And the Inevitable Pool of Tears...

17 Apr 2016

…or how overwhelming internet technology really is.

So I have decided I wanted to start a project and I decided that I wanted it to be a web project.

The only previous experience I have had with web development was a relatively simple website called DVJudge built with a relatively simple framework (Python Flask). Using the magic of Bootstrap and SQLite 3, we were able to get our project up and running in two weeks and using a agile sprint methodology, out the door in 4. It was a lot of fun but I did notice some limitations of the technology used:

• The website was not responsive
• The database was very hard to maintain (we probably should have used Alchemy…)
• I like Python, but not that much
• Flask is not as universal

So I then decided I should do some research about web stuff, see what else is available.

I quickly came accross three main contenders, and a couple of hourse later, I had read the wikipedia articles for Ruby on Rails, Django and “The Mean Stack” (in the last case, the individual pages of each compononent), some basic example code in each and perused stackoverflow for the communities opinion. I also had a quick look at Seek.com.

It seems start-ups like Ruby-on-Rails, bigger tech companies like Django and everyone else likes Javascript (including MEAN and various other subsets). This gave me a good idea of where to start looking and also and idea of what to expect with each stack.

At the moment, I am leaning towards Ruby-on-Rails because it seems to be the most popular and more widely used in the area tha I would be interested in (product-based start-ups) but I will reserve judgement until I get a chance to do the basica “Hello Server” for each.

The other major issue is templating and prettifying. I haven’t had a chance to look into this, and I am not looking forward to it. Like many terminal programmers, fiddling with color schemes is not my idea fun.

“I can’t do it to save my life. If I was stranded on a desert island and the only way to get off was to create a pretty UI I would die there”

— Linus Torvald

Down the Rabbit Hole

15 Apr 2016

Hi.

This is the first post on my new personal website Brady Watkinson dot com.

The title refers to the fact that I am primarily a C++ terminal programmer i.e I have no idea what I am doing with this website stuff; but it is never to late to learn.

My goal of this website is to provide an outlet for me to share my thoughts and ideas, lessons learnt and maybe some helpful resources for people who are in a similar position to me.

What position is that I hear you ask? Well I am a recent software engineering graduate looking for a job. Thats it.

As I am sure you are all aware, finding a job is one of the scariest things you can do in your life. The inherrent judging that takes place makes you wish either you already had a great job (made worse by the fact that your parents probably already do) or that you could never have a job in your life and just bum around. Well, you know the second one isn’t an option, and you know you are capable of the first one; you have no excuse.