The COVID pandemic has impacted many aspects of modern life. To minimize the spread of the virus, we had to quickly adapt to new ways of doing familiar things. We could no longer work as we once did. In order to socially distance ourselves, many of us could no longer go to our office or school. If we could, we worked or learned from home. Because of lockdowns, restaurants, bars, and entertainment venues had to restrict access or shutdown completely. New sources of revenue had to be discovered and new business models had to be invented.
Many of the business…
National Compliment Day was yesterday. I’ve been fortunate to have gotten my share of compliments during my career. I’ve also received many unsolicited suggestions for improvement that were conveyed with various amounts of diplomacy. How suggestions are received are as important, if not more important, as how they are given. The same could be said about compliments.
It’s nice to hear compliments about your appearance. Nice haircut. Sharp looking shirt. Cool socks. It’s nice to hear compliments about your intelligence and competency. Great presentation. That was a clever approach. That’s an insightful perspective.
My favorite compliment that I’ve received was…
Building good habits is the key to building a more intentional life. We begin by defining the kind of person we want to be. If we intend to become a better developer, we must define what that means to us. I like an exercise I picked up at a Stephen Covey seminar I attended quite a few years ago. Imagine yourself at your wake (or some end of life celebration) and choose a number of people to speak. Who would they be and what would you want them to say about you? That becomes the blueprint for the type of…
A colleague recently asked me for recommendations for what he should learn in order to become a software architect. He’s been a software developer for a few years and wanted to see if the architect role would be something he would be interested in. He asked for suggestions on what he could read. That request was the genesis of this article.
Fundamentals of Software Architecture: An Engineering Approach
Mark Richards, Neal Ford
This is a very good, easy to read overview and introduction to software architecture. If you’re only going to read one book on this list, it should probably…
In my previous post, I described the beginning of my journey learning Go. In this post I will dive a little deeper. I continue to find terrific Go resources including this terrific post. The author states that Go is boring but that it’s a good thing. I also love the Go by Example website.
As I mentioned previously, I volunteered to become my daughter’s unofficial TA for her introductory programming course. A recent assignment was to write a Python program that read in stock symbols and prices, save them, and then print them out. …
Every day has become “Blursday”. My colleague AJ introduced that term to me and I find it incredibly appropriate. During this Covid pandemic, working remotely has become the norm for many in the “knowledge worker” ecosystem. Those of us who are fortunate enough to be able to work remotely have probably found it more difficult to balance our work and home lives. The days blur together.
I first worked remotely when I was in grad school. I worked as a software developer for a startup. I was initially thrilled to have the freedom to work from home. Unfortunately, I soon…
I strive to be a lifelong learner and enjoy learning new things. I prefer to learn skills by seeing and working with examples. I especially like learning new programming languages and frameworks and have been wanting to pick up Go for quite a while. There are plenty of great resources to learn Go including the wonderful https://tour.golang.org/ that offers a hands on tour of the Go language. There are also several good books on Go including:
These are wonderful resources. I was eager to…
I have always told my kids to follow Dad’s Rules. When they left house, I would remind them, “Don’t forget Dad’s Rules.” They would usually reply with a grunt, “I know dad.” I would the ask, “OK, what’s rule #3?” At that point they would roll their eyes and answer with a sigh, “Don’t be…” So here are Dad’s Rules.
Rule #1: Always have fun. Life is too short. Enjoy it while you can. Life should be joyful. …
Lorenzo De Leon
Geek, poet, wannabe musician, and anti-racist. Senior Principal at West Monore https://www.westmonroepartners.com
