Basically a devlog

dfebs Jul 29, 2023 0 Comments

I said I would do a post once a week and doggonit I’m doing it! I realized yesterday that almost seven days passed since the last post and my first reaction was “wow, how do actual professional writers do it?” Time itself decided it was time to be next week and here I am, at the mercy of it.

Jokes aside, it has been an absolute learning experience with Python and Django. Much like when I was learning Bevy, there was an initial phase of “this is confusing and has so many moving parts; how does any human function while working on this?” and then over time I started to think “Okay I want to do these things, so I just need to change this, and this, and this, oh and I gotta remember that. Why doesn’t this work? Oh yeah duh because of this.”

That’s essentially the sound of growth. Anyway, here are the things I recently accomplished so far with creating a sample media posting app in Python and Django:

• Basic login/logout system
• Making posts with images
• Making comments on posts
• Deleting your own posts
• Seeing all listed users
• Seeing user profiles
• Editing own user profile

Here are the features I plan to add as well:

• Following users and see only their posts
• Making reactions on posts (ideally with ajax)
• Full email authentication
• Making things look nicer using bootstrap’s layout system
• Automated testing

There are some additional nice-to-haves like lazy loading and real-time post updates, but we shall see on those. I ideally want to have those things but it won’t be the end of the world if I decide to move on to a newer project by the time I finish adding the things I definitely want to have.

One thing I want to do as well is construct a local Gitlab CI pipeline for the project. This effectively falls under the very broad category of “Automated Testing” that I listed above. The pipeline would ideally run my automated tests, then deploy to some local web server that I have. I’d be using my assortment of raspberry pis for this endeavor. I also want to use the Django unit testing framework as well as Selenium for product level testing. Therefore, “Automated Testing” will most likely take the most time out of the remaining tasks.

Anyway that’s about it. I hope to have at least have the remaining core features done by next week so that I can talk more about them. Thanks for reading and don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!

Tired, but free

dfebs Jul 22, 2023 0 Comments

Alrighty, so it’s been quite some time since my last post. For what it’s worth, it’s not entirely because I was lazy. There’s slightly more to it. Some good, some bad.

It’s frighteningly easy to go on autopilot sometimes and to think that life is one big routine that never changes. To some degree, it’s definitely true. But, once in a while, you’ll smack right into a brick wall to shift the balance. We tend to forget how tenuous the conditions of maintaining our equilibrium are, then when things are shaken up, we can get shaken up too. We begin to question reality and quickly recall that the universe is actually uncaring.

It’s easy to see that as a bad thing. And a lot of times it is.

In my case, let’s just say I have a lot more freedom now at the cost of stability. Thankfully, knowing the universe, I prepared for a time like this. I’ve been focusing a great amount of energy to figuring myself out and understanding the potential that I have. Guess what? It turns out I learned stuff about myself and the rich possibilities life has to offer.

Programming is still pretty neat

Firstly, I still like software and writing stuff for it. I like the process that goes into the problem solving for it. I like having a sick playlist in the background as I’m slamming out some code to bring an idea of mine to life. Yes, it’s hard some days. But everything worth being paid for is hard some days.

Being lost is fine and in fact encouraged

That’s basically it. I think being lost is the next step to being slightly less lost. From there it’s slowly chipping away at the ground you want to explore next, while mapping the ground you’ve covered.

Results-oriented retrospection is a slippery slope

With any decision you make, there’s almost definitely a better one. Probably. But nobody’s psychic and can come up with that optimal path. What matters is PICKING ONE. Seriously. You’d need all of the world’s information as well as the ability to process it in order to make the most optimal decision. Yes, maybe you’ll regret the decision, but it’s better than doing nothing.

In my case, I started learning the Django library in Python. At the time of writing, it is an absolute work in progress. I didn’t think too much about it when deciding to learn it. I just saw Django a decent amount in job descriptions and I kinda like Python. Plus, I’ve messed around with Flask in the past. Is the choice to learn Django the most optimal? No. Is it a waste of time? Absolutely not. In any case of doing software engineering, there’s something to learn from. What matters is I just pick something and roll with it because otherwise I’ll just sit and overthink things instead.

Maybe I won’t like Django. Maybe I will. Who knows? If I don’t, I definitely learned stuff. If I do, then I win. I’ve done enough overthinking.

It’s not about not failing, but rather increasing chances of success

I previously took the approach of getting by. It’s not sustainable. Yes, you can do it while technically growing, but there’s a lot of potential learning left on the table when you don’t try things that you know you’ll fail at the first time.

Some things, you basically just have to constantly fail over and over. As your failure counter rises up, throw the stupid failure counter in the garbage because who cares? If you learned from previous failures and applied them to future attempts, then you can sleep just fine.

Sometimes, you can do everything perfectly and still not succeed. Refer back to when I mentioned the universe and its relationship with people. All you can do is say, well, I am trying to just increase my chances of success with each new iteration. Sometimes the odds are stacked against you or literally at 0 and you’d just never know.

/ramble

That’s about it honestly. I will be making attempts to post on here weekly to have as part of my routine. I have had a lot of opportunity in the past month to grow as a person and reflect on what I like and what I do. Maybe this can help someone else do the same.

Stay safe; make good choices!