Blogs

When I work or research a topic I have no experience with, I notice that after some hours, I get super tired and can’t focus on the problem anymore. My brain gets tired, and I’m only capable of doing simple administrative tasks or work that I’m very familiar with.

As I get older, I feel the brain fog a lot more often. I used to be able to code for hours plus every day without fail, but lately, I struggle even to get five hours of focused work. It can even get dangerous when I want to drive a car at the end of the day.

I need data from a website, and they don’t provide an API to consume the data. What can I do here? And how complicated or challenging will it be to do?

There are multiple options when you need to scrape data from a website. Which one you choose is highly dependent on your use case. Just understand that you have various issues to solve. I would not recommend it for one-off tasks as, in most cases, you will be faster doing it by hand. Perhaps you could use Excel to Import data from the web in such a scenario?

What is the best way to filter an array? I know there is a filter function, but I don’t know what I need to put between the curly brackets.

When I work with arrays, I often need to filter an array by a criteria and get a new array with only the matching element. When I started coding, I usually did this with code along these lines:

var data = ['A', 'B', 'C'];
var result = [];
for (var i = 0; i < data.length; i++) {
    if (data[i] === 'B') {
        result.push(data[i]);
    }
}

This does work perfectly fine. But it is pretty cumbersome to write and needs a lot of lines. On top of this, it also buries the intent of what I want to reach with my code, especially if you have multiple steps where you need to filter your array.

Should you use a library when only a tiny part of its functionality is relevant to your application? Or would you be better of in writing the needed code yourself?

Writing the code yourself instead of using the library would make the code more straightforward, and you would not need to invest time in learning the library. And we all know that documentation for such libraries is usually not very complete. And the next person to work on the application would need to learn & understand the library as well.

How do you know when it’s time to use a library instead of coding something yourself? Perhaps you don’t yet have any industry experience in this field or are unsure how to balance your code and external dependencies.

Not every line of code needs to be by yourself. You are not cheating when using a library instead of writing your code! There is still enough work left for you to show your coding skills when using the library. Most programs are greater than the sum of the dependencies they use – the essential part of your work is the problem it solves for the user.

You have been a developer for ten years and work on the same project. Every day looks the same, and you are no longer sure how long you happily can sling code? Where do you go from here?

I know this feeling from my own experience. Every day you drag yourself out of bed. You are trying to find a bit of motivation. You don’t want to stop coding as there are still aspects you like ¹. You feel stuck. Especially as you don’t want to take the managerial route. You want to provide value and not sit in meetings all day! So I propose a method to try before you throw the towel altogether.

There is much conflicting advice out there when you start with coding. Should I copy code I find on the internet? How do I learn when I copy code constantly? Especially how do I get independent from the internet when I constantly copy my code? I don’t want to be a copy/paste coder my whole career!

On the other side, everybody tells you not to reinvent the wheel and waste time writing solutions to problems already solved.

When do I need to pass a function to a useState setter function? I searched everywhere, but I couldn’t find any proper explanation. Especially when to use one form over another.

I used react js for over a year until I learned about the functional updater form. And did not see any issues with my code from not using it. But there needs to be a reason why it is there, And when you should use it. Let’s find out together.

How can we have a civilized discussion in a face-to-face setting, but as soon as the meeting is via Zoom or Teams, we get a clusterfuck of people talking over everyone? You wait for an ebb in the discussion before speaking. However, You are still constantly interjecting yourself at the wrong time, unintentionally talking over your colleagues?

I know this issue very well from my meetings at work. And I’m constantly feeling bad about myself, that I’ve interrupted somebody again. I don’t want to be rude, but I seem never to pick the right moment to start speaking. And when I wait too long, I fear I lose my train of thought. Or the discussion has moved on to other topics, and my comment feels no longer relevant.

Each day you have one or more meetings. The meetings are distributed over the day without any system. One is at 9, and the other is at 10:30. And in the small gaps, you cannot focus and get work done. The half-hour meetings always take at least an hour and fifteen minutes. The constant context switching means you get nothing done before lunch.

On top of the regular meetings, you get an emergency meeting. To discuss the latest development in the project and the meeting is in your lunch break.

Are you a Software Engineer and drowning in meetings? So many meetings interrupting your flow and stopping you from delivering your stories or bug fixes on time? Are you losing a lot of time due to context switching?

You know the situation every day you have meetings, but they are aligned so awkwardly that it leaves your day all fragmented and giving you no chance to get into coding flow.

You need to organize a meeting. The company requires you to provide an agenda to prevent the meeting from going all over the place. Or have people attending who don’t need to be there (see Sitting in multiple meetings each day and never say anything?).

Writing an agenda does not need to be complicated. The agenda also help you get clarity about what you need to discuss. The outline is giving you a tool to realistically estimate the time required — giving you a chance to time box your meeting appropriately.

Another hour-long meeting with 10+ persons. And only a tiny subset is actually talking at all. You have not said anything since the beginning. Another hour of productive work is lost for the day. You are frustrated, bored, and thinking about bringing your laptop to the next meeting. So you can work on that one small issue you should finish today.

The solution is simple, don’t attend this meeting at all. Why should you be there when you don’t need to provide anything in that meeting? It may sound daring to decline such a “big” meeting. But the meeting content does not allow you to bring any value. And you have actual work to do.

Congratulation, you have a new project. But the project is so big that various teams are involved. Which you need to organize.

Communication is vital in all projects. But you do not need to make the process too complicated. I propose that you set up at least one regular meeting with all the stakeholders. Depending on the team’s sizes, only invite one or two people per team. It does not help if 90% of attendees sit there and don’t say anything. And the more actively participating persons you invite, the longer the meeting needs to be. And nobody likes meetings which take too long.