Susanna Codes

Concurrency and Async/Await in FastAPI Okay so you may not know this about me but I work in an AI team. I love it sooo sooo so much - I love AI. Anyway we use a lot of async Python so I have been asked to do what I find hardest - read. So here I am. Right. Time to work. Ahem yes. I have done this before in JavaScript but it's different in Python. Asynchronous Code Source.  "Asynchronous code just means that the language 💬 has a way to tell the computer 💻 that at some point in the code, it 💻 will have to wait for something else to finish somewhere else."  "Let's say this something else is called "slow-file 🗃". Nope, lost. I have done this before in JavaScript but it makes no sense. "So, during that time, the computer can go and" work on something else somewhere "while slow-file finishes. 🗃" "THEN, THE COMPUTER 💻 WILL COME BACK EVERY TIME IT HAS A CHANCE BECAUSE IT'S WAITING AGAIN" CAN YOU TELL THAT I HATE READING O...

Never enough reflecting for one day Well I am on the bus and my phone is about to die so what else am I suppose to do. I made so many mistakes today and I can’t get over them.  I can’t get over the fact that I wrote a message about a technical question at about 5.15 pm and sent it cos I was so exhausted and lost. And then realised as I continued to code that I didn’t need to worry about the problem. Admittedly I was still interested so it’s not that bad. And maybe I will get a response tomorrow. And as I pressed send on slack Margaret Elaine Hamilton’s advice to women in tech echoed in my mind: “the only dumb question is a question that doesn’t get asked.” And so I feel stupid but I also did so well. I did an amazing git rebase on Friday - a huge one.  And then this morning I did some really complicated git magic to cause a mysterious git issue which my advanced and fancy rebase caused (which was still correctly done). And really there is something missing. There is something ...

What do I know: the past present and future of my current ticket  What do I know I know that I am good. I know that I am kind. I know that I work really really hard I know that I shouldn’t ask questions on slack when I am tired. I should wait and save them for the next day. I know that I should just write out questions to myself first and wait *because even if I wait and don’t actively research the answer* the answer may just come to me anyway while I wait and process things I know that I did really well today and just focused on my ticket. I know that I fixed a lot of git issues today and I did really really well and some of them are really complicated and tbh I was really impressed with myself and this fancy git reset manoeuvre that I pulled off I know that I just need to focus on my next ticket I know that tomorrow I need to focus on the function I was already working on - working out what bits I need to slot in and where  Writing the parent function wouldn’t hurt although ...

AI In Renewable Energy, Part 2: Grids and Storage Systems Oh hey! Welcome to another blog series about my favourite thing in the world, AI in renewable energy. I researched this in great depth in January 2024 and went to a seminar at the University of Cambridge on it, which was the greatest hour in my life.  Recap In my last post, we talked about why use AI in renewable energy and we began to look at patterns and predicting generation. Smart Grids There is nothing more I love in the world than a smart grid. Modern grids have to integrate a greater amount of energy than ever before into themselves. The demand is higher than ever and therefore the supply has to be higher too. This modernised smart grid quite simply cannot function without artificial intelligence. As the grid relies on varied sources of power (in renewables alone we are looking at hyrdo, wind, solar, maybe one day tidal), live sensor data provides continual live feedback which feeds into the AI that helps us to manage...

Focusing on one ticket at a time: a guide for AuDHD Picture the scene. Monday morning. You come in. Emotions are flying high. Because why wouldn’t they be? They are always high. There’s so much going on.  A billion people have posted on slack and maybe one or two people have messaged me. Maybe I have some other issues on my mind. Maybe there’s a performance issue I’ve been working on (hello, AuDHD) and I’m thinking about that. Maybe on Friday night I did a big rebase and it’s all on my mind. Maybe I am waiting on the review of a big PR. So how do I sit down and focus. If this is just the baseline - where’s the room for my actual work. What do I focus on.  It was probably hard for me to get out of bed today and I may or may not have had breakfast and if I haven’t there’s a battle between focus on work and grabbing some food - but there’s nothing I want to eat anyway around. So ladies and gentlemen and gentlefolk what do I do? I have myself covered. I just focus on the next tick...

Researching the Role of AI in Renewable Energy Again: Part 1, Predicting Patterns and Optimising Energy Production Back to doing the thing I loved most in the world again. Why Have AI in Renewable Energy As always, AI in renewable energy is so badly needed due to one main reason: demand. Various places in the renewable energy industry where AI is needed are: The generation of renewable energy The stabilisation of the grid (very important one!!!) The optimisation of energy storage (including, think, EVs, batteries, and so on) And the utilisation of renewable energy assets - one of my favourite ones! Such as planning maintenance works and being more intelligent with them using AI to make smart planning decisions based on information such as resources available and planned works, as well as integrating these with data based on predicted faults - I am really blessed to be working in a team who are doing some really interesting stuff around this at the moment - with water Predicting Pattern...

I Am Absolutely Unlimited … and so are you. All limitations are truly in our minds and what we are is truly infinite. I want to write one more post for tonight consolidating my good new behaviours and habits although this means I violate my “no working too late” rule. But anyway this is a blog post. So what are my good new behaviours? Actually a story first. Many years ago in Liverpool a man really saved my life. I was stranded late at night in the city. I had had a seizure and was really unwell. The worst time of the week to get seizures are the nights when other people drink. People are much slower to help. So there I was alone way up by the Liver building and I was totally stuck. This man found me and let his McDonald’s go cold to talk to me and put me in a taxi. But he said to me “you need to accept all the support you can get.” You know I used to be really good at accepting support and then somehow I realised that some of the stuff I was getting wasn’t as helpful as it could be an...

Okay so. The job has clicked. This is great. Now I just need to stay calm.  And think and focus on - softly, softly - gently, gently - what has been working for me.  Because I love the wind farms and the offshore wind farms - so, so, soo much. So here we go: What has been working for me? Writing to myself first: when I have a problem I write a message to myself first. Then I usually realise, what the solution is, or what I need to try that I haven’t tried yet next (!!!), or what I can ask to chat GPT. If I am still stuck after 45 minutes I can send. So far after doing this - I’ve never needed to send Drawing a diagram. The frontend is so easy for me. The backend is so hard. Drawing a diagram allows me to visualise things so much easier. Suddenly, unsolveable problems become solveable. Thank you Problem solving: I ALWAYS just come back to “what is the problem”. “What is the solution.” And it always just works for me every time please. Thank you Grokking: I have invested inA3 sk...

Sharing with you the beauty of it all Life is one great big beautiful adventure that I don’t understand. My job has clicked. My work has clicked. My job has clicked for me. Software engineering has clicked for me (Frontend engineering clicked for me in minus five minutes). Backend engineering has clicked for me. Backend engineering has taken about a year of doing it all the time for it to click for me. But clicked it has. I can’t stop churning out tickets. But it’s not even that. It’s the peace and happiness and joy that I feel. That maybe things will be okay. And that maybe it will all all work out somehow. All be okay somehow. Im not going to lie I’ve had the most intense year ever. And my closest colleague and I have been on one hell of a ride getting me here and overcoming my barriers and working with my learning style and surmounting the challenges I had of this last year. But now I know that I can do the job. I know that I can do it really well. And no one can take that away from...

How To Be A Great Engineer: Susanna Codes Edition My friends, the time has come to share it with you. All of the wisdom that I have learned on this journey. Some of it is serious and most of it is based on how much I have poured my heart and soul into this journey and how much heartbreak I have had to take and endure. How to Be a Great Engineer Love your job Love your job so much that it breaks your heart when you lose it  Love your job so much that it breaks your heart when you risk losing it again Love your job so much that you spend a year working 12 hour days and on weekends as well to follow your passion, find a new job when you lose it and then bridge the gaps in your new job Love your job so much that you are open to any and all feedback and no amount of feedback is too much to take Develop a thick skin - different managers will value different things in you - and when you stand out like I do some managers will hate the very things that other managers loved about you - altho...

Bringing Softness into Software Engineering What could softness in software engineering look like? Being kinder to ourselves. Being kinder to those people who make mistakes and being kinder to people who don’t know certain things (and losing the “what you don’t know this?” Culture we sometimes have - people are strong in different areas). Bringing more rest into software engineering and not advocating working 24/7. Having more understanding of the fact that people learn differently and some people taking longer to get there. Having more emphasis on collaboration.  Celebrating team achievements more and emphasising less on personal achievements (my team is amazing here). Having more emphasis on a work life balance. Do you need 100 side projects? I mean great if it’s what you enjoy but what about those of us who are also cooking and cleaning and maintaining things and when do we breathe and when do we go out in nature and out into the world? When do we dance? Personal bias… Loving th...

When You’re Feeling Down, You Might Miss The Fact That You Did Some Of The Best Work You Have Ever Done In Your Life Because this has been me over the last year. I missed it. In my focus on the shortcomings. On the huge huge huge knowledge gaps I had due to changing language and tech stack and jumping up at least one level if not more. On the accessibility issues I had for 3-6 months until we figured things out. I missed all the hard work. I missed the 365 blog posts only they were never blog posts. A large number of them represented hours of self study or hard work or difficult conversations with my boss. Many of them were the results of countless hours of hard work and effort or hugely painful self reflection. So did I see it? Did I see my hard work that I did in 2024? Did I see my blog posts? Did I see how much Python I learned, how much backend I learned? Did I see how much I improved? I learned to review my PRs so beautifully. I vastly improved how I asked questions. I managed to ...

Warszawa I haven’t been back to Warsaw or Poland in 6 years or 7. Where most of my family are from. I was meant to go in Feb but I lost my job. Could it be a mission for 2025? I have lost contact with one of my home countries and I really don’t like that. I always say when I go back to Poland I feel a part of my comes back that I didn’t even know what was missing. I was feeling so anxious about coming back to work. But I’ve been doing my errors and debugging course. And so many things just click now. Not just about errors and debugging but about software engineering too.