Career

I have blogged about my road to productivity recently. I received a comment there from one of my readers asking me if I have a secret weapon that helped me be so productive. While I don’t have a secret weapon strictly for productivity, I realised that I have a secret weapon (or two) for learning. That weapon is simply… Audiobooks! Why Audiobooks? Why would you get an audiobook? What is so magical about them, when you can simply read a book (a paper version) or an eBook (on your Kindle or something similar? ...

Being productive and motivated- who wouldn’t want that? I used to think that some people are just bornmore motivated, that some people simply are this way. “The War of Art” is an eye-opening book. I think that if I have never read it- it is unlikely that I would manage to write two articles a week for this blog ever since starting in January 2018. Here is a short story on my road to productivity. ...

In my career as a software developer, I have interviewed over 100 people. Most of these interviews were face to face interview involving coding on paper or a white-board. In this article, I want to give you practical advice on how to approach these interviews. “Whiteboard”, or “paper” based coding technical interviews, are the interviews in which you are asked to write code, either on a whiteboard or a piece of paper in front of you. ...

*“Scrum Mastery: From Good To Great Servant-Leadership” –*a book that I picked up recently based on it being the number one selling book about Agile Methodologies (from Amazon). I also wanted a fresh view on that role, given that I work in a Scrum team myself. Was it worth my time? Definitely! I did not really know what to expect from this book. There are plenty of “Scrum manuals” out there, which more often than not, describe some idealised realities. ...

You might have seen recently some Pluralsight promotion on my page. There are two reasons for this. Reason number one- I became a Pluralsight Affiliate and I earn by promoting their website. Reason number two- I use Pluralsight myself and I think it is a great place to level up your skills. In this article, I will explain why you should consider it too! What is Pluralsight? Pluralsight is an online training platform… Ok, come on, I am not going to bore you to death here! ...

*“All problems in computer science can be solved by another level of indirection” –*David Wheeler. In this article, I look at my favourite quotes relating to software development and what we can learn from them. “All problems in computer science can be solved by another level of indirection” David Wheeler I opened the article with this one, as it is one of the truest and most insightful quotes that I have ever read about computer science. You can say that this is another way of expressing Dependency Inversion Principle which states: ...

Have you heard of Reddit? It is an amazing place on the Internet, where people share links and ideas. It has also a very active programming community. I visit Reddit daily- you can learn a lot from people there and have some interesting discussion. In this article, I will tell you how I use Reddit and why I consider it so valuable. Reddit is not the only social media that I use for learning about technology. I have previously written about using Twitter for staying up to with the Java world. ...

Technical Architect is a job that many people understand differently. Some people argue Technical Architects should only design systems, staying hands-off, while others would see them as being deeply involved in the development of systems. In here I will explore the role of Technical Architects, the job itself and the value they bring. The Role of a Technical Architect All systems have technical architectures. Sometimes this architecture is decided and designed, other times- it happens by chance. ...

Three years ago I was looking for a new job. I decided that I will pick up a couple of books to help me revised for the interviews. One of those books was*“Cracking the Coding Interview”*by Gayle Laakmann Mcdowell. I expected a book that will help me revise for the interviews, but I got a lot more from the book! Programming interview questions and answers The main idea behind this book is to give you a list of programming questions that may come up during the interview and teach you how to solve them. ...

I have started studying Computer Science at University more than 10 years ago. Now, with Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees and a few years in the industry, I look back reflecting at the value of these degrees. Are Computer Science degrees worth the effort? Before going into details of what I wish I knew before going into the world of professional software development, I want to address the most commonly asked question, whenever the topic of degrees comes up: ...