Greetings! Sometimes I just need to open my text editor and write away some thoughts.
I have been listening to a podcast where a famous programmer is interviewed, and one question was if he had any advice for younger people, as he answered (in his own words):
“Prepare yourself for opportunities, by learning tools, do not push a specific goal”.
And that got me thinking about the programming languages and tools I use, If I am prepared for the world or not.
For most of my professional career, I have been thinking: “I am gonna be the best at this specific set of tools/paradigms and find opportunities around that.”, this is nothing new to any software developer, as hiring consultants usually find people with specific experience on a set of tools. (Kinda talks about how broken the system is)
From now on, I am gonna see every tool as it is, and just be open to any opportunity.
Can I make a program that reads an image and turns it into text? - Yes, I can use Python and import the pytesseract package.
Can I create a simple API in the shortest time possible. ? - Yes, I can use Node and Express for that.
Do I need a reliable database for this API ? - I can use Postgre.
And so on. No more premature optimization, or judgment over tools.
I still prefer free and open-source tools over proprietary ones though.
My thoughts on people migrating to the fediverse
The mastodon instance I am in has had a huge amount of people joining in lately, mostly because of people being unhappy with Twitter management.
I feel like the fediverse is a more natural evolution of the web compared to huge monolitic websites that are own by few companies.
If you wanna join in the conversation on the fediverse, please read my article on how to get started with Mastodon.
Writing a bookmark manager
Note: There is a way to cross-sync between devices using xbrowsersync, but I wanted to go my own road.
I am constantly roaming between devices, mainly desktop computer, laptop and recently, mobile.
I use two web browsers, Mozilla Firefox as my main one on desktop and laptop, and Brave on my phone.
It is often that I find an insteresting article and I want to save it, as most people, I used bookmarks and sync for this.
Using Go as a back-end and a simple web front-end with no libraries, I decided to write my own bookmark manager: rimi
I also had a funny problem with Go lang managing arrays, althought it was mostly me assuming how something works instead of actually finding out how it does.
Contributing to an open source project: Fosscord
If you are interested in a decentralized chat, you should check IRC or Matrix
Fosscord is a project to re-implement the back-end and front-end of the popular proprietary chat application Discord.
I have been quite active on their Discord server and had conversations with one of the main maintainers.
They are migrating their code base from a backend that uses Node + TypeScript to a C# (Dotnet) service.
This is super interesting for me because at work I am faced with multiple challenges using the same technologies.
Setting free my dotfiles
The repo was created 3 years ago and was moved around computers and private repo providers.
Now it is time to set them free, so they can see the light.
You can now check out my dotfiles here
Those are all the updates for now, take care!