This is the first in a series of “praise of a tool” blog posts. You know that feeling when a tool (or library, framework, or even a song or movie) feels so cool that you just have to shout about it to the entire world? Today, for me, it’s the “Observable Framework.” By the way, I’m not sure how many articles this series will have… Another tool I’m thinking of praising is “mermaid.js,” but I’m not sure if I’ll have “enough words” for a full article about it. In case I don’t, just know this: mermaid.js is great! But let’s get back to today’s star – the Observable Framework.

For a software engineer, the code editor is not merely a window where he/she types text; it’s much more than that. A code editor for a coder is like air for a living being, like a tasty dessert for coffee, like a good dog - it’s always there for you. It’s hard to overestimate the importance of a text editing tool when we, developers, spend most of our time using it. The code editor is our primary tool (well, maybe right after the brain). So, let’s talk about it a bit.

It has finally happened - the first real tech article on this blog. We gonna talk about design patterns and their importance. Today on the menu - SOLID. To be more specific - some critique towards SOLID, meaning my opinion on the bad parts and good parts about them. Excited about the subject? Or the fact we’ll be covering something with dirt (which is always pleasant, right)? Hopefully, you’re excited as I am.

I code for 10 years now. I’m a self-taught software engineer and with those ~120 months of experience I’m pretty confident about my tech skills (in a certain tech stack in any case). If you need to shit-code something - I got it. But for all these years there was a dark emptiness within me with the name “UX”. I’ve always felt incompetent in the area of user experience design. Usually, devs do not need any design skills, but UX knowledge might turn out handy. Also, it’s much more interesting to be closer to the domain and to the end users. So one day I signed up for a UI course and after it for a UX one. This article would describe my journey.

VR is getting more and more popular. The first reason would be - we now have computers powerful enough for it to be possible. The second reason - people want it because it’s so natural. And the latter is the main reason. VR is such a demanded thing that corporations spend millions (or maybe rather hundreds of millions) on it. Some even rename companies to emphasize their direction towards VR (I’ll give you a hint, otherwise you’ll never guess - starts with M). No shit that it is the next big deal. But is the existence of VR so simple? This article would be a pessimistic look at VR. Fans of Black Mirror might like it.

I’ve been in IT for quite some time already and had a chance to, as they say, wear different hats. It was a few years ago - the first time I was given a team. Even though guys had a lot less experience than me it was me who was sweating while meeting them. Managing a team is hard. Especially without prior experience in it. After some time back then I thought I got it. But now not so sure anymore. Last few years I was working with seniors only, but recently I’ve been given a non-senior team member and it’s “fascinating” how many stupid mistakes I’ve made so far. This would be a blog post about my (re)learnings on the hiring matter.

There is this kinda big thing in economics called “division of labor”. I believe all of us have heard about it in high school. It’s all about specialization - narrowing skillset to become a true master in one and mostly one area. The question has been around for quite some time already - Plato was writing about it, Carl Marx and Adam Smith were writing about it. So how come such an old question is still relevant in the modern world in the context of such a young discipline as software engineering? Is full-stack dev a real thing? Or is he a master of none?

Probably there are many articles with such a title. Maybe lots of them will give you an even better motivational “shot” so you’ll be inspired to start your own blog right away. Or not. I haven’t checked what is out there for a reason - didn’t want existing arguments to affect ideas I currently have in mind. Also, I just want to quickly get done with this article. This one is for both of us - you, my dear reader, and for me too to remind myself why I once choose to write. So this is kind of a “second first article”.

So except NodeJS we now have Deno - a new backend runtime environment for JavaScript. The new child of Ryan Dahl promises to be even cooler than the first one. Node’s reach over the years turned out to be astonishing. So when the creator of such a powerful tool says “Behold mankind! I have a new #better #safer gift for you!” then every dev related to JS naturally gets an itch that can only be tamed by confronting the dinosaur. In this article, I’ll tell you about my meeting with the beast.

I was wondering what makes some people successful, and others not. Of course, passion and doing something meaningful is very important. But that’s not all. First of all, let’s define success. If you’ve found a cure from cancer is it a success? Well, yes. But if you are living on a small island with no human beings other than you does it count? If your creation doesn’t serve anyone is it a success? Getting harder… Now let’s say there are people on that island, but you can’t speak their language. Even though you have created something valuable you aren’t able to share it. Is it a success? Not so easy to tell, right? So, along with creating something valuable, it is important to be able to communicate about it. And this is what we’ll try to reason about in this article.

From my first article, you could guess that I’m a PHP developer. No, not from the picture, you bad you! From that other clue. Anyway, I wanted to set in stone another opinion in this old as world holy war - can someone who write in PHP call himself a software engineer?

I was thinking what to write about in the first blog post to give you an idea (and to better understand myself) what the shape-taste-smell of the blog would be. And somehow the book “Just for Fun: The Story of an Accidental Revolutionary” by Linus Torvalds and David Diamond immediately popped up in my mind. I guess it because some ideas in the book are the same I’m writing those lines right now. So, it is kind of “saying hello” through a book review. Hopefully, it’ll make sense when you’ll finish reading. And now we are gonna take a turn towards Linus Torwalds.