Miscellaneous

Miscellaneous

How to Deal With Developer Burnout

Posted on by djbrensinger

Everyone can feel tired, bored or exhausted from doing work. Why? Too busy. Your tasks are repetitive and unchallenging. Or you deal with people who drain you. You need to focus on things that you can control to help deal with developer burnout.

How to deal with burnout

Here’s a list of things to try:

  1. Take a day off and do nothing. Relax, sleep or go somewhere different.
  2. Change your sleep routine. It may need a bit of tweaking. You may need to change your nightly routine.
  3. Break a habit or pattern. Take a different route to work. Eat at a new place for lunch.
  4. Drink water. Stay hydrated during the day.
  5. Spend time in nature. Go for a walk in a garden or a park.
  6. Take regular breaks during the day. Get up walk around or stretch.
  7. Do something creative. Write. Photograph. Or make something not related to work.
  8. Move your body. Talk a walk. Do yoga or pilates. Anything that gets you to move.
  9. Listen to a new podcast. If you listen to programming podcast, choose one on a different topic. Try out something you don’t normally listen to.
  10. Learn something new. Read a book or watch a video. Try a new programming language or tool.
  11. Say No to additional tasks at work. See if you can arrange to do them at a later date.
  12. Change your coding environment. Use a different text editor. Or go outside and code.

You want to try these things to avoid developer burnout and before deciding to quit your job. Small changes can help. If they don’t, then you can find a new job later.

Creating a simple weather app with Open Weather API

Posted on by djbrensinger

How do you get the weather? You could use an app or create your own. First, you need a way to get weather data. You can use an Application Programming Interface to get the data that you need.

Creating a simple weather app with Open Weather API

Where can you find APIs to use in your projects? Try ProgrammableWeb. It is an API directory that lets you find the right API for your project. I found a weather API called Open Weather. Open Weather allows you to get the current weather data, hourly or daily forecast and more.

With Open Weather, I created a simple weather app. It gets the current temperature, daily forecast (highs and lows) and weather conditions. Then, it tells you if the weather was right for riding a bike.

Getting Started

Before writing any code, I looked at Open Weather’s documentation. It explains how to use their API. They include examples using different programming languages like JavaScript. These examples are helpful were helpful to learn what I could do with the API.

On their examples’ page, I found Weather.js. Weather.js fetches data from Open Weather for you. It makes it easy to get weather information from Open Weather.

Building the App

Before building the app, I researched other weather apps to get an idea of what I wanted mine to look like. Then, I sketched out an idea on paper.

I chose to use HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Since I am familiar with Bootstrap, I used it as well. I built my prototype with Bootstrap’s starter template. Then, I wrote my own JavaScript file to fetch data from Open Weather using Weather.js.

Open Weather has weather icons. Weather.js doesn’t use those icons. I looked at the JavaScript and wrote code to get the icons.


Weather.Current.prototype.icon = function () {
  return this.data.list[0].weather[0].icon;
}

Now, my app shows the current and forecast temperatures, weather icon and conditions.

Bike Weather App Screenshot

What to do differently

Open Weather returns weather information for a specific location. Instead of hardcoding the location, I would use the location of the browser. Right now, I used Bootstrap for the UI. I would use a different tool for handling layout like FlexBox or CSS Grid.

Write Better Documentation for Your Code

Posted on by admin

Do you write documentation? Most developers love to write code. They write code that solves problems. It helps people to get something done. If they write documentation, it is quickly written. A task to be completed so you can get back to writing code.

Write Better Documentation For Your Code
Image by Christine Sponchia from Pixabay

How do you choose a new framework? You look at the features to see if it does what you want. Then, you read the documentation. If it is hard to read or non-existent, you’ll get frustrated and choose a different solution.

If you want people to use your code, you need to write great content.

How do you write better documentation?

  • Decide who you are writing it for
  • Decide what you are going to include
  • Make it easy to use
  • Keep it up to date
  • Read great documentation

Decide who you are writing for

You need to know your audience. Are they developers, clients or customers? Developers want to know how to use your code. Or what can they do with it. Your clients may want step by step instructions on how to use it.

What are you going to include

Decide on what you want them to know. Create a list of questions or items that you need to cover. A technical audience may want to read tutorials, how-to-guides and/or references. Beginners learn better with simple step by step instructions. For everyone, you may want to include videos as well.

Make it easy to use

No matter what you are writing, decide how you are going to organize it. If you are writing a tutorial, you may want to start by explaining what you are planning to talk about. Use formatting styles like headings, bulleted or numbered lists and bold or italics. Formatting styles help guide the reader through your documents.

Keep it up to date

Developers make improvements and changes to their code. When they do, the documentation needs to change as well. Plan time to update it. Apps and other projects fail because the content isn’t kept up to date.

Read great documentation

You can learn how to write better by reading. These style guides show you how to write great developer content.

More Resources

Customize your command line interface in Mac OS X

Posted on by djbrensinger

When you use you the MacOS for a development environment, you will have to use a command line interface to get some things done. With MacOS, you get the default command line interface tool called Terminal. You may notice that the Terminal window is a bit bland. What can you do? You can customize it.

Customize Your Terminal Window in MacOSX
Photo By: joffi

When you use you the MacOS for a development environment, you will have to use a command line interface to get some things done. With MacOS, you get the default command line interface tool called Terminal. You may notice that the Terminal window is a bit bland. What can you do? You can customize it.

Customize Terminal

When you first open Terminal, it looks a bit like this.

terminal macosx

To make it look better, you’ll want to change the appearance by changing its colors. It comes with 10 different profiles or themes: Basic, Grass, Homebrew, Man Page, Novel, Ocean, Pro, Red Sands, Silver Aerogel and Solid Colors.

To pick a different profile:

  1. Open the Terminal
  2. Choose Preferences from the Terminal menu
  3. In the General tab, choose a new profile from New window with profile
  4. Close Terminal and relaunch

Not sure which profile to pick. You can open a terminal window with the selected profile. In Terminal, click on the Shell Menu, choose New Window, scroll over to the drop down menu and select a profile. A new window opens in the profile theme that you have chosen.

terminal window themes

You can also tweak a profile by changing fonts, colors and much more. Open the Terminal’s Preferences and click on Profiles. In the Profiles window, click on the + button to create a new profile. Then, change the settings as desired.

terminal profile window

After working with the Terminal window for a while, you may want to change how it looks. You can choose to change the fonts and colors, pick a theme or create your own. What if you don’t want to use the Terminal Preferences window, you can edit the .bash_profile file. Whether you customize by using the preference window or edit the bash file, you can make the Terminal window look the way you want.

How I make Atom work for me

Posted on by djbrensinger

My new favorite text editor is Atom Code Editor. With Atom, you can modify the editor to fit your needs. I am going to show you a handful of tips and tricks that I use to make Atom work for me.

How I make Atom work for me

Customize Atom

You can customize fonts, font size and themes.

Change font and size

Don’t like the default font? Is the size too small? You can change that.

Atom > Preferences > Editor

  1. Enter a font name that you want to use.
  2. Enter a font size.
  3. Save.

Atom Editor Settings

If you want to go a step further, you can edit Atom’s stylesheet.

Themes

Atom comes with two default themes: Light and dark. If you don’t like them, you can install a new theme. Don’t know which one to install. Use Atom’s theme search to find your next favorite theme.

Atom > Settings > Themes

Atom Themes

Keyboard Shortcuts

Want to work faster in Atom? Use these keyboard shortcuts. Since, I use Atom on my Mac, the shortcuts are for a Mac.

Duplicate a line

When you are writing code, sometimes you have to write the same line over and over again. Instead of copying and pasting, you can have Atom do the copying and pasting for you.

  1. Go to a line you want to duplicate.
  2. Press the keys CRTL + SHIFT + D. It copies and paste your current line.
  3. Repeat for as many times as needed.

Move lines up or down

Have you ever need to rearrange some lines? Move one up from its current spot. Instead of cutting and pasting, you can use this shortcut to move a line up or down one.

  1. Go to a line you want to move.
  2. Press CMD + CTRL + UP (arrow). It moves your line up one row.

If you want to move it down, use CMD + CTRL + Down (arrow).

Comment out code

Different code can use different syntax for comments. You can use a shortcut to comment out your code. It will put the right syntax for comments depending on the language. You don’t need to remember to use the right comment syntax.

  1. Highlight the code that you want to comment out.
  2. Press CMD + /. Atom add comments to your code.

Conclusion

Atom is a great text editor. I like that I can customize it to look they way I want by changing the settings or install optional plugins. Atom’s shortcuts help you to use it even more productively.