Inspirational Coding

August 19, 2015 Back to home

I attended a hack night at BigNerdRanch, yes, that really is the name. It turned out no one could make it, traffic, weather, etc.... However, the people from BigNerdRanch hung out with me anyway. I expected it to be a bust, but having that time to just hack at code again, even if it was just new to me, was so much fun. I learned what I called inspirational coding.

What does that even mean?

To me, it means I played around with new technology with some cool people and did some fun stuff on computers. Here is a bit of what we did. I updated my github to support github pages. Well, it means if you go to http://lotekmedia.github.io you will see a nice little site. It was created using Jekyll, which needed ruby, which needed bundles, which needed... you get the point. I loaded stuff, I created stuff, and tonight I added this theme I found for jekyll sites ( https://github.com/hmfaysal/hmfaysal-omega-theme Thanks @hmfaysal for your theme, nice work.

All that said, it took about an hour to get the site up and running. (Mainly because windows didn't have anything natively installed, go figure).

However, I was only there for about 3 hours... we talked about Ruby vs Python. Why code should be clean and readable over making it just work. We talked about automating blogs using jekyll. It was just a really fun night writing some simple code and getting a fun win.

Inspiration can come from anywhere. I sit here tonight writing a blog entry about a seemingly bust of a night (no one showed up), but because of that, we had a great time. If everyone showed up, it may have been too crazy and overwhelming, but it was perfect. I learned a lot and had a good time, plus the free pizza didn't hurt. :-)

So I've recently learned python, and really like the significant white space, it forces you to write clean code. It really is nice. Now, I have ruby installed, so I suppose I should start learning that. I have LESS basics down pretty well, but now that I have ruby... maybe I should move to SASS. I have used grunt, but really love Gulp over grunt.

I just realized I have so much to write about...

How do you setup google auth for python, c#, etc?
How do you use css animations for page turning effects?
How do you leverage local storage on the client before pushing things to a server asynchronously?
what automation tools do you use with jekyll? what is the better html5 boilerplate or jekyll outputs?
What is the best workflow for a new website... a wordpress site... a jekyll site...?
A designer sends you a psd file and says, make that... what do you do?
How do you stay motivated when you feel bored, frustrated, or tired?
What is the best practices for source control?
You have a day to make it work, do you start with unit tests, hack/slash approach, or general research?

One of the things I wanted when I started writing a blog, was to just document my own notes. It turns out my notes help others too. Go figure. Then I tried to keep a schedule of writing. It was really difficult to do that. Then I didn't have any ideas on what to write about. So many people write tech blogs, and so many people have managerial tips... S.M.A.R.T. goals, the GROW model, Agile in the workplace, Kanban in tech, How to keep your team morale up and still make deadlines... Yes, I know how to do that too. But then I realized, my spin on things is simply that. MY SPIN. It may have been said before, and someone else may have a similar idea, and they may have a better approach. But it is my idea... my thoughts... and you know what, it may not work for you. Tom McFarlin says that alot, here is what I do, but it may not work for you. So with that said... I am excited about my next steps. Who knows what they may be and when they may happen. I am not holding myself to a schedule to write a blog. I am going to write when I am inspired to do so. If you read this, great, if you don't, I understand. I don't like reading a lot, except for manuals (for some reason I love reading manuals, tech manuals, device manuals, etc... anything with instructions and steps).

So for those who have made it down to this part, thanks for reading. And thanks for stopping by. Stay inspired... whatever that means to you.

FYI, that featured picture is from my wife. :-) more of those to come too.