Susanna Codes

Python on the Train, Part 2 [I wrote this yesterday morning] Me: there will be no more Python on train, and especially not at 6 am, the crack of dawn when I am basically still asleep anyway (yes, even me, who is usually bouncing around brightly, full of energy). Also me: I love coding I can't sit still on the train My mind is too full of everything to read any books at the moment It makes the train journey go by sooooo fast but in a good way I need to finish this course. Iterators and Generators Finally, I am on to these. I always loved iterators in JavaScript sooo much. Safe to say they were like my favourite thing. Introduction to Iterables Tbf I know what these do but always room to learn some more... "In Python, an iterable is an object that's capable of being looped through one element at a time." 10/10 definition. Has really helped me to grasp it some more and to understand it some more at a subconscious level.  "We commonly use iterables to perform the pro

Even If Nobody Else Sings Along You all know the Mama Cass song right? “You gotta make your own kind of music, sing your own special song, make your own kind of music, even if nobody else sings along.” That’s how it is writing my story. Very often it feels like nobody else sings along. Occasionally people will tell me that they love my content - I get people on LinkedIn or IRL sometimes telling me that they love my content or that I have inspired them to become a software engineer. But often there’s no feedback loop. However it’s less about the public response. It’s more about “does everybody think I’m insane” There’s method in my madness And you don’t know what I am building yet

It’s Getting Late But I Don’t Mind Were you even alive unless you were a kid in the 2010s? Yes I really did dance to David Guetta in the cool clubs in Brussels.  I have a huge hard task facing me tomorrow and thereafter. And very quickly I am learning that the only way to handle this and to face this one is to break things down into small steps. So currently my current task requires me to: Go back to my recording with my boss where we recorded the instructions because I was kidding myself that I had understood them. I need to understand them again properly yeah thanks. Go back to the documentation for the package. I am implementing. Yeah I have been bad. I didn’t read that properly. I need to try again haha. Maybe I’ll do that first thing. Might need to be a blog post. Thanks. Then my boss has sent me three steps. I can’t remember what they are. I roughly and vaguely remember the first two. But they are all written down so I can handle them.  Crucially all three of those tasks need to

Codex: What Are HTTP Headers? After they came up on a call and I didn't understand what they were I was advised to go away and watch some videos about HTTP headers. Now as you all know it is impossible for me to watch a video without writing notes on it so here we are.  Btw "Codex" is a song by the PHENOMENON Joel Sunny, please expect many more posts named after his music. What is a header in an HTTP request? So according to Chat GPT (I watched one video and got lost but will try another in a sec), headers "tell the server" things like: Your identity The type of request you want The format you want your response in Except that because it's me I have got Chat GPT talking about magical kingdoms... of course, naturally. Different types of headers Request headers: Tell the server about you and your request Response headers: Tell you how the server is responding Omg so many dragons... in my analogy... yes yes yes thank you. Look:  And it gets even better wait: Yo

A Never Ending Dream I am currently a bit high off of my four chai lattes and counting. I don’t know why I think these things are ever a good idea but they always seem like they are. I am such a mess.  I don’t get how I do it sometimes. I find my office space so hard to keep tidy and I find my personal space so hard to keep tidy and I have such bad executive dysfunction sometimes. I get such bad sensory overload sometimes too but I just have a passion that just keeps me going. And I don’t care about anything else. I don’t really care about anything else. For no reason at all I would like to say something about my seizures.  They are non-epileptic. I just don’t care who knows anymore.  They are the result of severe stress and major major trauma when I was in my teens. After 15 years I found out there was a huge correlation with autism. I am not aware of the fact that I am stressed. I have to be on the floor to realise what it was that was stressing me out all along. But this is no way t

Drinking Chai By Candlelight (using ChaiFi) I had a lot of things to learn this year. Not just this year but in my life. Firstly I had to learn how deserving of love and respect and kindness everyone is. Everyone is so deserving of love and respect and kindness. The person who I didn’t understand was worthy of love and respect and dignity and kindness was me. I’m having some really amazing experiences with my current employer. Those of being given time and listened to and treated with dignity. Those of being given time and listened to when I need it. If I get upset at work I am no longer left alone with my sadness anymore.  People always make time for me when I need it. I love it so much and it is so so so so beautiful. I feel so loved and cared for. I feel so included with my diet as well - I am a gluten free vegan and people always include me. But most of all it’s just being listened to. And being heard. It’s all so wonderful and so beautiful. I can’t believe I am made time for. And

„I don’t have a mission, I just have a love of Truth” I heard my mediation teacher say these words the other day. This was the most beautiful thing I have ever heard. I love these words. I don’t know if I have a mission either. I love AI. I love renewable energy. I love water technology and I love software engineering.  And why can’t that be enough? The truth is I don’t have a specific mission in mind. I have never had a specific mission in mind. I love AI. I love renewable energy. And I love software engineering and I love wind farms. On and offshore. My love is enough. My love is absolutely enough. The rest will come. The rest will follow. What are the facts? What are the facts? I love software engineering I love renewable energy I love AI I love the wind farms I love the offshore wind farms out at sea in Brighton I love the wind farms near the village in Luxembourg where I grew up I love pylons I love coding I love internet towers I love the pylons on my train journey up to London I

An outpouring of love with no purpose When I lost my job in February I went to the Apple Store in Brighton about two days in and then I spontaneously decided to go to Manchester. I had nothing packed. I grabbed a couple of essentials in shops on the way. I made it to my favourite park just before dark. I met my little sister for dinner. I could never have imagined how badly I needed my family at this time.  It was a lifesaver. The past few months have been really hard. The upskilling in this current role has been surreal. I am so so happy because I think that it has worked but I would be lying if I said I didn’t feel tired or exhausted. I need a holiday. Only one more month to go. But it’s never a good sign to be desperate for your next holiday. I think I have about four and a half more weeks of work to go before my next rest. I don’t want to feel that way about work because I love it. It has just been really hard work and I’ll say it - if you look at the experience I had and what in w

How my heart broke in February In February this year my heart was broken but not how you might think. I came into work one day about nine days before Valentine’s Day and found out that I had lost my job. My renewable energy software engineering job. I didn’t know what I know now. That I would make it into a renewable energy job that was even better. That I would get to work in Python and AI and with water tech as well. I didn’t know these things. This morning or rather afternoon cos I slept all day I finally had the courage to go through my old belongings from my old office.  I never touched them.  My books, my photos of pylons and my poster of offshore wind farms. I found a typescript book. That ship has sailed for me now I think. Long live typing Python. I sat there on the floor of my entrance and I cried. The effect that major major life trauma earlier on in my life in my teens has had on me is that I want to avoid looking at stuff. I can’t bear to unpack boxes and take things out a

An overflowing of love for no reason That’s what this whole universe is. An overflowing of love for no reason.  And why do I love the wind farms? Why do I love AI? Why do I love coding? I don’t know. Do you? Why do I love my team so so much? I love them so much I really do I definitely had to upskill a huge amount this year to perform in a role and team like mine This week and last week I have written in my new Yosemite-themed journal (one of at least two): am I a better software engineer this week than I was last Friday? And the answer is always yes. I have done so much new stuff and learned so much new stuff. And it’s so cool. Yes. Thank you. I love you I love you. Bye 🥰  And that’s it. I reflect all I can every day and every week again.

Every Day is a Lullaby The title of this blog post is a quote from a beautiful Lana del Rey song.  I want to go out to Yosemite. I want to get married in a beautiful forest or outdoors somewhere or in a random garden in some midwestern state.  I dream of living in a glass house. I want to live in a campervan or in a tiny house somewhere. I want to recover enough from my seizures so I can learn how to drive. It’s entirely possible. They keep on getting better. I have so many dreams. I want to go to the USA. 🇺🇸  But really I just want to give my life to the wind farms. I like to look at them and say “I can fly with you, build AI with you” which are some lyrics I wrote to my own song a while ago. I can fly with you, build AI with you. How was today at work? I had some major disruptions with the office space but I think I got there. I addressed the comments on my PR and I was really really happy because I did them super fast. My code worked and I was delighted. I did my Python course and

Thursday Mornings with Python, part 3 Not starting out with the best start as having some issues with where I sit in the office, and also not feeling great from yesterday. But as I learned when I was in my early 20s, it's never too late to fix something you think that you have broken, so here I am, back to test fixtures. Test Fixtures Tests need to occur in a "known state". Conditions that are tests are run in need to be controlled. A test fixture is "a mechanism for ensuring proper test setup and test teardown. Test fixtures "guarantee that our tests are running in predictable conditions, and thus the results are reliable." There is some stuff about @classmethod but again I am not doing it to death. I don't think that we really use unittest in my team.  But it is still really helpful to learn more about fixtures. Really really helpful to understand them at last. After I have been using them a lot. I would like to know a bit mo

Happiness is a Butterfly „It’s only words and words are all I have to take your heart away.” The Bee Gees once said this in a love song. A heart achingly earth shatteringly beautiful song called „Words.” This is how I feel about the wind farms. I love them so much. So what can I do? How can I express my love to them every day? I try. I try to do it in my coding. I try to do it in my persistence. My resilience and perseverance. I try to do it in my hard work and dedication each day. Relentlessly. I showed my love when I got laid off earlier this year. I refused to leave working for a renewable energy company. I turned down a really lovely fintech offer to be here.  Sorry. I was so flattered and so pleased. But I cannot leave the wind farms. Even when things are tough. I refuse to leave the wind farms. It was hard enough finding another software engineering job. But I wanted it to be renewable energy. People told me to give up on it but I couldn’t I couldn’t and I couldn’t. The stakes we

What it really means to me to love the wind farms and how it feels to love them I never feel more inspired in life than when I look out to the sea and see the wind farms. I especially love them when they are a visibly bright white; when they are touched by a pure light white golden brightness. I am not going to lie working this hard and moving this quickly (if you look at the trajectory of my career) can be really tough.  So it’s worth always reminding myself why I keep on doing it. I mean I love it so that much is obvious. But it’s worth reminding myself of what I can do better as well. Today it’s not losing motivation. My PR took way longer than I thought it would. Last night I was really ill and I had to come in a bit late this morning. Then this afternoon I got ill as well for a different reason and had to take a few hours out as well. On top of that I got stuck on a test for hours. „It’s just one test it will take 5 minutes”. Nope two hours and a change of serializer and moving th

I saw in my mind fairy lights through the mist - again Being autistic and having ADHD can make it really hard to express myself sometimes. When I’m stressed I don’t know why I’m stressed and when I’m upset I don’t know why I’m upset sometimes. It can take me days or weeks to articulate emotions and that’s if I even get to articulate them at all. But I love what I do so much. I have something that I love so much and for me that outweighs everything. Because I don’t care how many people take advantage of my naivety or gullibility and I don’t care how many people put me down along the way and expect me not to be able to tell and I don’t care how many people expect me to have no boundaries.  I don’t even care how many people sometimes expect nothing of me and/or are shocked and amazed when I suddenly do start to perform let alone excel. Or who are amazed or surprised or resentful when I get promoted or hired or find a new career path that I love and then move surprisingly quickly in. Becau

Python on the Train, Part 1 My plan is to not work out of hours any more, not even Python courses as I have a bit of time to complete the only ones I really need to do at work, but I got on the train and couldn't handle the prospect of doing nothing for 2 hours. I don't want to write it all up because I get it and I find it easy. And unittest is not what I use. Although the concepts are helping me to understand testing better - I don't ned to memorise the syntax or anything like that (and anyway by not trying to I am). I really should be chilling but nevermind. Once I have reached the point of feeling like I can't learn more - I will chill then. But I don't really like working outside of hours. "There is another group of assertion methods related to exceptions and warnings" self.assertRaises() this is interesting because my boss told me that if we are expecting our code to raise a certain type of exception, then we should test for it as well. So while I

You Can Chase Me Now I don’t have many words to say how much I love this.  Just how much I care about what I do. I don’t have words I am so sorry. I don’t have words to describe how much I love what I do.  I don’t have the words to say just how much I care for and love the planet. How much I love renewable energy technology and water infrastructure. How much I love hydroelectric dams and the wind farms. How much I love software engineering and coding. How much it means to me that I can be doing what I love best in the field that means the most to me. How connected I feel to the wind farms and to the pylons and to the internet towers and the hydroelectric dams. And how much they mean to me. Today someone told me I was resilient. To have survived 15 years of seizures.  I didn’t feel resilient anymore.  I just feel lucky. I am so happy. I have something I love so much and that’s what I do. How could anything be bad in the face of that? Fifteen years of seizures and the equivalent of month

What It Really Means To Me To Work With Water I build water technology within an AI/ML team. I love water. And I love water infrastructure. I’m a Cancer star sign and I live by the sea in Brighton. I love mermaids and Neptune and my favourite manga is “Tropic of the Sea.” But most of all I just love water infrastructure.  I love hydroelectric dams and dams all around. They speak to me. The impact of water in our lives cannot be underestimated. The work that we are doing is groundbreaking. We work to prevent leaks at both local and network level. This gives so much more meaning to my work. I love software engineering in general. But doing it for what I really love which will be so important in the future too means so much more. Namaste “Great virtue is like water, it is good for all things.”  Thank you

Where To Hide A Star I haven’t read this book but I just saw this title of a forthcoming children’s book on the train and so I wanted to write a blog post based off of this as well. The last six months have been… rewarding and fulfilling. I have managed to make all of my dreams come true and to defy expectations,  Sometimes the best place to hide is in plain sight and if you reread all of my blogs over the last six months (all 200 of them) you would know exactly what I’m struggling at work and what was going on. And why. But I’ve managed to overcome most of my challenges. Neurodiversity. Being very new in the field relative to the expectations of the job. Being in a new workplace environment. All stuff which I can handle and I am doing just fine. Because I am amazing and fabulous and I can do anything. I am loving the job. I am thriving. I am loving just getting on with it. I love my work. I am having massive breakthroughs. On Thursday I had what felt like the biggest breakthrough of a

Thursday Mornings With Python, Part 2 It's that time of the week again... yay! This honestly feels like Christmas to me. I prefer real coding even more but I LOVE courses. My course-taking days might come to an end soon. But for now I am very grateful to be being given the opportunity to upskill a lot more. THANKS! ❤️ Introduction to Testing Moving on from the fact that I have been doing lots of testing for 6 months, here's some of the interesting theory behind it. Why test? Things can go wrong with our code: syntax errors and exceptions MISTAKES IN PROGRAM LOGIC ("WHAT ME? NEVER!" - THE PRINCESS ANASTASIA IN ANASTASIA) THIS CAN CAUSE THE PROGRAM TO BEHAVE IN UNEXPECTED WAYS. And furthermore:  Testing is crucial to creating quality software The goal of testing isn't just to find bugs It's to find them quickly LEAVING BUGS UNFOUND AND UNRESOLVED CAN LEAD TO MASSIVE CONSEQUENCES IN THE REAL WORLD. !!!! !!! Two Categories of Testing Manual

You Lost Your Maps, You Lost The Plan I’ve seen what it’s like for everything to fall apart. Sometimes. The experience of having seen things go really, really wrong really early on in life has left its mark on me. But it has also led to love and kindness and tenderness like I can never understand. And so that’s why sometimes you have to throw all of the fudging plans out of the window. When I was 24 I wanted to have a plan. It started a bit younger than that. But I was obsessed I desperately wanted a cure I desperately wanted to fix my seizures I desperately wanted them to stop. But there was no plan.  I tried desperately hard - I tried to come up with something. But everything failed. Then one day after the toughest year I was in the back of an ambulance (for the umpteenth time that year alone) and we turned a corner and the light came flooding into the back on the ambulance through the back window. I’m serious. It was the golden hour. It was the Liverpool sunlight in June (or May may

Muted Swan, Part II Woke up early, can’t sleep, wanted to get some thoughts down (not that early anyway anymore). As usual I have some stuff I need to improve on.  I have had some feedback on; improving the quality of my testing, improving the quality of my debugging, and improving the quality of my PRs, as well as some other pointers as well especially related to debugging. It’s not that early anymore after all so I only have a few minutes. But let my reflect for a few minutes on errors I have made and how I can fix them. No pun intended about the errors btw sorry. So as you can see from the above infographic. I was making lots of mistakes on my PRs: leaving code in, leaving types, leaving comments. This was because I wasn’t rereading them.  I did in my last job but here I wasn’t asked to so I kind of got away with it. However I’ve gotten better at it recently. Once I was told explicitly I started doing it (like with most things in life). One thing I need to keep on remembering to do