Relearning Python (continued)

Last week I was preparing for a Python technical interview after a ~7 year break from Python. Apparently it went well: they asked me to do a take-home exercise. I think this went well too, and I used it as an excuse to learn about Row-Level Security in PostgreSQL. I spent longer on the exercise than they suggested, but it’s all good: for a long time I have been intending to learn RLS, and this exercise was the carrot I needed to do it.

Relearning Golang (also continued)

I have pushed on with Golang this week. I want to work through the whole of Go by Example so that I have a decent (re)grounding in the language. I’m ~50% through.

Of the time I have spent on this, journalling my experience has taken up the biggest part. The good parts are quick to journal, but there are a lot of bad parts and WTF?! moments. I have spent time experimenting to check my assumptions too.

At times it’s a grind. Many times I have considered cutting short this endeavour as a sunk cost. But Golang has been a big part of the software ecosystem for a decade or more, and still is. I want to give it a chance, or at least I want to have a solid understanding before I make my own personal judgement of it.

Side quest: adding series to my website

I did some coding on allenap.me so that posts can now grouped into ordered series. Series have a title and an overview page, and each post links to the series. I added this for a “Relearning Go” series (upcoming; not published yet) but it’ll be more broadly useful. It was fun to build too! I want to improve the UI a bit, but it’s serviceable already.

Fit 4 Start

No progress on this. Due to other obligations I have only one day left in which to put together an application. It seems likely that I will miss this cohort.

Finally, some rest

I’ve been doing all this plus other tech stuff, like learning more Rust, and it was becoming apparent that I was overdoing it. I was stressed, cranky, and not sleeping well. I’ve taken time out to work in my garden, go cycling, and do things around the house. This is something I often neglect, but every time I do I feel refreshed and come back to the tech stuff with more energy and a clearer mind.

I love the tech stuff, but the net result of getting away from my computer is undoubtedly better in every way, every time. It’s easy to go down a rabbit hole when doing something as engaging as coding or learning, but I can actually get more done if I give my mind and body a break.