I started Medium with three clear goals in mind. The first being able to teach others about what I know within the software engineering space. The second is to become a better writer. And finally, the last goal, to make extra cash on the side with the goal of it becoming a profitable side hustle. I tried to post once a week as opposed to some other writers on Medium that post more frequently.
I will be going over each month in more detail, highlighting the stats as well as my thoughts for each month. For those of you here just to see the number, the image and total will be right below this paragraph. Keep in mind, the content I create is geared towards the software engineering/programming space as well as a little bit of the productivity space. Numbers can differ depending on the niche. I also do not regularly promote my content outside of what Medium does on its own. …
Starting the year off right with some simple projects to get that ball rolling
The beginning of a new year is always a great time to set goals. Hopefully becoming a better developer or even to start programming is on that list of goals. If it is, then I hope this list of small projects can help get that ball rolling.
These projects are meant to be fairly simple so that you actually finish a project. You don’t want to start the new year with a project so grand that you cannot finish it.
1. Web Scraper
Web scraping is one of those tools that you always want to have in the back of your pocket. It’s not something that you will be using every single day, however, it’s nice to know how it works and how to do it since it can be very powerful when that tool is needed. …
Staying interested in your side projects can be hard with so many other things going on in life
I find that the most challenging part of a side project is not coming up with an idea but taking that idea to a finished product.
In this article, I’m going to go over a few strategies I’ve implemented to help keep me motivated on my side projects.
1. Define the MVP
This is my most important rule when it comes to staying motivated on side projects: the MVP. MVP stands for Minimum Viable Product. It is the minimum amount of features required to achieve functionality so that users can use it.
The complete source code can be found on GitHub.
In the current era of programming, tools are being developed from developers all over the world that are not included in the programming language’s standard library. Python is no exception. Since developers are creating new packages every day for Python, it only makes sense for the community to standardize package dependencies so that developers can continue to focus on the development of their software as opposed to worrying about the dependency management of their project.
Introducing Python virtual environments. Virtual environments allow Python developers to keep all the dependencies packaged up nicely so that it can be shared with others without having to worry about whether or not they have certain packages installed on their machine. …
Share your packages with the world
Note: The complete source code can be found on GitHub.
If you work with Python, then you are probably aware of packages that you can download and import into your projects using pip. It’s a robust tool that allows developers from all around the world to upload their code so that others can use it.
In today’s article, I will be showing you how to publish your Python package to the service PyPi, which is the Python Package Index. …
Productivity tools are all around us on a day to day basis and are an important part of our lives. Finding the correct tools can be difficult, but once you are familiar with a set of tools that work for you, it works wonders. I use all of these tools on a daily basis and they help me get what I need to get done with plenty of time left over for my leisure activities.
The tools and applications that I will be talking about in this article are not sponsored in any way. …
We all experience it from time to time. Here’s what worked for me
Imposter syndrome is a very common occurrence that happens to all of us — some more than others. Although it’s not specific to the world of software engineering or programming, it tends to happen a lot within this field since it is a very competitive industry.
New technologies keep coming so quickly that we feel like we’ll fall behind if we don’t learn them right away, or we feel that our peers and colleagues know everything while we sit idly at our desks contemplating how we got hired in the first place.
Trust me, I’ve been there, and I’m willing to bet that you have as well. …
Complete source code can be found here: https://github.com/ericjaychi/sample-rest-api
Before we go into building the actual application, we need to take a quick step back to understand at a very high level what a REST API is. Ironically, REST APIs are not something new. It has been around since the year 2000 but has been very popular recently with the rise of JavaScript libraries. If you are curious about all the specific details, I’ll let you go ahead and read about it on Google as I am not trying to bore you with all these crazy details.
At a very high level, REST APIs are a way for developers to pass data back and forth for an application. It uses the concept of CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete). CRUD operations are performed on a piece of data inside of a database but with REST APIs we use the verbs POST, GET, PUT, and DELETE instead. …
Some familiar tools and some you probably haven’t tried yet
The terminal/command line is a sacred tool that developers have under their belt. It is possibly the most used tool for programmers. I believe that is because of how lightweight it is and also the unbelievable amount of things you can do with it. Some developers even go the extra mile to do everything inside of the terminal. Kudos to them.
I’ll be showing some of the CLI (Command-Line Interface) tools that I personally think are awesome and use pretty much on a daily basis. …
Simplifying the backup process
Complete source code can be found here: https://github.com/ericjaychi/sample-dotfiles
In today’s article, we will be talking about backing up your lovely dotfiles. These include files like .vimrc, .bashrc, and .gitconfig. Keep in mind, this is simply how I back them up. Feel free to back them up however you want. After all, I am just some random stranger on the internet.
This will allow you to easily pull your dotfiles onto any machine, as long it’s a UNIX-based system, as well as keeping your dotfiles always backed up.
For reference, I used this blog post from Michael Smalley’s blog and made a few adjustments for my misc files I want to backup. The original source can be found here: http://blog.smalleycreative.com/tutorials/using-git-and-github-to-manage-your-dotfiles/. I highly recommend you check it out, as I have been using this way of backing up my dotfiles for quite some time now and use this almost daily. …
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