February 2017 • Modern Web and Mobile Development and more...

Lately, I have been feverishly organizing my daily life, both personal and professional, trying to find a way to include in it many things! The main focus remains to master React. At this point though, I am beginning to think more seriously and in much longer-term perspective. So, my plan is this:

I need to wake up pretty early and go to bed consequently early too. So, I am currently waking up every day at 6:50 am! I have set a habit for this in HabitBull. Counting a 21-days streak already.

When I get up I read for 2 pomodoros! I am currently reading Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr.! (He is one of my role models along with Elon Musk btw..)

After this I am doing my newly added Chinese lesson with a mobile app called Chinese Skill. It is a really good language learning app, but to be honest: chinese is too hard!!! I am doing a pomodoro every day for chinese!

After this I am spending a pomodoro for Studying Programming! This is where I include video lessons, online courses etc. All learning stuff! I am currently doing this course on Node.js: The Complete Node.js Developer Course (1nd Edition). Very good course so far. And it started from really the basics, like primitives and functions.

While trying to build habits with all these new stuff, I am planning of squeezing in my morning rituals some exercise and meditation! I have already ordered two or three books on meditation! More on this when I get the books and start practicing meditation myself!

And this is the lucky strike!

I was InMailed in my LinkedIn account about a job opening in a company! I decided to give it a try: they had a project and they wanted to use React as the main development platform! Hurrayyyyyy

So, I went to the interview and it got quite technical at once! After a while and without trying to lie about my current level of React skills (I suck at this point!) they decided to proceed with other candidates! But: the developer who interviewed me introduced me to the big boss who is like a god of programming! He immediately understood my programming skills level and proposed we should do a small game in React instead. Mind blowing stuff! Of course, I said yes and after careful thought I told him we would go for Sudoku! We will build this with React, Redux and Reactive! Yayyy!!

Prerequisites

The first step in doing the project is to take on a course in Udacity to better understand JavaScript itself! The course is about the OOP paradigm in JS and it is called: Object-Oriented JavaScript by Hack Reactor! Great material! I skimmed through it and learnt more than I knew for JS alone all these years!

The second step is another lesson this time paid from Codeschool. He told me that he will give me his credentials to finish it! How about this? I haven’t experienced something like this before in my entire life! A complete stranger is offering me mentorship for free! I am more than grateful to him! God bless him eternally!

Finally, we will setup the environment for React and start building Sudoku!

How about that for a change? I think I am the luckiest guy in the planet given this opportunity to learn from the Master himself!

In this final post of the series of time management techniques I am going to talk about and introduce to you Trello. If you do not already know or use it, you should try it out. It is one of the best software tools ever used in my life.

Trello

Trello is a platform for collaborative projects as well as with your own personal projects meaning that you do not have to be part of a team. You can use it for example to organize your week scheduled tasks.

It is based on the notion of Kanban boards! Kanban means “visual card” or “billboard” and that is its main function. It is a tool to help you visualize your project, your product, anything you want. It is a great tool for breaking things in components and track and better understand the flow between moving or dependable parts. It is a great tool for continuous improvement and delivery too.

Why using Trello?

At first, Trello helped me finding a clearer vision of my blog’s theme and purpose! Along with this, I am using it for implementing parts and flows for my side projects. I am currently using it with my friend Lefteris to make a React Native app for a client! (you can read his blog post about using other visualizing tools here)!

Apart from that, I have to say that the work being done to Trello itself is awesome. It is one of the best looking and working web apps I have ever used. Great UI and UX!

Finally, I am using Trello to brainstorm and find my motto for this blog! Soon enough I will!

This is a screenshot taken from the Trello’s website front page!

Lately, I am seeking new opportunities that will enhance my career and improve my personal life. I am especially looking for opportunities that will provide for me more freedom – like working from wherever I want around the globe – and will open new doors and adventures!

While browsing the net for such opportunities I discovered TopTal job ads in StackOverflow! Two of them to be precise:

React.js Developer and Drupal Developer!

Firstly, I really think I am a good fit for these two jobs! I am currently working extensively with Drupal 7 and coping with Frontend frameworks like AngularJS. I am trying really hard to keep up to date with the latest technologies. Recently, I started working with ReactJS. My plan is to integrate it to Drupal CMS. Decoupled Drupal that is. I tried this with Angular with good results. The biggest problem was SEO! But, from what I hear there is server-side rendering for React! Great stuff!

Secondly, I saw that TopTal is backed by investors like Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz and Adam D’Angelo!!! Oh man, how about that? I love the culture of high-quality and constant improvement too. I love giving the best of me and improving all the time! I despise mediocrity and I love a good challenge! The company is also at San Francisco. I do not know why, but this city is like an El Dorado to me, mythical! I will be visiting it pretty soon! At first chance!!! ASAP!!!

Thirdly, I love the idea of being a freelance and manage my own future. I have some hands-on experience in small business (co-founder), I studied Business administration and I love reading, learning and creating stuff. I am actively looking for ways to implement business ideas. I am trying hard to establish my own successful company. I want to make a difference to the world! I want to help people solve their problems, I want to be useful in massive scale! And, lastly, I want to make my way out of the rat race and into freedom!

Finally, there is a personal desire for applying to your company! It is something that transcends me! It is that I want to make my companion happy. Have kids with her and have time to watch them grow and help them become better persons than I am or will ever be!

I love reading books! Especially, philosophy. During my youth, I built a huge library consisting mainly of philosophy books of all times. Some of the writers that scarred my young mind and soul are Frederich Nietzsche, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Marquis de Sade, Plato and many more. Therefore, I absolutely recommend to any of you to start reading books ASAP if you don’t practice it regularly already.

There are more serious reasons why reading is useful to you apart from pleasurable. Warren Buffett is one of the most formidable readers on the planet! Here is what he says about this noble pastime:

The CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, when asked once about the key to success, pointed to a stack of books and said, “Read 500 pages like this every day. That’s how knowledge works. It builds up, like compound interest. All of you can do it, but I guarantee not many of you will do it.”

*taken from here

If someone wants to get rich, eventually he has to start reading like crazy! START NOW!

Well, moreover I have read tons of blog articles suggesting that someone should keep a record of the books he reads, so he can measure his progress. So, I decided to jot down any books I will read from now on. In this article though I will list only the books I read during the last 4-5 months and up to this moment. Of course, all of these are listed by memory. Sigh… I wish I had known better, but let’s keep a positive attitude! At least, I have read a lot!!

Programming books

The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master
Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship ( Uncle Bob at his best! Made me rethink of my coding style and my principles and standards. Every time I write a function I feel guilty after reading this book! Comments should be banned from code forever! Talking about great revelations and moments of enlightment! MUST READ! )
Soft Skills: The software developer’s life manual ( This book started it all! It is my main inspiration for this blog and I think it changed my career in general and in many ways! DEFINITELY READ THIS! )
JavaScript: The Good Parts ( This is an old-time classic by the creator of JSON )

Entrepreneurship books

How to Win Friends & Influence People ( One of the greatest books I have ever read in my lifetime is the Dale Carnegie’s book on human relationships! It is more than a mere reading! I think of it as a life guide and I decided to follow and practice all the principles included in this book from now on as much as I can! )
Rich Dad Poor Dad: What The Rich Teach Their Kids About Money That the Poor and Middle Class Do Not!
The Millionaire Fastlane: Crack the Code to Wealth and Live Rich for a Lifetime ( This book broadened my entrepreneurial eyesight I would say in many ways! IMPORTANT NOTE: The author of this book despises “Two dads” Kiyusaki because he believes that he did not get rich because of real estate as he says but from the book and the games he created! He thinks he is a fraud! To be honest after reading both books Kiyosaki’s book seems too out of place, chaotic and irrelevant! )
The 33 Strategies of War (Joost Elffers Books) ( Robert Greene in a full of historical tales and teachings! )
Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future ( This book was so interesting that I read it all while travelling by plane! )
The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles ( Extremely interesting approach by the author of the infamous “Gates of Fire: An Epic Novel of the Battle of Thermopylae“. This one though is non-fiction! Interesting notion of “Resistance”! )
The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers ( How business can be SUPER HARD stuff!! )

All in all, these books altered my perspective about my job and more important about my life! Keep reading like crazy! Do not stop learning! I sure promise not to!

I had some time ago one of the most, probably THE most exciting and nice job interview in my whole life!

Near the end of the interview I had to solve some interesting JS problems.

One of them was to write a function which validates both of these:

console.log(sum(2,3));

console.log(sum(2)(3));

The solution is this:

function sum(a,c) {

   if (c !== undefined) {

       return a + c;

   }

   return function(b) {

         return a + b;

    } 

}

If you ask me, this is a really nice little exercise!!

The second one was a for loop like this:

for (var i = 0; i < 5; i++) {

    setTimeout(function() {console.log(i);}, i * 1000);

}

This exercise had to be implemented in order to print i like this:

The solution?

Using ES6 change var to let. Or, use a closure like this:

for (var i = 0; i < 5; i++) {

    (function(a){
        setTimeout(function() {console.log(a);}, a * 1000);
    })(i);

}

This had to implement block scope! Nice huh?

PS: Thank you Nicolas for the most interesting interview ever! He used a tool like this here: https://coderpad.io! Super cool stuff!

UPDATE: Of course, I did not pass to the next round, I blew it somehow! But, I earned an important insight out of this interview! I NEED TO STUDY JS MORE. Pure JS that is… no frameworks, no libraries! Yep! Lesson learnt!

I have Ubuntu 15.04 installed in my 64-bit laptop. I had already installed Android Studio and ran into many errors doing so! I do not think I did something weird myself because I challenged some colleagues to install it too. They had to solve quite a few errors themselves! I had some problems with updating it too. But unfortunately, I didn’t record them. Next time I will be more thorough about that!

So, I hurriedly went through the installation page for React Native. After some time installing all other dependencies and stuff I tried to install Watchman too.

Following the instructions in Watchman installation page my make command crashed with an error like:

pywatchman/bser.c:31:20: fatal error: Python.h: No such file or directory

After a quick google search I found out the problem! I had to install a Python package which was python-dev

sudo apt-get install python-dev

and problem solved!

Secondly, I had an error in AVD Manager after starting my emulator that KVM is not installed etc.

The solution? I had to enable Visualization technology in bios settings.

Finally, I got this error, so I ran:

 react native start

and everything worked!

Excuse my sloppiness but these are some quick notes I took long ago and guess what! Yeah, I cannot remember exactly what I did and I am cursing myself for not writing down more details about them which might help other fellow devs! Sigh… next time I will do it better!

PS: there is the troubleshooting page which may have something helpful for you, too!

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2017 / 02

Lucky strike

And this is the lucky strike!

Prerequisites

Mentally prepare: time management techniques continued again (last time hopefully)

Trello

Why using Trello?

Why TopTal?

2016 Books list (and up to this moment)

Programming books

Entrepreneurship books

JavaScript inquiries

Getting started with React Native: installing Watchman and other problems

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