday, somehow, the topic drifted from me venting towards sopranos. I am always fascinated with how the brain goes from one topic to the other. So I let the brain do its thing.

“four more weeks”. I had this rant with a few colleagues this week on a few zoom calls. I was done with the whole lockdown and being at home. I had done this before. Last year when Covid-19 made its way to Australia, NSW was not in lockdown. Everyone was encouraged to stay at home and stay at home, I did.

For three whole months. Alone in an apartment. It’s fascinating to see how your thoughts wander from one thing to another when you are alone in an apartment for three months. Yes, you have Zoom and Whatsapp calls, but that was not me. It worked the first month, but I was done depending on a screen to interact with people after a month. I was also done being at home all the time. I have never been the kind of person who stays at home for long.

This last year, I have hardly spent any time indoors. After last years experience of being indoors all the time, it was almost like I made a pact with myself to go exploring and visiting places / doing things as much as I could. And that I did to my heart’s content.

It was good, though, the first month of being indoors. I started on a positive note. “a week at home”. I got a whole lot of things done. I had plans for a week. When things did not work out well for NSW, I had plans for two weeks, and then three and four weeks. I could even make plans for what I wanted to get done in the next four weeks of being indoors. It’s just that I am tired of being indoors. I understand why the government is making us stay indoors, and I am more than happy to comply. It’s just that I cant wait to go outside, meet new people, exercise at my gym, visit new places.

Boy, it feels good to vent.

I came across this thread on Reddit this week. “Four more weeks. Fuck positivity, I’m starting a negativity thread”. If you are on Reddit and have some time to spare, I would recommend giving it a read.

I rarely write about anything negative here. It’s not me, and I tell everyone around me to not have negative thoughts. It’s good to vent, though. It’s good to write about the things that are bothering you. Something about putting your thoughts down on a digital notepad or in a diary: it has helped me quite a lot before. I remember reading this post by Marco Arment a few years ago, and it instantly resonated with me “Thank you, internet”. I remember writing a post based on this post, but I lost that post thanks to moving my blog from one platform to the other.

I have been watching Sopranos the last few weeks and following Sopranos as a topic on Twitter.

men will watch tony soprano go to therapy for 6 seasons instead of going to therapy themselves

— Haley OC (@MILFWEEED) July 17, 2021

One of the main characters, Tony Soprano, goes to visit his therapist in almost every episode I have seen so far. To talk about what he has on his mind and listen to what the therapist has to say. It’s good to vent. Let your thoughts out. Maybe you are talking about it with your friends or your diary, writing it on a blog, or visiting a therapist to talk about it. Whatever works best for you. I hope you are taking care of yourself.

I was reading through The State of Developer Ecosystem 2021 yesterday. If you are a software developer, I would recommend reading through the report.

This report presents the combined results of the fifth annual Developer Ecosystem Survey conducted by JetBrains. 31,743 developers from 183 countries or regions helped us map the landscape of the developer community.

My takeaways after reading this report were:

• Need to pay attention to developing Javascript-based apps.
• GraphQL. I should have paid more attention to GraphQL and building APIs using GraphQL.
• TypeScript. My next project needs to be built using TypeScript.
• Go - Look at building a few microservices using Go this year.
• Since I work with PHP, look at moving more apps(previous and current) to version 8 and start writing tests using PHPUnit or Pest.

I had almost two hours of discussion yesterday about tribe and its importance. I remember reading this book by Seth Godin named “Tribes” in 2009. However, I don’t remember a lot about the book, and it was great to spend a few minutes this morning reading reviews about the book.

If we have ideals aligned with the bettering of people’s lives, aren’t we obligated to try our hands at doing so?

Review of “Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us” by Seth Godin

I also liked this review of the book

Seth’s basic premise is that a tribe is any group of people, large or small, that is connected to one another, a leader, and an idea. The Internet has eliminated the barriers of geography, cost, and time. All these tribes need is leadership.

That’s where you come in.

Book Review Friday: Tribes by Seth Godin

From my discussions last night, I remember telling my friend that I wish we all belong to a few tribes we associate with. If we are passionate about certain things, we owe it to others to lead certain tribes.

Breakups are hard. Having been through a few now, I only understand a few things of what it takes to get over one. I hope no one has to go through one.

A friend on Friday told me about one of his friends who committed suicide by hanging himself. While talking to another friend about this, he asked if it was because of a breakup. I was not sure. Police did find a note in his diary which said: “this life has no meaning”. What the person went through before choosing to end their life is only something they know.

I build software for a living and don’t have much knowledge about human psychology. After every breakup, though, I remember reading a lot about what a person goes through and the different signals and emotions your brain has to process. Sometimes you win. Sometimes it’s the other way around. I have a few been told and read about post-breakup suicide stories, though, and it has made me extremely sad to hear about them.

Breakups are tough. If you are going through one and reading this, believe me, it does get better. Each day choose to focus on yourself. A lot of people out there are waiting to meet and hear about you. Maybe you don’t find them right away. Perhaps it takes a few months or a few years. Choose you. 🤗

Do you have a routine? The first thing you do after you wake up? Is it different on weekends vs weekdays, or is it always the same?

Does this routine need a change? If you have not been feeling the best through the day for a few days now, maybe a change in routine would help. On the other hand, if the change in routine does not help, perhaps the change you chose to make was not the correct change? For example, running instead of going to the gym, tea instead of coffee the first thing after you wake up, writing instead of reading, yoga instead of jumping on Instagram as soon you wake up. There are so many different choices to choose from.

Or maybe you don’t need a routine. It could be some different each day. Why not?

My routine during weekdays is different from weekends. Weekdays it’s all about exercise; at least it was before the lockdown. Weekends are more about writing while sipping on good coffee and listening to good music. These things I look forward to and consider twice before trading for something else.

You can build software really quickly.

Building well thought out, robust, well tested, performant, scalable, accessible software?

That takes a surprising amount of time.

No matter how talented your team is.

— Laurie (@laurieontech) July 8, 2021

When I initially started to build software, I wondered what so many people who worked at the company did. Why did Twitter need 100s of people to maintain their API? Why does PlentyofFish have 100 employees for being a dating site? The naive me did not understand what it takes to build and maintain software.

After working in the software industry for more than ten years now, I can see what it takes to build a well thought, robust and scalable software. However, knowing the scale and reach of some of the products, I now feel fewer engineers work in these companies.

We need more people to join the brigade to build well thought out software. So apply and join that team in the company that you admire.

Before I went to get my coffee today, I was thinking about what to write about here. I must have mentioned this before, but writing early morning on Saturday and Sunday is something I have enjoyed.

The barista at the cafe asked me, “what’s the best thing that happened to you this week?”. It got me thinking for a few seconds, and my mind racing to think of all things that happened from Monday to Friday. I told him about my friend James cooking some mutton curry for me. It was great, and it was nice of James to cook a meal I had been craving for a few days. I am so grateful to have good friends in my life.

It also got me thinking of all the other things I did this week. With NSW still being in lockdown, other than the trip to the cafes downstairs and the grocery store, I have been home most of the time. Computer, TV, food and conversations with friends close by and over Whatsapp.

My chat conversations tell me I was sad on Monday cause of some more people leaving the organisation. I also had to cancel my trip to Cairns cause of the lockdown 😢. We had our OKR boards on Tuesday, so the first half was spent on that and the second half debugging an issue I was working on. Wednesday was a quiet day, focused on updating a node.js Lambda function. I have been enjoying working on node.js. Thursday was the same, with the highlight of the week, mutton curry 😋. Friday, again node.js testing and our companies showcase over Zoom in the second half. Yesterday, I also learnt about the worlds largest sailing yacht.

I am going to make this a regular thing going forward. So, Saturday morning, think about the best thing that happened to me this week. It’s been a fun exercise.

I had this talk for the second time this week. A friend wanted to build a learning management system to host videos/courses they have been working on while granting access to only a selected few who pay them on a weekly or monthly basis.

Six years ago, I would jump to the opportunity to build a learning management system to learn how to create an LMS and a chance to spend more time programming and setting up servers. Now, though, I know how long it takes to build a new application and all the problems you encounter when setting up a new system from scratch.

When you have an idea and the urge to present the picture, I recommend using an already existing tool. It might not match your requirement 100%, but if it does 50% of what you want it to do, signup, upload content and start marketing. Does it cost a few $$ to pay for the product? It sure does. But a lot less than paying someone to build, host and maintain the product. When you reach a particular scale, though, and when that 50% mark does not cut it anymore, look at building your software.

As of now, I recommend Podia(affiliate link) as a way to get started, but a quick google search for Podia alternatives should give you a few more options. Good luck.