Forem: José Paz

Developer Diary #3 - Bus(y)ness

José Paz — Mon, 24 Sep 2018 02:10:34 +0000

Hello and welcome!

This and last week were kinda busy for me with some mid term tests so development with personal projects went to an halt. With the little free time that I got I decided to start with the basis of Python and now this is what I think:

DUDE THIS IS HARD

Alright, alright not hard per se but coming from another languages with similar structures, learning Python is like WHERE ARE THE SEMICOLONS?! and that's the hard part.

Now I know why so many schools and universities teach you this language as your first, it's fun, and you don't have to think much to create something.

I'm lucky that I got a friend that hand me her classes when she was in first year of university, if I need something I just look at it! (or in the online bible known as Stackoverflow)

How do I learn a new language?

Since I learned Pascal like three years ago I always had like a self imposed test or challenge:

One week, starting my summer vacations I didn't had internet for some days, I was bored and decided to make a game, it was kinda simple, a game with a turn-based combat, in my mind was easy make that, I was sure how to make that... Now I see it and I'm amazed how I did it.

If you are curious you can see the source code here

WARNING

That code was made when I was in my first year, I didn't had any knowledge of objects nor that I could've made another document to hold the functions, I made that with everything I learned (and researched) in my first year.

Also it is in Spanish.

Anyway, the REAL first version I completed it in like three days and the rest of the week was tweaks and bug fixes until I got that version that I shared, I'm happy with it, it does still have some bugs but I'm not gonna go back to it... unless not in that language...

What do you mean?

Every time I learn a new language, the way that I feel happy with my actual knowledge of it or mastery is by remaking RDG (Role (the) Dice Game... because it is a Role-Playing game heavily based in a Random Number Generator that acts like a dice) in the new language and adding something new.

For example, when I learned C and C++ I added two more scenarios, an inn, somewhere where you could rest at some cost and a town that had three buildings and nine possible outcomes, it had an inn, a shop and a blacksmith, the last one was new too! and a city could have the three, two of them, one or none.

With Java and C# I finally knew what an object was so I revamped almost every mechanic of the game, specially the core of it, the combat.

It is kinda sad that I didn't save that two versions, I didn't know about git or uploaded somewhere because I didn't fully finish any of that versions.

With the Python version I want to revamp the classes. Since the Pascal version every class had something special but all of them acted the same in some way or another, I want with this version add more depth to combat, like abilities or something, maybe some other things but that's the main objective.

In a future I'm going to do an analysis of the original RDG and how it evolved with the time, maybe it's something interesting to see, let me know.

Feel free to share any type of comment, do you have some challenge to test yourself?

See you next week!

Developer Diary #2 - The planning of the eCV

José Paz — Sun, 09 Sep 2018 17:56:36 +0000

Hello and welcome!

This week (or half of it) I learned to differentiate yourself from others with the contents and design of your resume (or curriculum vitae if you like) with the help of my communication skills teacher.

She taught us about how everybody is different and how to appeal to a company. At the start of the class everyone was confused, so do I; you have in your class 30 aspiring engineers and programmers that may, or may not, have the same technical abilities (like the same languages) if we all give our CVs to the same company, HOW can we appeal MORE than the other? If you have some kind of job experience or experience with job interviews it can be easy to answer, but not for me.

I'm from Venezuela and there I studied for three years computer engineering before moving to Uruguay to continue it. One thing different between these two is that in Uruguay is very common to work in summer or in a part time job when you are starting high school, that way you have some kind of job experience. I had none (neither some of my colleagues but most of them did) so I payed more attention to what the teacher was saying.

Long story short, she said that we needed to take advantage of our abilities and try to make or do something just to add it on the resume, like one of her students put a QR code in his as a way to show its portfolio, and then it hit me.

How about I make a CV online and put it in a page? That would be cool! an electronic Curriculum Viate! An eCV! No... an eCV™! But first we have to ask ourselves:

Why?

If I'm already going to make one in paper, why I'm going to make an online one? isn't that doing more work?

Not really, at least not for me, I believe that if I do it this way I'm going to caught more people only for the originality. I also think that this is going to be the future of resumes so better hop into the train before you're out of seats.

Also, I made a list of good and bad points about doing it this way:

Good ones! 👍🏻

Freedom, you can create it and design it just the way you like it!
Animations, you can't print gifs!
Experience, you can learn a lot just by doing it!
A QR code in your business card, is very aesthetic!

The ones that are not so good 🤢

You have to program it, I mean, this one was obvious

If we put all of the points in a scale the positives win, so, let's start!

Let's think about what we are going to need

I have used most of the things that I think I'm going to need for this project that I'm going to list riiiiiiiiiight... now:

Github pages, this is the most important tool I think, I mean, how are we going to show the world our eCV? Github Pages is the way to have a free hosting of your resume.
HTML/CSS, these are the basics, HTML for the text, CSS to make the text pretty, not much else to say.
Javascript, I want some interactivity in my eCV, that's one of the advantages of making your resume online, javascript is my way to go with this.
React, I'm not very familiarized with React, I heard of it one class at uni but didn't pay so much attention to it, but it could be useful, I'm not very sure of using it though...
Frameworks, maybe some of them can work, at least to make things more easily, like Bootstrap or TACHYONS

Maybe I'm going to use something else, but these are the one that come to my mind, if I'm using other one I'll make sure to link it!

Ok, ok... but how is going to look?

Nice question! This question was also asked to my teacher and she said:

The basics of a great CV is to design it like a building, the most important bits of you go to the top, like a rooftop, then you structure your CV as a base for this, using big blocks of information.

She didn't really said that, I made that analogy, but the idea is the same.

Thinking it like that you can get A LOT of possible designs and then you start filtering until you find the one of your liking, so I decided to go around looking for some inspiration and I found this one, you may have never heard of it, but I took a photo of it!

Just look how great it looks uhm! 👌🏻 beautiful! maybe if we made some tweaks here and there...

Yeaaaaaah I think I got something!

Yep, I'm talking about the Dev.to profile page, I think is just the inspiration that I need, literally blocks of information... is just perfect. Maybe that's why we have the option of adding more technical information about ourselves... just like in a CV!

The plan

This one is simple: Create a CV based of this design and make it interactive we have to take advantages of all the opportunities that offers making our resume this way.

This is just an example, but imagine all the possibilities!

The objectives

I think the most important (and obvious) is getting a job with this, appeal to someone or a company, make myself interesting.

I want to have it ready before January, That's when summer starts here.

I also want to learn some new tricks and maybe new tools, like React.

There's maybe more objectives but I'll add them as they appear.

This is going to be a very important project, one that I'm going to dedicate a big chunk of my time just to make it look perfect and I hope it does!

You are welcome to leave a comment, I'll appreciate the feedback and happy to hear your opinions!

Developer Diary #1 - An Introduction

José Paz — Thu, 06 Sep 2018 02:22:43 +0000

Hello and welcome!

This is my developer diary, a section of my life (and the purpose of this account) to share what I did this week in code.

My intention with this is to share all my creative process and decisions on a personal project(s) hoping that someone finds it useful and to boost my motivation for continuous development.

I'm gonna try to share any kind of photos or planning phases and fully explain them in case someone finds them interesting, worst case scenario gonna remade them in Photoshop or any other type of software. But why so eager to share that? I believe that the first phase, the planning phase, is the most important in any type of job, not only in design and development and also, I find it easier to see what I'm coding.

Other thing, one very important, that I'm going to share is code segments that I find too complex or interesting or weird or... well you name it, you never know if that is going to be the answer in a future interview question of a show aired on TV that you are going to participate.

My vision or objective with these posts is to find balance between my studies and my projects, also, this is not only me sharing knowledge, I want to find feedback between you and me and between you and the comments.I believe that it is impossible to develop something without a second opinion, in other words, it is (for me) impossible develop alone, that's why we have pages like stackoverflow. And (more as a secondary objective) is to perfect my English skills and writing skills in general.

Hope you find these useful!