So. Here we are. Another tech blog by another software engineer who thinks he has something to contribute to the world of software that’s thoroughly saturated by people much smarter than him. Maybe he thinks he’s funnier, wittier, a better writer. Maybe he realized that all of his commits were in private repos and he needs something outward facing to show for it. Or maybe he just thinks that because the domain http://codeslinger.io was available, he has to do something with it.
Well, what now? Now I pretend know things while hiding my true ignorance through personal anecdotes and self-deprecation. A little about myself so you know I’m not entirely incompetent (just mostly):
I graduated with both my bachelor’s degree and master’s degree from Brown University, the former in 2013 and the latter in 2014. I studied neuroscience for my undergrad and biomedical engineering (focusing on computational neuroscience) for my graduate degree. I then joined a cool startup called pymetrics that uses neuroscience and data science to match people to jobs (that’s the short version).
Being the third engineer at a startup, I had to wear a lot of hats. My first project was building our APIs (because we were using Django views for everything before I joined), followed by some front-end work, followed by basically anything that needed to get done. Pretty much standard startup life.
But then, a client asked us for an iOS app. Well, you can’t really say no to a client when you’re an early stage startup. And, as luck would have it, out of the three engineers on the team, I was the only one with an iPhone. So I was tasked with building the iOS app.
That’s actually how it it happened. No embellishment. No exaggeration. The reason I became an iOS developer was because I was the only engineer at the time with an iPhone.
So when I say I’m ignorant, I kinda mean it. I learned exclusively on the job by watching videos, reading blog posts, and lots of Ray Wenderlich tutorials. And if my commits were public, you’d be able to see the garbage (the kind that takes centuries to degrade and hurts dolphins and stuff) from my early career transform into the less harmful garbage of today. I wouldn’t say it’s like going from fossil fuels to 100% renewables, but more like fossil fuels to nuclear: still got to do something with all those spent fuel rods, but at least we’re not polluting the environment as much.
So now that you know how I gained my “experience”, here are some of the topics on which I’ll give my opinions on*:
- iOS development
- Localization
- Django
- Photography
- Random thoughts
- Life
- etc.
* Non-exhaustive list
You’ll also have to deal with my firm belief that the music I listen to is fantastic, although I really know that it is most accurately described as juvenile. So the song for this post is:
Anyway, tune in next time for a lively discussion on localizing your iOS app.