Sunil Shenoy

I woke up with this thought yesterday morning. I have been doing a good enough job in one of my roles at work. I have been trying to do my best, but I often feel that someone else would have done a better job at the role than I would.

Part of the role involves running sessions and recording notes of the sessions, and tracking metrics. These parts I enjoy, and I often feel that I do justice to, but there could be more that I could do—following up on tasks, following up on dates and coordinating between the team much better. Follow-ups often would affect how much we can deliver as a team. Getting better at follow-ups is what I should be getting better at. Getting better at follows up is something I need to observe and re-learn.

It’s not a great feeling to wake up with the feeling that you are not good enough. Then, with your brain playing back words in the background of people, you overhear telling others you are not doing all that you could do. Writing down this post, though, has given me time to think and reflect. Take a step back and re-learn.

I wanted to keep my writing streak going and not have a break this year. Get up early on Saturday and Sunday, get my coffee and write the post. I had planned the weekend morning, and I was enjoying the routine. I would look forward to the practice. I remember mentioning this to a few colleagues at work that I look forward to writing on the weekend.

The last week though, I missed the writing streak. I missed getting up early in the morning and writing. I missed my early morning coffee and opening Craft to write the blog post. I missed thinking about how my week has been and picking up a thought, an observation, the thing I had learned, and reading and penning my thoughts down about it.

I did not account for how I would continue my routine when travelling. Last weekend, I was in Auckland, New Zealand, with my team visiting Hobbiton, and the weekend had a few things planned, and time on the laptop was not part of it.

It was a good break. I love that I can travel again. I am grateful to be in a country that allows me to travel and visit another country. I love that I can revisit New Zealand, a country that holds a special place in my heart.

As much I wanted not to break the writing steak, it was a good break. I am happy to return to my weekend schedule, back to getting coffee early in the morning and writing.

If you have been on Twitter a whole lot or have been following the news, you must have heard of cryptocurrency the last few weeks. Elon Musk and Tesla have been words also being spoken quite a lot around the term cryptocurrency.

I read a tweet last week which said that Elon holds too much power in the cryptocurrency world. One tweet and he can add or remove millions of dollars from the cryptocurrency world—too much power in the hands-on one man. The same could be said about many people who hold a lot of stocks of a company in the equity market.

I remember first hearing about bitcoin at least five years ago. Sanat and I had been looking into it, and Sanat went ahead and bought 1 Bitcoin at that time through an Indian cryptocurrency exchange network. If memory serves me right, it cost about Rs. 32000. Around 600 dollars at that time. A considerable amount to invest and only rumours to go by that said Bitcoin would reach $1000. Never had we imagined that it would be worth more than $70000.

I had stayed away from investing in cryptocurrency all these years. I never understood the market or the world surrounding it. I had read a lot about it and understood the concept but was unsure how it actually functioned. From my years of experience, I have learnt that the best way to learn is by doing and putting your money into the things you want to know. I took the plunge yesterday and got myself an account with Binance(referral link).

I have not invested a lot as of now, a few hundred dollars to get my feet wet and understand how trading works. I will be updating here once I learn more.

web development, from what I read online, has become incredibly complicated. We have more compiler tools, more javascript frameworks, more build tools, and an even more complex way of deploying software to servers.

A few years ago, this was not the case. There was no docker, no build tools required and no complications around deploying software to the servers. SFTP to copy files over and single or a few compiled javascript files did the trick with HTML / CSS.

As I wrote the above two paragraphs, I realised I sound like a grumpy person.

Famous internet startups, though, made many people believe that the way they were building software was the way to build software. You needed all these extra tools. They needed all these additional tools to scale up, but most companies started adopting these tools from ground zero, adding a few weeks/months to the development process.

Maybe we should get back to starting small. No build process, single or multiple JS files, simple deployment process and look at adding this to the stack as we face challenges scaling up. Get back to enjoying building software rather than spending time debugging a tool that you could do without at the early stages of development.

There is no great art without passion.

Two of my friends are getting married today to each other.

A company that I love and closely work with launched their new fund yesterday. If you live in India and are looking to invest in mutual funds, check them out.

I have been sleeping for eight-plus hours the whole week and have been feeling great the entire week.

I decided to get back to iOS programming and have started brushing up on my skills.

New beginnings are exciting. New beginnings give you something to look forward to. New beginning make you want to get up early each day and get started.

Maybe we should look at introducing something new into our schedule every few months. A change in routine, a new book, a new tv show, a new way of cooking, a new route to work, a new podcast on the way to work, oat milk instead of full cream milk with your coffee, checking up on a friend each month and having hour-long conversations.

If you have been around me and I am comfortable being around you, at some point or the other, I must have made fun of the situation around and had to have dragged you into the situation I had imagined.

Often, I don’t think about my words hurting someone, but if I feel that my words did end up hurting the other person, I have been quick to apologise and have made a mental note, not to involve the person to keep the conversation upbeat. I had read about standup comedians often trying out their routines with a smaller audience to gauge how the joke fit in before delivering it to the broader audience.

The workplace can be similar. what you think is funny might end up hurting a colleague. You did not mean for your words / actions to be hurting them. You thought the words/actions you did were funny; a few others thought it was funny too, but not the person/people who took offence to your words/actions. When that happens, it is essential to acknowledge that and apologies. Everyone has varied thoughts/feelings about things based on their life experience. I hope that people are forgiving, and if someone did something that offended them, they forgive for the first time. Having said that, not all actions are to be forgiven, though.

Recent changes at Basecamp had me thinking about the above. DHH also wrote about it here. Let it all out. Not everyone at your company will agree with how things were done before. It’s important to acknowledge when this happens. Correct course and move on. I don’t know the whole story of what happened which caused this change at Basecamp. We know the gist of things, as mentioned in the blog post. Not the whole story. As an effect, though, it looks like a lot of people are quitting Basecamp.

I still have conflicting thoughts about what unfolded this week at Basecamp, but I wish everyone the best, including Jason and DHH.

John Swartzwelder, Sage of “The Simpsons

“would things be different when you meet your friends and family after a long gap?” I had thought about this question as we got out from lockdown last year. There was no way of knowing until you met someone you had not met in person for a long time.

It had to be different. I was prepared. Everyone had to change their habits last year. Adapt to the new way of living. Some people had to create a shell around how they dealt with being alone. From looking forward to hanging out with others to now being ok with being alone. Would most people go back to their old way of life before lockdown, or would they become this new person that society had forced onto them? I had read in a book that it takes 21 days to form a habit. We had been in lockdown for more than 21 days. New habits had to start.

Meeting someone after a year and a half, I was surprised this week with how someone I knew for a long time had changed so much. I was expecting the change. I was just not prepared for it. Maybe it was me. I had to have changed to be deal with the changes around me. Things did not feel the same. Would we be rigid around sticking to the habits that formed the weekly schedule, or would we be open to change when friends and family visit?

A recent tv show on Netflix has me hooked. what/if. It’s not the best show I have watched, but it does make for a good watch. I am still on episode 3 as I write this.

What…if you were paid a lot of money to solve all the problems you were going through in your life? What..If you had to do something to get that money? i.e. you had to keep certain secrets from your friends and family. What… if that thing you had to do did not affect your friends and family as much as you, and it slowly ate you’re away from the inside. After all, you are the one who had to go through things as a consequence of getting that money.

If your country offers lotto, at some point, you have had this discussion with your friends. What…if you won the lotto this week? I know I have asked his question to a few friends and I like listening to the plans they have if money was not a problem. I wish everyone gets access to the money they need to get away from the current work/life pattern and move towards the change.

What…if though the money/change you so desired came with a string attached? Strings that slowly ate away at the simple life you lead now. Would you reconsider?

A new language. Spanish or French? A new programming language. Go or Java? A new javascript framework. Ember or Vue? A new cuisine. Japanese or Middle Eastern?

We often stick to the known. Known is comforting. Known does not take a lot of time. Known often comes with its own set of joys. Known is usually excellent.

Why try something new then, you ask? Cause it’s great to experience new things once in a while. Take it from a guy who loves to experience new things. Sometimes new things lead to a change in how you write code, experience food or just in the road you take to work. You don’t have to stick to the change, but experiencing or learning about new things is an experience we should all go through from time to time.

I say this while I sit down today, trying to get better at PHPUnit. It’s refreshing to get back to a testing framework I have no used in a while. So much has changed, yet so much I learnt a time ago remains the same.

Travelling an hour and a half to reach the nearest computer bookshop is one of my earliest memories of getting started with PHP. After the first visit to the bookshop, I would make it a point to go there every month. Most of the pocket money I would get from my parents and aunt were spent on books and music CDs.

I don’t remember much about the book that got me started with PHP, but I remember it was a book published by Oreilly. Programming PHP and MySQL

Every time I was asked how I learnt PHP, my answer was always to read that book. The joy of going through the book is nothing I have experienced as I try out the digital courses these days. My courses joined vs completed ratio on udemy stands at 14:0.

Other books I remember reading when I got started.

Information Architecture for the World Wide Web: Designing Large-Scale Web Sites

Head First PHP & MySQL

High Performance Web Sites

Head First JavaScript Programming

PHP & MySQL: Novice to Ninja, 6th Edition - Reader

I remember trying out driving range at a golf course a few years ago. I remember only that. I don’t know anything else from that experience. I tried the driving range again yesterday, and it was a blast. I wonder why I did not try it sooner. I am trying it again soon.

I remember chatting with a friend about how golf, driving a race car and programming had one thing in common—the focued zone. Once you were on the course, in your car, zoned in on the problem, everything else your brain was thinking about would zone out. All you are thinking of that time is hitting that ball into the hole, the next turn, how to clean up the code or solve the problem in the best possible way. I am sure other professions have the focused zone experience too.

Maybe we should choose more professions and hobbies around things which let us experience the focus zone more often. Not have the brain think about too many things as you work on that one thing.

I got a message today thanking me for keeping the web servers running well the last few months. Being thanked for keeping the system up and running had never happened before. I have been yelled at, questioned and blamed when servers went down, but never for ensuring that it stayed up for a long time.

We remember and document the moments when things go wrong. If there is downtime, people are blamed, the processes are blamed, and tools are blamed for why the system was not working. Very rarely, though, we look through all the above and thank the previously named when things are working well.

Maybe, we should. Thank people when things have been working well. When they have no reason to call you, yet they do. They have no reason to shout you that breakfast, yet they do. They have no reason to plan a trip with you, yet they do.

I did not know what being anxious meant till I travelled to Andaman and Nicobar islands a few years ago. Most of the island has very little network coverage, and your phone constantly scanning for it meant that it was draining the battery—100% to 20% in a few hours.

It’s not great to not have access to the internet when you are in charge of providing support if the system goes down. Not having access to the internet meant that if the servers were to go down or there was a significant issue, it would be a while until the system was back up. Not a good customer experience for a paid SaaS product.

I remember constantly checking my phone to see if there was network coverage to access my emails. If the servers did go down, my email would be alerted. I was constantly thinking about the systems being down rather than being in the moment. I could not wait to get back to the hotel, which had internet available if you stayed around the lobby. Nothing did go wrong in that one week. But the state of being anxious continued through the week.

I went hiking again this week, and as we drove off the road to get to the caves, we lost network coverage. No network for about seven hours. This time though, the experience was a bit different. Even though I was a bit anxious, I was not as worried as before. The system has been stable for quite a while now. I had taken the necessary steps to ensure that the backup system would kick in if the primary failed. Knowing more about DevOps has helped ease my mind about going on holidays without network coverage for a few hours.

Still a while to go so that I can live without internet for a few days.

Sanat sent me this blog post two days ago and said, I should use this as inspiration for one of my blog posts.

It’s bad that the boat is stuck. It’s bad for lots of people and for lots of reasons. I know that. Please don’t think that me liking the stuck boat is an ideological stance. This is not an opinion I have about boats, or about canals, or about things generally being stuck

Having read through the post, I have to say that it is very well written. “The boat is stuck. That’s all there is to it.”

The boat being stuck has caused people to evaluate and look at alternatives. If boat/ship kept smoothly, passing through that canal all the time, not a lot of people would have been educated about the canal. Not a lot of people would have learnt about its importance in the trade route. World over, there would not be people looking for an alternate trade route.

The boat being stuck also reminds me of how we tend to revaluate things when stuck at a particular place. Be it personal(should I keep working at this company, continue being in this relationship, in this suburb), or related to work(should we build redundancy, add more conditional checks, add more logging).

Being stuck is not always a bad thing.

Ideas improve when they build slowly. This constant quest for virality might make good ideas burn 10x as bright, but also 10x as short. Everything just scrolls by, because everything is just mixed together.

Everything from everyone all the time is too much. It’s unnatural and it’s unhealthy. We weren’t built to listen to hundreds if not thousands of people every day.

Tools that let individuals publish, but do not seek to amplify them or force them viral, give us that natural, human scale.

Newsletters. Podcasts. Small-scale forums. Yes, yes, yes.

David makes a very valid point on his Hey World blog. I am not sure if they are calling it the Hey World blog.

We dont need more platforms for sure. I am already behind on my Instagram feed, my twitter feed, my RSS feed and my podcasts. I also dont like that all these platforms come with their own algorithm on how they display content to me. I like my podcast app and my rss feeds a lot more than Twitter and Instagram.

But there is a need to make micro content posting available to a wider audience. More places like micro.blog who make it easier for people to post content. Can some of us work on that please?

But if your music, your graphic design, your website–whatever your work is–isn’t resonating with the market, it might be because you forgot to make it for them.

Empathy is at the heart of design.

“Well, it seems great to me”

Seth Godin always has excellent advice to share on his blog, books and postcast. I only wish I was as consistent or had as much content to share with the world. I am slowly getting better. Someday, wriiting here will be a daily practise.

If you have been part of an interview, this has to be a question that you have been asked. I remember the first time I was asked this question, and I was not prepared. “The next five years?” I would possibly be in a good role within the company was my answer. The answer I thought, had to match the expectations the interviewer was looking for. You had to be part of the company in the next five years. Why would they think of hiring you if you communicated that you had other life plans?

I was asked this question yesterday by a good friend. “You are single right now. Would you be happy the way life is, being single, in the next five years?”. I was back at the same place, the same situation. This time it was about life rather than work. Again, I was not sure how to answer that question. I am not sure what I said yesterday.

Being single has not something that has bothered me. It’s not that I am against relationships. Every relationship that I have been part of has been great. When I happen to bump into the right person the next time, I will give it my 100%. Like I did the last few times. I am grateful to have good friends, good family and good people around me. As long as I am healthy and happy, being single does not worry me much. Healthy and happy.

One of the things you will have to deal with when working on the web application is dealing with software downtime. It somehow just happens and in most cases will happen when you are sleeping or on a weekend when you are away from your computer, whenever you are away from having access to a laptop and never when you are online. That’s just the way it is.

After you have access to a computer, the priority is always to get the application back up. Customers have been waiting to access their data.

After the application is back up, it is essential to know why the application went down. I hope you collect as many logs as possible from the application about metrics you want to track and error logs from the application and the server. I hope those logs are rotated and cleared out frequently. I usually clear out logs after a month.

If you are running a web application, Nginx or apache will usually leave traces of their processes. Your server monitoring software will monitor for CPU and memory spikes and leave traces for why there was a spike. Your application performance monitoring software will have data about transactions that took place just before the software went down. I hope everyone running a web application has these monitoring setups on an application used by many people.

It’s good to know why the application went down. You can build measures around preventing it from happening again. Maybe it goes down again in future, but not for the reason it went down this time. Slowly overtime downtimes are less frequent. A few of my applications are now in the stage where they rarely go down. I still have all the monitoring application running. It’s always good to know the reason why.