Life without a .Net

I wrote code exclusively on the Microsoft platform from 1997 until late 2013.  Sixteen years of ASP, ASP.Net, Visual Basic (4,5&6), VB.Net, wonderful C# and lots of MS SQL Server.  I could take a pile of computer parts, assemble them into a server, load the current flavor of Windows Server,  IIS and MS SQL Server, and assorted .Net Frameworks.  Then I could design a database, write the code(C#, assorted JavaScript add-ons), put it all together and Ker-Pow, a working software application/website/platform thingy.

And those applications worked!  And there were always more .Net jobs waiting for more things to be built.  And then, one day, while looking at Visual Studio 2013 I realized, I can't do this anymore.  I tried to slog through.  I know that everyone feels burnout from time to time, but I was starting to get a little worried at the thoughts going through my head.

Do you still want to be a software developer?  What else can I do?

I had recently moved from a startup (using .Net) to a big multi division company that had an Information Technology Department.  You know the kind of place I mean.  A cube farm that spanned an entire city block.  Bookshelves full for Wrox & MS Press titles.  Motivational slogans.  Well stocked Keurigs. Glass walled conference rooms.  End tables for network printers that had the \\unc\\ taped to the front.  My title was Senior Software Webgineer or some such.  The company was so big in fact, that the job I was hired to do had already been contracted out by the department that originally contacted IT.  Nobody told the hiring manager.  So after my on-boarding, there was not much for me to do.  I went to a few hackathons on the weekends.  That helped some, but the main problem was I didn't want to work in the .Net-corporate-IT-business-causal world anymore.  There was nothing wrong with the people at the company, it was all me.  I was tired of the dress code, the culture and the tech.  But at the same time I was scared to leave it.   It was all I knew.  That was part of what was bugging me.

I went to a meet-up for the relatively new programming language called Go (golang).  I had been messing around with the language in my free time just to break the .Net monotony.  The company that hosted the meet up said they were hiring and to talk to them if interested.  I was.  I knew this place would be different from what I had done in the past.  I also knew that I had zero skills in the tech stack they used.  At that point I'd written maybe 100 lines of Go, and they were primarily a Python/Django shop with a few projects in Go.  But I told them of my interest anyway and they suggested that I submit a resume.  I did.  Two interviews later I got the offer.  I was sitting in my cube in Corp-IT-Ville when I got the email.  I raised both hands in the air (clinched fists I think) and hissed, "Yessssss!"

I started out with new company with about 100 lines of Go code experience and a crash course in the Django tutorial.  But man, what a curve.  If it was just the language differences, that would have been easy enough, but it was more than that.  No Windows machines.  All developer machines were OSX.  And the development environment?  Well they used a tool called Vagrant, which housed a Linux build via Virtual Box with MySql and Gunicorn and Celery and Nginx and can you check out this feature branch and submit a PR that we can review?  Lots of command line...commands.  My head was spinning.  I was asking questions and Googling.  A lot.  I found myself thinking, "If this were on Windows, I'd do this thing this way!" But I wasn't on Windows.  Every day I was learning new things, which was great, but I was also finding out about new things that I did not know anything about.

And that was the worst part.  After about five months, I still was not able to turn things around as fast as I wanted to in my new job, but I also wasn't up to speed with the Microsoft world either.  New versions of C#, SQL Server and Visual Studio were released.  I did not know what the new features were.  I was trapped between the two worlds and I couldn't be productive in either of them like I wanted to be.  So what's a developer who is in over his head to do?

Slog through it.  Day after day.  Google dumb questions.  Ask dumb questions.  Get no where.  And then one day something makes a little bit of sense.  Slowly, I learned how to make changes to code that caused errors but...they were errors that I was expecting to see.  That's the Eureka moment.  When you can break source code in expected ways, soon you can make it do new things.  Things like, new features or bug fixes.  It's all the same thing, modifying the behavior of the code so that it responds the way it should.

Now I code in Go(golang) and Python.  I can form my thoughts into these new languages and produce thing that work.  Both of these languages have made me a better overall developer because they force me to think about code in different ways.  My pull requests still generate some chatter about how things could be improved, but then that's what pull requests are for.  Occasionally I'll get a, "oh, I didn't know you could do that" from some one.  It's cool when that happens, and not because it means I'm a big shot (ha!).  It's cool because, after having a team of developers patiently answer my questions for almost a year, it's nice to be able to give back, if only just a little bit.

To wrap this up, the journey was more than worth it.  Writing software is as fun as it's ever been.  It's hard to be a beginner in a field where you thought you knew a lot, but it's a necessary step if you want to continue to grow.

Simple Git configurations for beginners (like me)

     As the shores of Microsoft disappear over the horizon, I find myself using tools that I used to think of as convoluted command line hacks and black magic.  Things like Git.  Of course, now that' I've used Git for several months in a for real multi-user multi-location environment, I love it.  Not only do I use it, but I'm comfortable enough now that I don't even use the GUI's.  I'm all CLI like the real hipster programmers.

I use Git and Github a lot these days.  It's cool and all but there were the inevitable hickups along the way.  Lots of Googling.   Here's a list of things that I wish had been all in one place when I started.  I provide this for others(my future self included) who might be new to Git/GIthub and want to lessen the learning curve a bit.  These tweaks assume you already have Git installed, a free Github account and an SSH key.  If not, create an account at Github and follow these steps to create an SSH key.  Moving on...

These are the problems I ran into early on and how they got fixed plus a few tweaks.

1. Every time I do a git push to a repo on Github, I get asked for username and password.
1. This is most likely because you did a git clone from HTTPS and not SSH.  I'd post a screen shot but the UI will probably change at some point.  Look on the github repo page, find the clone URL and make sure that you are copying the one for SSH.  More info.
2. I make changes on my local branch, but when I push to Github it says, "Everything is up to date" even though it's not.
1. Instead of doing git push, do git push origin <branch name>, like git push origin newfeature.  More info.
3. I get asked for a pass phrase every time I do a push or pull.  More info.
1. On the command line type:
1. eval $(ssh-agent) <enter>
2. ssh-add <enter>
4. Helpful git aliases
1. You can run this at the command line to make typing git commands a little easier.
1. $ git config --global alias.co checkout 
2. $ git config --global alias.br branch 
3. $ git config --global alias.ci commit 
4. $ git config --global alias.st status
2. git commit becomes git ci.  git checkout becomes git co and git branch becomes git br.  (These aliases were taken from Scott Charon's book Pro Git)
5. Color!
1. It's nice to have some color on the command line.  Set this so that the git diff, git status and other commands return some color variation to make things easier to read.
1. $ git config --global color.ui true
2. More Info
6. Lastly, instead of doing git commit -m 'message' all the time, you can do a git commit -av which will launch the default text editor, let you view the changes that are going into the commit AND type the commit message.  I like using Sublime, so updated the git config to do so.
1. git config --global core.editor "subl -n -w"(More Info)

If you see anything wrong, let me know.  Present and future me thanks you, but not past me.  Past me is a corner cutting jerk.

Movies I saw in MMXIII

I looked over the list of movies I saw in the theater this past year and was surprised at the total: 21.  Below is a quick one or two sentence review of each film and links to purchase on Amazon (my blatant attempt at revenue).  A couple of these were late 2012, but I'm including them on the 2013 list since this is the first time I've done this.  Some of these are over a year old so my recollection may be a tad hazy.  However this isn't going to be much more than a thumbs up/down kind of thing, so it should be fine.  Keep in mind this is very subjective.  You're opinions may vary.

Movies I saw in the theater, 2013:

1. Lincoln - Really liked it a lot.  I'll see anything with Daniel Day Lewis.  A great director with a bunch of great actors making a movie about a great man during a pivotal time in American history. What else is there to say?  Thumbs Up
2. The Conjuring - It was okay.  Parts of the plot seemed thrown together but a good horror movie. Surely we can find better parts for Ron Livingston.  It's alright.
3. Argo - I had no idea what to expect.  I knew almost nothing about the plot.  Liked it a lot.  I'd watch it again.  Solid film making and story telling.  No over the top grandstanding-look-at-me acting moments.  Thumbs Up
4. Zero Dark Thirty - My favorite of the year.  Incredible movie about a subject that brings up many conflicting emotions.  Thumbs Up
5. The Hobbit - Silly.  I really wanted to like it but it's silly.  I'll provide a link to the book instead.  Thumbs down.
6. Killing Them Softly - Gritty-Ugly-People-Gangster(GUPG) movie.  If you like that sort of thing (I do) you'll love it.  James Gandolfini steals the show playing the role of Mickey, a gangster who is past his prime and eats and drinks too much.  Turns out there was a lot of foreshadowing in that role, which is sad.  Overall I give it a thumbs up
7. Django Unchained - I usually love everything Tarantino does.  This one, I'm not sure what it was but I found myself turning away from the screen during the final blood bath shoot out.  I wanted to love it, I just didn't.  What I really wanted to see was Christopher Waltz as Col. Landa trying to fit in on Nantucket Island.  Thumbs....not sure yet.  I abstain.
8. Stand Up Guys - I'm not sure why I liked this so much.  It's a good bad movie.  Another one of those Gritty-Ugly-People Gangster(GUPG) movies.  Pacino and Walken didn't act very much, but I didn't mind.  Thumbs Up.  You can also find this streaming on Netflix.
9. Gangster Squad - I really wanted to like this.  I didn't expect it to be life changing, but I was hopeful it'd be solid.  Didn't work for me.  Thumbs down.
10. The Berlin File - Interesting, but I'm not 100% sure what happened.  It was this movie that made me realize I should never look at my phone during a movie with subtitles.  It was different and not bad, so thumbs up.
11. Skyfall - Daniel Craig's physique puts all 40+ year old men to shame.  Probably most of the 30+ and 20+ men too.  Fun movie.  It was great to see Javier Bardem as a bad guy again.  Thumbs up.
12. Side Effects - Warning, this movie may cause excessive eye rolling.  Thumbs down.
13. Evil Dead - Walked out of it.  Thumbs down.
14. The Place Beyond The Pines - Amazing.  I will definitely watch this movie again.   Thumbs Up.
15. The Iceman - Another Gritty-Ugly-People gangster movie.  The acting is great but the main character is a bad guy who's...a bad guy.  There are a few scene's where he's conflicted about the things he has done but...that's what happens.  I cheered when he got caught at the end.  If you don't like GUPG movies, this isn't for you.  Otherwise, thumbs slightly up.
16. This Is The End - This was my first Seth Rogan movie.  I'll steer away from anything else he does, but I was entertained.  I could have done without the gross-out comedy bits but that's what some people are paying to see.  I get that.  Still, thumbs up.  Like I said, it made me laugh.
17. Monster's U - It's hard to be objective about this because it's the first movie my wife and I took my daughter to see in a theater.  She was equal parts entertained and frightened.  We had fun.  Thumbs up.
18. You're Next - Slasher horror film.  Different.  Campy.  I enjoyed it.  Sometimes movies trick you into cheering for the bad guy but you gotta pull for Erin in this one from start to finish.
19. Grand Master - Beautiful.  Three intertwining plots that each could have been their own movie.  Really had to pay attention (No phone during sub-titled movies!) but I enjoyed it a lot.  Thumbs up.
20. Gravity - Fantastic.  One of those rare movies where I think to myself, "Okay, maybe 3D isn't a complete waste of time."  If you're a selective pendant about how the laws of physic are portrayed in movies, then do us all a favor and don't see it.  For me, thumbs up!
21. Old Boy (2013) - The new one, not the old one.  Meh.  I guess I'll see the original one of these days since it is so highly regarded.  But as far as the Spike Lee remake that I saw, thumbs down.