Shut up and drive
Like the distortion in the beginning of the song, preaching something dark but good is coming, I come to drive in the night. I need to put my hands in the wheel of my future and I’m referring about my capabilities in software engineering.
Something I didn’t realize until now is that your current job prepares for the next one. Technically I am leaving behind in some technologies and trying to move horizontally in the field showed me that I neglected this aspect of my life for the last three years. I need to do something about it and do it now.
Acquiring new habits is hard but not impossible. In the last quarantine I successfully achieved a three-day exercise rutine because… It was driving me crazy. In that moment, it was clear to me that I was sedentary at extreme levels due to global situation and it wasn’t to end well. And done something about it. And done it again, and again, and again… and now it is almost 11 months of continuous body development. I can do this, I know I can. I just need a plan.
What I want to achieve?
- Be up-to-date on languages I like to work with.
- Gain experience on system design at high (distributed systems) and low (project layouts, DDD) levels.
- Be familiar with basic aspects of software engineering: algorithms, design patterns, data structures and its applications to solve complex problems.
- Fluent speaking level of english.
- Have a clear work ethic that helps me to provide a good quality of service as collaborator and enables me to grow into management levels.
- Product design capabilities.
- Enhanced writing abilities.
Constraints
- Needs to be fun to do.
- Ready for access in any time.
How?
- Daily rutine: 1 hour before the working day, 1 hour after it.
The next itinerary is a proposal; it will be mutating with time for sure.
Plan
Monday
- Morning: Golang katas.
- Afternoon: Python katas.
Tuesday
- Morning: Technical reading (blogs or a specific book).
- Afternoon: Java katas.
Building Microservices: Designing Fine-Grained Systems - Sam Newman
Designing Data-Intensive Applications - Martin Kleppmann
Wednesday
- Morning: Algorithms katas.
- Afternoon: Containers katas (if they exists).
Thursday
- Morning: Design pattern katas.
- Afternoon: Soft skills reading (practicing?).
Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion - Robert B. Cialdini
Los fantasmas de mi vida: Escritos sobre depresión, hauntología y futuros perdidos - Mark Fisher
Friday
- Morning: validate business ideas (lean) and build.
- Afternoon: English talk practices.
Easy… right?
It’s that the way I want to live? Hard to say. It’s that or sell some redundant body organs I don’t use. The think about validating business is really interesting and I don’t want to give up on learning product design through lean methodology.
That’s it. Let’s write the progress in a weekly basis.
Updates
2021-04-09
The “weekly basis” thing is the first thing that failed XD.
The most evident difficulty was the constant search on every day for activities to perfom. It complicated the continuity on next weeks bacause there was not a clear plan about what exercises to do. I will append activity items in the daily plan to solve it.
2021-04-11
Added options for every day; spent half morning on it.