Susanna Codes

A Song That's Too Beautiful To Finish If you know me you know that I get to work with really beautiful and really really truly truly wonderful wonderful people. I currently have some incredible Senior mentors I'm working with and they really really inspire me to no end. One of them has inspired a lot of work that is on my other blog , and another one has inspired me to write a series I'd like to document here. This photo was sent to me by a friend and fellow software engineer! The Series One of my seniors/my interim manager (while someone is away), has taught me so much about solving software engineering problems. I want to write up a mini-series, but I'm going on leave. I expect to write a mini-series when I get back - on the days when I don't have another hot topic to write up. These are what the topics will be: Solving Software Engineering Problems Get comfortable with being uncomfortable Most of software engineering is just getting things wrong Build stuff out t...

Adventures in Coding So I went to one of my fave fave fave mentors - one of my fave mentors ever - and I said I wanted to be better at writing code.  That's actually what inspired this post ! We had an amazing time. But I wanted to talk a bit more about the process that I went through - and what I actually learned from it. What We Did We decided to build an endpoint in the style of the codebase I am working in at the moment. In fact it was in a branch of my main codebase - and it imitated the style of some of the other endpoints that I have in my codebase. We did it there because - well I don't know because it was at my mentor's suggestion.  But I thought that it was a brilliant suggestion so I jumped on it straight away. Although I have built endpoints before, I still feel that I am fairly new to the backend - all my bootcamp projects, I owned the frontend. So it is very exciting to be in a mostly backend role - and I think I prefer it - and I still have a lot to learn in ...

Shadows Across The Floor I  am stuck at Gatwick airport. No really. [Edit: for anyone reading and getting concerned - I got safely onto a train back to my hometown that stops in my street]. The delays back home from London to Brighton have been so bad today that I have changed trains three times and I still have no signs of imminently getting home. So what better time or moment to reflect on my software career. Today I had a chat which changed a lot of things for me. I mean I had a lot of amazing chats. I had such an amazing chat with a mentor, and it really changed a lot for me. But first I had a conversation with a staff engineer at work. We talked about growth and goals. And he really told me what a lot of people have been telling me; to just enjoy the journey. To focus on learning. He kept on talking about software engineering being a  craft.  And about how you should hone that craft. And it’s not always about the rank and the job title you get. It’s sometimes about b...

What it means to me to focus What does it mean to be focused? Okay so firstly I realise the irony of writing this during working hours when I could be doing actual things but it needs to be done. As always I'll make up the time anyway. This is the process of working for me anyway and this just needs to be done. One of the world's biggest laser beams. What does it mean to be focused? I have a lot to be focused on.  I have a lot going on at the moment. I have a lot of things to be focused on. So what does it mean for me? So firstly it means withdrawing, kind of. I have a lot of incredible people who I am so incredibly lucky to work with.  I have seniors who give me so much of their time. But that means I have to give a lot in return. I have to prioritise these meetings, these relationships - but I have to prioritise both preparing for these meetings and making sure I have done any work that has been assigned to me before these meetings. Doing Homeworks I love it when my mentors ...

What is the Query String in GET Methods? Okay so my other blog is used for more polished blog posts... this blog is used for learning into as well as sharing and documenting my journey and redefining my goals and my focus. So one of my wonderful seniors and favourite and beloved mentors has set me a task He has asked me to reserach GET METHOD QUERY STRINGS... or something. So I am doing the best I can I am also working on another task from another wonderful senior  Thank you so much to both!!! 💛 My other senior has asked me to build out a mini small app that will implement a solution for a bug we are having. He has told me to set up the bug, REPLICATE IT (!!!), and then attempt a fix. This is the best advice ever and I am so grateful for it. But unfortunately I got interrupted I hate having to context switch... but I had a meeting (it was very fun) and after that it was hard to get into the project again. So now I'm lost... do I build out the Django project or do I research the ge...

Born In The Fire One of my favourite quotes is from the opening lines of "Best I Ever Had" by Laurel. "Born in fire/ Golden waves upon the shore can't calm us/ Burn on the beaches we won." I was born with a passion. Or rather I was born to have a passion. And later I found it so much. How do I focus on things I constantly need to be reminded of my goals again and again. I constantly need to be protected and taken away from distractions. So what am I going to do about this How am I going to do this I struggle a lot with remembering what my main goals are if I have a lot going on at once. This is why I like to always keep things streamlined, and really simple. WRITING ALL MY GOALS DOWN AT FIRST The first thing I have been struggling to do, and maybe this is REALLY REALLY SIMPLE, is just using a pen and paper. I NEED to write down what my goals are every day at the start of the morning. I need to write down what my goals are, and what I am focusing on. I took a fab...

Magic Methods So by a super cool and awesome and really amazing developer who I work with sometimes, I have been set the task of trying to figure out how we would go about sorting two instances of the same class - based on the value of one of their attributes. magic methods - taylor swift folklore aesthetic and vibe So what are magic methods? Magic methods are "special methods describing how certain objects should behave." They are "dunder methods" (sounds like something out of a fantasy novel?) like __init__ , __repr__ and __lt__ . I came across these when I was first learning Python/Django for my job interview. These methods apparently indicate that these methods "shouldn't be called directly by the programmer, they are normally called by the interpreter itself." Source:  https://blog.cambridgespark.com/magic-methods-a8d93dc55012 There is a thing called __new__ that comes before the __init__ method, but we are not going into this today. I am not g...

Lambda Functions  11 pm. I'm on the train home from London, having met up with my little sis. Should I do some work? No I don't work at this time. Should I read? I can't at this time. I know. I'll learn some AI. So currently I am taking two foundational modules that my AI engineer colleagues have recommended. Then I can do the full AI/ML career path.  A wind farm in Cornwall that my wonderful sister sent me. Lambda Functions for Pandas "Learn to define a Python function in one line."... Sounds like JavaScript. Which I miss. Only because I love it so much - don't remind me. I miss it every day. Anyway I love Python too...  So this is my attempt at writing a lambda function: age_in_dog_years = lambda age: age * 7 And this is attempt number two: say_hi = lambda name: print('Hi ' + name) Okay not so bad for someone who is writing at midnight on the train on the train from London for today having worked all day. An if statement inside of a lambda functi...

Alan Turing's Legacy, Part VII I have run out of AT pictures - maybe one of his memorial - but I want to keep sticking to the titles. My next plan was to use pictures of wind farms in Luxembourg, where I am from, so here we go. Using TypedDict So this was my second homework assignment that was set to me by my incredible mentor. I am so so lucky.  I have the most incredible mentorship.  I have the best mentors in the world! And so one of them has set me a task to learn what TypedDict is  And so that means I need to read again - arrrgh. Luckily my lead and I have spent a bit more time on this today so I have some context. But I still need more - hey I wonder if I covered it in my Codecademy course. It's so obvious, please - DUH It does exactly what my Lead has said to me that it does, based on the conversation that we had this morning. So why was I worrying about it so much? From Dafoster (???!) https://dafoster.net/projects/typeddict/ "A TypedDict is a new kind of type rec...

What is the enum library, part II? I wanted to do a bit more on this - sorry please, thank you. I wanted to do a bit more practical examples. A cute little octopus. Testing out enum code Is there anything else here, that I can take away from this? Is there anything else I have learned here? why meta? I asked chat GPT but it didn't make much sense. It's just a type of enum class I guess? One more interesting source... Here is one more interesting link... Source:  https://www.python-engineer.com/posts/enums-python/ It says here that: "Enum is a built-in data type in Python. It is used to create a finite set of constants." "Enum is a collection of symbolic names and values. It's a shortcut for enumeration and can be imported from the module enum . Enumerations are created using classes." So to give more examples I played around with it some more And I think I've got the idea now - thank you... Thank you.