Susanna Codes

I AM PYTHON I bought a notebook today. The most special one of my life. Please don’t ask how much I spent on it; I got some money unexpectedly and it was more or less the same amount so it was beautiful. In it I will put: everything I learned on this journey. And everything I am working on. And everything I still have to do to get there. But first; to bed; it’s nearly midnight. Please see me dressed up as Python for Halloween though please. Thank you

Thursday Mornings With Python, Part 6 It's a Thursday morning with Python and unusually I'm starting out on a train as well. BUT THERE IS ALSO A MASSIVE PLOT TWIST. I hope to share it in a picture later today lol. If my costume is still intact(ish). I just need to buy 3 rolls of cellotape when I get to the train station. Just you wait and see... Generator Expressions This is so amazing omg. This is so much simpler than the generator function thing and I have been using them for ages anyway. It was good to remember the syntax. There is a great table on list comprehensions vs generator expressions but let me write it up in my own words anyway please thanks. Generator expressions are wrapped in brackets, whereas lists are wrapped in square brackets. Generator expressions return a "newly defined iterable object", whereas list comprehensions return a, well, list. A new list. I want to dwell a bit more on this "newly defined iterable object...

Three Things I Really Need To Focus On At Work There are more okay. But these are the main three. But first of all I am running all over Brighton trying to find some face paint. I want to 5 stores in the city centre and none of them had any. I am so sad. I had such an amazing Halloween costume idea and all of the other parts were ready. I hope that I can pull this off. If not then maybe in London tomorrow. But I would rather be prepared. Okay so what are these things I need to focus on then please? I have some time as I wait for the bus to one of my last hopes. Thank you My three biggest main focuses for work right now  I am exhausted. I am knackered. But I am never too tired to process another goal. Thank you Goal number one Goal number one is the middle. The middle between coding and product management… I guess you could call it software engineering. I can see the overarching view of the product very well. This is my area of expertise and I used to work in product. I can do the c...

Feel the Power⚡️⚡️⚡️ My name is Susanna. I am 30 years old. I live for AI and live for renewable energy. I live to be a software engineer. I started coding just over two years ago and it pretty much became my life overnight. I love pylons. I love wind farms. I have written nearly 500 posts on this blog alone on software engineering.  When I lost my job in software engineering and renewable energy earlier this year I couldn’t bear to leave either. So I found a job again against all the odds that allowed me to continue to do both. And I got to do AI as well. I give everything I have to what I do. If I get guidance in a 1:1 I will write it out by hand to process it. If I get to make a wish I will make a wish for my job to work out. Well, now you know A photo by my friend Alejandro 🥰 world class software engineer who really likes Madrid And when you know, you know. Just like I did with software engineering 🥁  These are the facts.  My name is Susanna. I am 30 years old. I lo...

Python on the Train, Part 3 next() and StopIteration Oh wait! Oh hold on a minute. I've seen these two before. I've seen these two before, haven't I. They are part of the iterators lesson. And now they are teaching them to us again in the generators one. Clearly they are part of the same process. I kind of knew this anyway especially from my Senior's amazing explanation of yield vs return. But it's still very helpful to learn them anyway and to see them anyway again please - thanks. "Generator functions return an iterator object that contains traversable values." Generator functions return an iterator object that contains traversable values. Generator functions return an iterator object that contains traversable values. Retrieving the next value from a generator object "To retrieve the next value from a generator object, we can use the Python built in function next() which will cause the generator function to resume its execu...

Myopia When I cry I don’t cry alone. The whole of the forest back in Luxembourg cries with me. The valleys and the forests and the trees cry with me. The secret oak trees that you know nothing of cry with me.  The deer that I have seen climbing up the hill cry with me. The secret valleys cry with me. The secret internet towers and water cages cry with me.  I do not cry alone. The whole of Liverpool and the whole of Manchester cries with me. Places I lived, and loved, exploring parks those rare times I could venture out far enough. Having seizures on every street corner and The unforgettable experiences that came with it. The handsome man who walked me back to my front door and stroked my arm who was about to do his PhD in some kind of Rolls Royce engineering. The actress who I met in the square who showed us all her video. The girl who I made a card for with lots of seagulls because she was studying them.  The handsome boy on a bike who put me in a taxi because I was tryi...

Island of Doom Sorry for all the really moody blog post titles. I’m listening to Agnes Obel songs. I love her sooo much - her music is so beautiful and so healing. A lot of my favourite music I discovered in my early to mid twenties - Agnes Obel, Princess Chelsea and Bat for Lashes - that’s right I don’t just listen to Lana del Rey and Taylor Swift haha! This weekend has really represented a massive breakthrough for me. On Wednesday I made a plan. On Thursday I had to deal with a major security incident and then I worked late and did more of my initial plan (I shouldn’t have done that). On Friday I raised a PR and my boss reviewed it. On Friday I also received some feedback on how to approach the changes to my problem. Over the weekend I couldn’t help it and I solved it in my head all weekend. Hey sometimes it’s okay for these things to happen. So now it’s all solved in my notebook. Need to check a few technical details on Monday. But the solution is all there.  How exciting is tha...

Broken Sleep I am doing so much at the moment. I am doing so much, project managing so much. And this is me after having toned it down.  I’m managing at the moment: Python course Obviously just my usual workload - which I’m hugely passionate about - and which is arguably more all-consuming for neurodivergent people Especially when I’m so passionate about it… Managing improving on a lot of stuff at work still - still have a lot of behaviours and activities I’m trying to hit better and so I’m project managing these as well - learning very hard what they are and so that I can try and hit them properly Keeping all of my reflective journals - yep I don’t just blog. Not even close. At the moment, I keep several reflective journals as well, about work stuff too. I am posting on LinkedIn less and on my blog slightly less - that’s okay - software engineering for me is always about the real thing and that’s only the real reason why I do it anyway Also trying to project manage cooking and hou...

Reading Stuff I can’t read stuff to save my life. Except that I can. When I absolutely have to read something I will read. I had to read a lot of notion docs today and it was fine. It was doable. But I did get hung up on reading some instructions. There was a piece of information that I was looking for and I missed it in the instructions. Because it was in an unfamiliar format. The answer was staring at me in the face. It was only when a colleague screenshotted it for me and sent it to me that I realised that it was right there. So we talked about how I could read better. He said to maybe look for the headings I needed. But the headings made no sense.  They were not logical or consistent. They were kind of fun and had like banter in them but because of that they made no sense to me. They didn’t clearly organise the information. They were a combination of verbs and misspellings and playful stuff. Which doesn’t make sense to me in the form of following logical instructions. So next t...

You Can Never Take Me Away From The Pylons I can listen to beautiful music about self-love and go into churches and look at the walls that glisten with golden, emblazoned with gold statues and stuff and so on. I have been following leading teachers in yoga for years and following their wisdom. But nothing can take me there like the pylons can. Nothing can take me to God like the pylons can. Like the wind farms can. Nothing can make me so happy. Even on days when I had major incidents like I did today (if you know, you know) nothing can make me so happy. As software engineering can. As coding can. Thank you  And from the software engineering and the coding

Thursday Mornings With Python, Part 5 Generators  This week is a bit different I have my meeting where I talk about this earlier than usual so I won't get as much done before I have spent most of the morning struggling through with a project whose instructions make no sense (which I will go through in my review meeting later) I have tried it THREE TIMES by myself I went through the instructions with an Engineer II (I am an Engineer I) and even then it didn't make sense so I am gonna try with my Senior... I had a stand-up that overran this morning So for some of this morning I am going to be finishing up this project on iterators.  But I can get started on my lesson on generators a bit more at least and maybe do a bit more after my meeting... so let's go... Introduction to Generators It says here that: Generators allow for the creation of iterators without having to implement __iter__() and __next__() Wait really what? I hadn't been expecting thi...

For So Long, London Whether I like it or not I am writing my tests for tomorrow in my head right now. Whether I like it or not I am realising what I need to do with my factories in order to make them run properly tomorrow. I am supposed to be chilling and I am having my dinner but I can stop thinking about: I know how I am going to write a test tomorrow. I know exactly what I need to test. I know how I am going to use my factories and modify them to get there. I know what I don’t know how to do and I know how I am going to raise a draft PR with a comment explaining this. I know why I won’t be able to get the app to run without doing one little thing and so I can leave a comment on a draft PR to get some feedback before I implement this. Unless… unless I can figure it out myself. Unless I can I’ve finished changing my models I’ve finished adding some changes to my logic although I’m not 100% sure if it will work yet and if I got the right end of the stick I’m not even sure if a bit of c...

Texas is hot, I can be cold „I’m gonna do it my way, it will be alright”. This quote and the title come from Kacey Musgraves. Slow burn.  But I don’t wanna talk about that. I wanna talk about the way it feels to climb to the top of the hill near my house and see a wind turbine. I wanna talk about how it feels to run to another part of that hill and see an internet tower. I want to talk about the light flashes of the wind farms at night and I want to talk about the hydroelectric dams and I want to talk about how much I love nature and all of the renewable energy and water and telecommunications infrastructure that exists within nature. I want to talk about what it feels like to be a software engineer in all of that and how it means so much to me. I want to talk about how hard it is to be neurodivergent in the workplace but the support I have received at Kraken is quite simply through the roof and is quite simply out of this world. It has been so so hard for me but I do it all for th...

A Moment That Changed My Life Forever So as you all know I went to Surrey this weekend. And I had a moment that just changed my life. I have been starting to calm down recently. To slow down. To work less (outside of hours). To run around less. And I was trying not to do what I normally do when I visit new cities which is run around, exhaust myself and then crash. So I tried to do what I would do in a new city eg with my dad or someone who was calmer or less chaotic than me. And so I went into the tourist information. A very big step for me. Usually I can’t stand still for long enough for things like that. They told me there was a quilt exhibition upstairs. I went up. I find museums really hard. I went into the first room and looked at the quilts and thought that the museum wasn’t interactive enough. But I had this sense of just wanting to stand there still forever and admire the works. I thought about sitting down. But then I saw a beanbag out there on the landing. And I sat down. I t...

"That's a Forever Job": Weekend Python in Surrey I know, I know. I have stopped working weekends, and I don't ever do work work and for the most part I have stopped studying. BUT I AM IN A PLACE RIGHT NOW WITH MY PYTHON COURSE WHERE IT'S LIKE A STORY AND IT'S LIKE A BOOK AND I CAN'T PUT IT DOWN. I can't wait to find out what happens next with iterators!! I just can't wait, I just can't wait to find out!!! I am on a cheeky weekend trip to Guildford, in Surrey. I don't know why. I wanted to go to my favourite Bubble Tea place. Which they also have in Brighton - but I wanted more exciting - but London was a little bit too far and so I wanted to make a fancy trip out of it. One of my colleagues lives where I'm going so I can tell him. Infinite Iterators "An infinite iterator will repeat an infinite number of times with no endpoint and no StopIteration exception raised. Infinite iterators are useful when we have...

What it means to me to have a dream In February my dream died, or so I thought. It has taken me almost 8 months to say: this was the worst thing that could’ve happened to me.  I love software engineering and renewable energy more than anything else in the world. Because I’m autistic, it takes me a long time to process my emotions. And so it has taken me eight months to say: I died inside when I lost my job in February. Because: I love renewable energy more than anything else in the world. Right up until losing my job I had been researching AI in renewable energy every single day for months. And I loved DERs. Today I saw someone use the word DERs on LinkedIn and it reminded me: I’m not me unless I’m working in renewable energy. And I hope to have more DERs back in my life again soon. Yours in eternal love, Susanna Castle on Holy Island

How I Need To Read Tickets I need to read software engineering tickets like I needed to read my university papers; backwards.  I need to start with the AC’s and the acceptance criteria; only then can I take in the new information and put it in.  If I can visualise what needs to be done then I can fit in all of the other information. Once I know what that final steps and what the final goals are everything else just becomes a step to achieving this. And everything flows from there. And then I make the magic work. Thank you. 🪄  Holy Island. Photo taken and sent to me by my Dad.

Thursday Mornings With Python, Part 4  Continuing with iterators - Next Awwww how cute - the next lesson also just happens to be on something called next. There is a method in iterators called next() and it can be used as next() or __next__() , and it works similarly to iter() and __iter__() . The moment I saw the title of the less I got it straight away. I don't want to spend too long on it. But what does it do under the hood? Basically, next in whatever form you choose, RETRIEVES THE ITERATOR'S NEXT VALUE.  It will raise an exception called StopIteration when all items have ben iterated through. But then what happens - does the exception get handled? PYTHON HANDLES THE EXCEPTION  StopIteration    BY STOPPING THE LOOP WITHOUT THROWING AN ERROR (during a for loop). Iterators and For Loops This literally just explains what is going on under the hood with for loops - then we can create our own custom iterators. iter() next() and StopIt...

Having the self-confidence to review my own PRs properly I have to believe in myself properly. I have been making a mistake with my own PRs. As someone with ADHD, I rush to get the task done towards the end for that sense of accomplishment and as such I have been neglecting to slow down enough to review my own PRs with enough mindfulness and attention to detail. I check for typos, formatting errors and stupid things like duplicate code or I left-in comments. But I don’t trust myself to check the logic properly. And this is where it relates to confidence. If I had the confidence and the belief and faith in myself that I was good enough to review my own code then I would enjoy it more and therefore do it properly. That’s right you heard me - I haven’t been enjoying it because I don’t trust myself to spot logic errors in my own PRs. Admittedly I am very careful about the code that I do and I often do things to death. But I am still capable of making very dumb mistakes. Like my code today:...