Andrew Chen recently posted his experiences on ten years of professional blogging. One of his points that I am trying to implement is writing frequency (maintain a regular schedule). I am working to post something everyday to build up the habit of posting. Right now, that mostly consists of links that are interesting to me. Andrew also linked to an older post with 10 tips for starting a professional blog, again there are a number of good points there.

Codeplease.io: Thoughts from a new software engineering manager. I am not a manager, but as a lead engineer, I can identify with the problem of not being able to focus on making code changes due to interruptions.

 

CivikOwl: Case study of launching a Minimum Viable Product, this article describes the launch of a Chrome extension. One of the top takeaways is using video to help spur interest from potential users.

 

 

 

Linux Journal: A delightful 2-part article about analyzing Beatles song lyrics using Linux/Unix utilities. Gives a new meaning to “small pieces, loosely joined” as it relates to software tools.

HP Enterprise: Neat article by Alan Zeichick on programming lessons from 1970s mainframe programming. I did mainframe programming in FORTRAN from 1985-1989, we were not limited by cost as much as Alan talks about, but I can identify with competing with others for CPU time, and being aggravated when getting my output back to see that I made a trivial error which wasted the run.

Gist: Interesting diagram of when to write new code.

 

NYTimes: A terrific photo story of a pencil factory, gives you a better feel for the backstory of I, Pencil.

Book and Ledger: Introduction to forming a business, good overview, especially the part of different business structures (LLC, etc).

IndieHackers: Some links to interviews and info on no-code programming. I think this is fine for people who want to put together strawman products or MVP apps, but I am not sure this would be a good base for a “for-real” business. But – who am I to say this? I am no entrepreneur!

HackerNoon: A story of what a person did over last year to go from zero knowledge of web development and Javascript to becoming a full-time web development employee. There was a little bit of deception to me in that near the end of the article, the author adds that he did have programming experience prior to starting his education effort.  That greatly reduces the effect of rags-to-riches, in my opinion.

Joshua Lyman: What I learned about bootstrapping in 2017 – the article breaks his experience into seven lessons. I liked the details he shared about his stumbles as well as his successes.

 

 

FreeCodeCamp: People getting their first development job in their 30’s, 40’s, and 50’s. This was interesting to me, I am in my mid 50’s, and it is neat to see people applying themselves to learn programming.

 

Some good year-in-review posts:

Aaron Parecki: Lots of different IndieWeb projects listed – he’s busy!

Amber Case: Leader in the area of “calm technology” – again, lots of interesting activities.