Catégorie : Notes

Notes #5 – Internet, networking

A new internet?

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of World Wide Web, believes that the way the internet works today « completely undermines the spirit of helping people create ».  He and other pioneers of the modern Web are searching for a new kind of information network that can’t be controlled by governments or powered by megacorporations.

Networking sucks because people don’t give a shit.

Try to network only people who wants to know you, care about what you do, what you love and what you are passionate about. They don’t have to be widely successful or even be able to help your career. They only have to care.

Front-end basics #1 HTML

Elevator speech

Elevator speech

  • it should tell a story about you
  • it gives to your listeners some facts about who you are and it shows how you are important to them. The person should want to know more about you
  • it must end with an opportunity to meet again: I will contact you again soon

How you sound and how you look

  • speak slowly so your listeners can understand you
  • use pauses
  • highlight information
  • body language
    confident, friendly, organised
    smile and make eye contact
    stand tall and add hand gestures to emphasise important points
    look natural

Basics on meeting online

Online video conferencing  is an important tool for today’s working professionals.

Some basics:

  • spend some time to prepare the meeting and plan what you will say. Practice.
  • respect other participants and watch how long you are speaking
  • turn off your microphone when you are not talking
  • remain attentive
  • don’t forget you are on camera so remain engaged and friendly both while you are speaking and while you are listening

Some expressions for online discussions (agree/disagree, clarify, restate, take a turn, show interest)

  • Yes, i agree.
  • It looks good to me.
  • I think so, too.
  • I definitely agree.
  • I’m afraid i don’t agree.
  • I am sorry, but i don’t agree.
  • That’s interesting, but i’d prefer something different.
  • Actually, i disagree.
  • Excuse me, i didn’t hear that. Could you say it again?
  • Sorry, i missed what you just said. Could you repeat that please?
  • I’m sorry, could you explain that again?
  • Excuse me, could you tell me what that means?
  • Thanks, now i get it
  • Thank you. It’s a lot clearer to me now.
  • I understand…..
  • I see, our first step is to…
  • Excuse, can i say something here?
  • Could i interrupt you for a minute?
  • Sorry to interrupt but i would like to say something here
  • So, what do you think?
  • Can you give me your thoughts on this?
  • Do you agree?
  • What’s your opinion?
  • That’s interesting
  • Really?
  • I see.

You can find more here: Speak English Professionally: In Person, Online & On the Phone.

Microsoft bot

Microsoft bot strategy

Bots are conversational agents are they are meant to help users to complete a particular task. There are not new and they are not specific to Microsoft. The user doesn’t need to have an application or to go to a specific Web site and he can provide information directly to the bots.

 

Why Microsoft just made a big bet on bots

Satya Nadella thinks that bots are a simple concept with a profound impact. Microsoft hopes that boots become the next major computing platform even if for now the consumer interest is not overwhelming. Bots are cataloged as the website builder of the future. Some startups are already creating bots, Google tried to buy Chatfuel and Facebook is expected to open Facebook Messenger to third-party bots. Microsoft will make easier for developers to write bots  in Windows and run them on the Azure.

https://dev.botframework.com/

To get started you will need a Microsoft account.

Microsoft Bot Framework contains Bot Connector,  Bot Builder SDK and Bot Directory.

Bot Connector allows you to register, connect and publish the bots to services like text/sms, Office 365 mail, Skype, Slack and others.

Bot Builder SDK will provide anything you need to build great dialogs within your bot. For C# you can get started from docs.botframework.com/sdkreference/csharp/.

The Bot Directory is a public directory of all approved bots registered through the Bot Connector.

 

Notes #4 – Git vs SVN, git-flow

A comparison between Git and SVN. Git’s major features:

  • Git was designed to be fully distributed from the start, allowing each developer to have full local control
  • Git branches are simpler and less resource heavy than Subversion’s
  • Git branches carry their entire history
  • Branch merging is simpler and more automatic in Git.
  • Git is extremely fast. Since all operations (except for push and fetch) are local there is no network latency involved

git-flow – a successful git branching model

The main branches:

  • master – the main branch where the source code always reflects a production-ready state.
  • develop – the main branch where the source code always reflects the latest delivered development changes. The « integration branch » where any automatic nightly builds are build from.

Other branches, with a limited life time,  with a specific purpose, to aid parallel development:

  • feature  – it branches off from develop and it must merged back into develop. It exists as long as the feature is in development
  • release – it branches off from develop  and it must merged back int develop and master. Branch name convention: release-*. Use it for minor bug fixes and preparing meta-data for a release
  • hotfix – it branches off from master and must be merged back into develop and master. Branch naming convention: hotfix -*. Use it when you need to act immediately upon an undesired state of a live production version, when a critical bug in a production version must be resolved immediately.

Automate git branching workflow – use  git-flow library of git subcommands that helps automate some parts of the flow to make working with it a lot easier.

Issues with git-flow – The git-flow process is designed largely around the « release » but when you need to deploy regularly (every day), like GitHub does, a much simpler workflow is required.

 

Notes #4 – Reading books

A simple plan to start reading more – Of course there is no simple plan. Just start reading 25 pages per day. I will start with 10. No excuses.

The art of reading, remembering and retaining more books

Start by finding out how fast do you read. My reading speed is average. You can improve your speed by following all kind of guides, choose another way of reading, like Spritz, or make more time by cutting out time from other activities. Keep in mind that not always reading faster is the right solution.

Remember what you read by trying to be impressed by the text or associating it to something you already know or use repetition by literally re-reading a passage.

Scribble, bookmark what you like, write a review.

 

Notes #3 – Career, developers, git

5 Essential Pieces of Career Advice No One Ever Told You

In my opinion the most important of all: Your boss matters more than your company. Having the right mentor is the real key. The second important advice is don’t use data to pick a job, just do what you enjoy doing and be great at it. Also, the technical skills will only get you so far. You will have to learn how to navigate the world of office politics.

What distracts developers

The survey surprised me: « unplanned worked », 24.9% of the votes and « only » 22.7% of votes, social media. Chatty coworkers, meetings, forums and reading/writing emails are other reasons.

Git Commands and Best Practices Cheat Sheet – Print this git cheat sheet!

The Naïve Perspective and social intelligence

In the work environment the stakes are suddenly raised. People are no longer struggling for good grades or social approval, but for survival. Under such pressure, they reveal qualities of their characters that they normally try to conceal. They manipulate, compete, and think of themselves first. We are blindsided by this behavior and our emotion are churned up even more than before, locking us into the Naïve Perspective. The Naïve Perspective makes us feel sensitive and vulnerable. […]

Social intelligence is nothing more than the process of discarding the Naïve Perspective and approaching something more realistic. It involves focusing our attention outward instead of inward, honing the observational and empathic skills that we naturally possess. It means moving past our tendency to idealize and demonize people, and seeing and accepting them as they are. 

See people as they are: social intelligence, Mastery.

Notes #2 – C#, Google robots

Which Works Faster- Null Coalescing Operator or GetValueOrDefault or Conditional Operator – A simple benchmark test to check which one is faster: Null Coalescing Operator ??, GetValueOrDefault method or Conditional Operator ?: The conclusion is that if you want to return a default value different than the default for the current nullable type the best choice is ??. If you want to return the default value the GetValueOrDefault is a little more faster.
Go and check the link, it is nice work, you would find great explanations and some charts generated by the benchmark results.

Why Google Wants to Sell Its Robots: Reality Is Hard
Software is far easier to develop and test than hardware. The robots need time to learn continuously and require fundamental research in a number of areas.