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Weeknotes: 16 June to 20 June 2025

white seagulls flying over a sandy beach. Blue ocean waves are crashing against it.
On the beach (1879), Fidelia Bridges (American, 1834-1923)

What I have found gripping

  • Deploying a small project combining new skills I have been building and a topic I’m learning about

  • In Ruby, the Time object contains the date and time since the Unix epoch (1 January 1970). I can create a Time object in UTC (Coordinated Universal Time) before checking what day it is:

#58
June 20, 2025
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Weeknotes: 26 May to 30 May 2025

a pine-tree on a cliff overlooking the sea
Pine-Tree near the Mediterranean Sea at Sunset (1915), Theo van Rysselberghe (Belgian, 1862-1926)

What I have found gripping

  • A carefully thought out ramp up process makes it easier for new joiners to contribute to a codebase regardless of their experience level

  • The better a project is documented, the easier it will be to contribute to

  • PRs (Pull Requests) can also be used to teach and learn

  • Knowing how to ask for help takes practice as does knowing how to give help. Providing actionable feedback on both makes a difference too

What I have read

#57
May 30, 2025
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Weeknotes: 12 May to 16 May 2025

Trees with green leaves in a field and a blue sky with white clouds
Après-midi de mai à By, près de Moret-sur-Loing (circa 1882), Alfred Sisley (French, 1840-1899)

What I have found gripping

  • ViewComponent is a library to isolate common UI patterns for reuse, helping to improve the quality and consistency of Rails applications

  • It’s possible to use a git command called git commit --amend to edit one’s last commit and another git add -p to view changes one commit at a time. P is for patch.

  • Finding a tried and tested course for micro-learning makes a difference even more when it’s highly recommended by folks from communities

What I have read

#56
May 17, 2025
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Weeknotes: 7 April to 11 April 2025

Two boats sailing on the deep blue sea
The Aegean Coast (1904), Fausto Zonaro (Italian, 1854 – 1929)

What I have found gripping

  • Creating things from scratch brings some excitement

  • Live coding also means making music using code

  • ASGI stands for Asynchronous Server Gateway Interface

  • Diversifying lineups requires building and nurturing diverse networks to reach as many potential speakers as possible

  • Quality coaching leads to engaging and memorable performances for new speakers

  • Creating the right conditions for folks to tell their stories on their own terms makes a difference too

  • Carving space for making contributions means trying different ways of doing things and finding what works in a given context

What I have read

#55
April 12, 2025
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Weeknotes: 3 March to 7 March 2025

Green blue sea with waves crashing against rocks.
Cap Martin (1907), Peder Mørk Mønsted (Danish, 1859 – 1941)

What I have found gripping

#54
March 7, 2025
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Weeknotes: 17 February to 21 February 2025

a painting of a beach with trees
La Plage De Saint-Clair (1896), Henri-Edmond Cross (French, 1856 - 1910)

What I have found gripping

  • There are advantages to doing rather than outsourcing one’s skills to AI

  • Getting out of one’s comfort zone leads to new learnings

  • Asynchronous code reviews can facilitate progress

  • Returning to a generative art project and considering what to add to it for the sake of it

What I have read

#53
February 21, 2025
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Weeknotes: 4 February to 7 February 2025

Orange And Violet Sky at Sunset in Grasse
Sunset At Grace (Grasse), Orange And Violet Sky (1918), Félix Vallotton (French, 1865-1925)

What I have found gripping

  • Converting a JavaScript project into a TypeScript one through going through error messages and asking for feedback
  • Adding acceptance tests to a project with RSpec
  • Emerging alternatives to softwares one might be used to seem promising. The teams shaping them also matter, especially those bringing together folks from different backgrounds with complementary and (at times) rare skillsets

What I have read

#52
February 8, 2025
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Weeknotes: 20 January to 24 January 2025

View of a green field and a snowy Mount Kilimandjaro in the background
Kilima-Ndjaro, 22 VI (1909), Akseli Gallen-Kallela (Finnish, 1865 - 1931)

What I have found gripping

  • In Ruby programming, the class Struct creates a class that can store and fetch values. See an example from irb below:

Book = Struct.new('Book', :title, :author, :year)
Book = Struct.new('Book', 'Sula', 'Toni Morrison', '1973')
Book.inspect
=> "Struct::Book"
Book.members
=> [:Sula, :"Toni Morrison", :"1973"]
#51
January 25, 2025
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Weeknotes: 13 January to 17 January 2025

Yellow sun setting over a blue lake with green pines on the right side
Sunset Over Lake Ruovesi, Akseli Gallen-Kallela (Finnish, 1865 - 1931)

#50
January 17, 2025
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Weeknotes: 16 December to 20 December 2024

Sunrise over the sea and cliffs.
View of Northern Head at Sunrise in the Bay of Fundy (1862), William Bradford (American, 1823-1892)

What I have found gripping

  • The following terminal command outputs a detailed list of files and directories including hidden ones. It means list all:

    ls -la
    
  • Parsing a URL using Ruby then extracting a domain name with different approaches before choosing one that will allow for code readability

  • Bouncing ideas off other people is thrilling

  • In Rails, the debug helper will print out variables

debug
#49
December 20, 2024
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Weeknotes: 2 December to 6 December 2024

View of mountains, grass and a green blue lake in Yosemite
Mirror Lake, Yosemite (1874-1875), Hermann Ottomar Herzog (American, 1831-1932)

What I have found gripping

  • Diversifying one’s sources of learning is wonderful

  • WSGI is an acronym for Web Server Gateway Interface

  • This line of code in Python will initialize a Flask web app

    app = Flask(__name__)
    
  • The Flask class handles all the web requests, routing and responses

  • The Pylint error message Missing function or method docstring means that a docstring (short for a document string) needs to be added to the function. Once a docstring is included, the error disappears. See the example below:

    def print_python_version():
        """Function printing python version."""
        print(sys.version)
    
#48
December 6, 2024
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Weeknotes: 18 November to 22 November 2024

Orange path in green grass along the Seine river
Seine at Tournedos (1922), Félix Vallotton (French, 1865-1925)

What I have found gripping

#47
November 22, 2024
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Weeknotes: 28 October to 31 October 2024

Mount Saint-Michel with a pink and orange sunset
Mont Saint-Michel, Setting Sun (1897), Paul Signac (French, 1863-1935)

What I have found gripping

  • Logging what’s done well helps maintain perspective

  • Making contributions visible leaves room for celebrating them and providing actionable feedback whenever necessary

  • A team’s health influences its outcomes whether they be positive or negative

  • Identifying what is missing in a process before amending it to improve it further is exciting

#46
October 31, 2024
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Weeknotes: 21 October to 25 October 2024

Yellow and orange Autumn leaves.
Automne À Jeufosse (1884), Claude Monet (French, 1840-1926)

What I have found gripping

  • Simple and elegant technical solutions are easier to maintain

  • MatchData is a class in Ruby programming

  • RDoc specifies that MatchData encapsulates the result of matching a Regexp against string

  • Local-first software allows folks to work offline and collaborate across devices

#45
October 26, 2024
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Weeknotes: 7 October to 11 October 2024

a sunset over the ocean
Sunset in Split, Menci Clement Crnčić (Croatian, 1865-1930)

What I have found gripping

  • Refactoring code requires a rationale

  • Keeping code readable and tested helps reviewers

  • Tools can help or slow down processes

  • Having just enough information makes a difference

What I have read

#44
October 12, 2024
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Weeknotes: 23 September to 27 September 2024

a painting of cliffs and a beach
Beach formation on Bornholm. Scene from Rø (1843), Vilhelm Kyhn (Danish, 1819–1903)

What I have found gripping

  • Context matters and enquiring about it too

  • Pairing in addition to listening to different perspectives can lead to exploring problems through new angles

  • EDA stands for Event-driven Architecture

  • CEP is an acronym for Complex Event Processing. It’s an event-driven technology to aggregate, process, and analyse data streams

#43
September 27, 2024
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Weeknotes: 9 September to 13 September 2024

Mountain landscape in the orange evening sky
Mountain landscape in the evening sky
Maria Wiik (Finnish, 1853 – 1928)

What I have found gripping

  • Sifting through information before using it through hands-on practice makes a difference

  • It takes a team to create a welcoming and collaborative environment

  • Asking questions can be a way to manage cognitive overload

#42
September 13, 2024
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Weeknotes: 2 September to 6 September 2024

View of a blue lake in Lucerne with mountains in the background
Alexandre Calame (Swiss, 1810-1864)

What I have found gripping

  • There are 8 categories of variables in C#: static variables, instance variables, array elements, value parameters, input parameters, reference parameters, output parameters, and local variables

  • It’s possible to turn code into sound using certain programming languages

  • Clayton Christensen coined the term disruptive innovation

  • Inner source is the use of open source practices within organizations for proprietary software development

#41
September 6, 2024
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Weeknotes: 26 August to 30 August 2024

A green field on a summer day. The sky is blue but cloudy.
August Jernberg (Swedish, 1826 – 1896)

What I have found gripping

  • Returning to a new UI for drafts on Buttondown and getting onboarded to understand how to navigate it is a smooth experience

  • Revisiting technical concepts across projects yields new insights

  • Super in Ruby can be used to call an earlier method in another one

#40
August 30, 2024
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Weeknotes: 24 June to 28 June 2024

A view of the beach at Kororareka in New Zealand
Kororareka Beach, Bay of Islands, New Zealand (circa 1856), Thomas Gardiner

What I have found gripping

  • Setting up a project in Ruby with a different browser-based tool is possible

  • Big O notation can be used to determine the efficiency of algorithms

  • Doing one’s part as a citizen at any level contributes to collective efforts whatever the outcome(s)

What I have read

#39
June 29, 2024
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