Susanna Codes

After well over 2 years of battling I have found my focus  If you have ever read even so much as one of my blog posts I want you to go out and have a drink on my behalf. I am 10000% serious. This is a breakthrough on this blog. And if you have watched me suffering... then I have suffered a lot. I WILL SAY IT 1000 TIMES. If I have to write 1000 identical blog posts. I will. WHAT IS MY MAIN FOCUS AT WORK Getting tickets from one side of the board to the other  Getting the code I write live  Getting users to use my code I am writing this at 11 pm after a dance workshop. I will write this out 1000 times  I don't care  I know I have this accessibility focus. I know I am learning React. I have the most amazing technical mentor and he has taught me to read the docs When I was 19 I had to battle for months to get an important identification number. When I finally got that thing I wrote it out so many times I COULD NEVER FORGET IT and I still know it perfectly  It m...

What makes a software engineer (at work)? Bro told me to stop worrying so much about what other people think of me. Bro (who is also a very senior Lead and a technical mentor to me, so um maybe not bro, hmm, whoops) told me that I care too much about other people's perceptions of me (that is true) and that that's not what matters  So what does matter at work? Getting tickets from one side of the board to the other  Getting code that you write live  Getting users using your code What could happen if I made these 3 my main focus at work And how could I do that? You see a big part of my work is spreading love  And now I have this cool new accessibility focus as well too  Also want to pay tribute to this crazy new track I have discovered

Thinking in State & State Shape: React (Absolute Disaster - Part 2 can only be better)  This is the task for my react time this morning and it's not going well. I've been blocked on it since I knew it was coming. Some cryptic statements from chat gpt include: "State is a model of change - not a mirror of your UI" They say I should be asking myself: "Does this need to change over time?" "Can I calculate this instead?" "What is the simplest shape that still works?" BRO WHAT ARE THESE SHAPES.  WHAT ARE THEY. "This session is decision making, not syntax". BRO TOPIC NUMBER 1: "MULTIPLE USESTATE VERSUS ONE OBJECT" Separate pieces of changes  vs. One bundled piece of change  React doesn't care - I care because it affects mental load apparently and some stuff - bugs and readability  MAKE REACT EASY  "DOES THIS STATE CHANGE TOGETHER OR INDEPENDENTLY?" CHAT GPT STOP TELLING ME WHAT TO DO. IT IS TELLING ME TO TA...

I Can Do So Much Better  I am a slow learner at first. It takes a while for all of the pieces to click together. Once all the pieces come together I move very quickly. I had my last two moments of clicking messed up and this has held me back. I got laid off from one job as I was learning the ropes - and then in my last role it clicked and was going well - but I had to leave because I wanted to come back to the frontend. But once it clicks I move fast  Boy do I move fast  No my issue is around focus. I can work for long periods of time. I can stay deep focused for two hours. But I cannot stop all the crap from stealing my attention  I cannot stop all the crap from stealing my attention I want it to stop stealing it from me. I can do some much better. I came to code. I love to code. How can I protect my attention? How can I realise my unfulfilled potential. I can do so much better than this  I know what I need to do There is only one thing that ever works for me ...

Resting on my Laurels In 2023, I gave a talk about my crazy breakthrough into tech.  It was crazy. I gave the talk a year after I had started taking web development seriously - and it had been my job to train to do it for 9 months. It was a great talk. After the talk, the organiser came over to me and said "now it's time to rest on your laurels." Three months later while living my dream and researching AI every day  I got laid off suddenly. It was a horrible time. I got hired into an AI team and that just shows you the magic and miracles of this universe - I manifested way harder than I thought I could've done. But AI was not meant to be for me. I transitioned into something a frontend role - I can process frontend problems 10,000x better than I can do backend ones  a team with more structure - more ceremonies etc. including daily standups - works much better for me as well And I learned frontend from scratch having forgotten everything except the foundations of HTML,...

Disassociation For some bizarre reason I have decided to talk about this today and I don't know why. I don't know if I will even publish this post. But I want to talk about this. When I was 15 I began suffering from mystery seizures. Those of you who have been reading this blog for a while will know. Back then there was no name for them. It was like this horrible mystery and nobody could tell me what it was. By the time nearly ten years had passed and people began to give me names for it I didn't care anymore. No name could do it justice. No written description online came close to paralleling  The hell I had been through. The endless hell that I had been through for years and years and years. Living with a condition that very few people believed - and even fewer people had understood. How do you explain to someone that you have lived through such extreme trauma that your brain will just shut you down in random places again and again For 15 years. Leaving you unable to driv...

Interfaces in TypeScript - with Taylor Swift I struggled this afternoon because a meeting was cancelled at short notice (or no notice) and that can throw me. So I am just trying to do what I set out to do - understand interfaces in TS. I am not meant to be doing TS stuff for now - if you know TS you know it gets complicated really fast and so I'm not trying to improve it for now - I am focusing on improving React. But I got told by someone I respect a lot to learn interfaces so I wanted to do this as a one off. But there are no good resources I can find  I asked Chat GPT to teach me about TypeScript through my favourite Taylor Swift songs. TS... TypeScript... TS... Taylor Swift. lol  An interface is the shape of an object. It's what it expects. Allow me to add this highly entertaining screenshot and sorry about the accessibility issues  I don't know what the hell is going on here but this is the most fun I've ever had in my life  What does it mean that public image h...

I go liquid when you come around Monday has arrived and with it a chance to change something. A chance to carry on writing up my tickets so I can understand them properly A chance to do most of my homework for my Friday mentoring session although I will leave it to tomorrow as well. A chance to talk to my mentor who set me the original goals for React so we can see how unbelievably fast I've moved in two weeks  Which is awesome  And maybe we can see what the next topic is A chance to talk to my boss about prioritisation A chance to talk to my lead about the tickets he has set me  Every day is a chance and an opportunity to make a difference 

I’ll call you when the party’s over I would like to retract all former complaints about my life. It was all perfect and I wouldn’t change anything. Sometimes we can idealise people’s lives. We look in through the window  And we think that they are perfect Fuck it, I wouldn’t have picked anyone’s life over mine Yes there were some absolutely crazy manoeuvres Crazy and rather silly stunts I pulled off But it all had a certain beauty and magnificence to it Whether it was the fact that I spent my 29th birthday learning React after work (at an event!) Or whether it was the fact that I got driven home by an ambulance on Christmas Day 2021 - I was spending it alone cos of my then job and Covid - I went on a walk - sadly said walk was not successful Or whether it was the fact that I spent my 28th birthday in an office applying for a product job Fuck it it was worth it And then I went and learned about product on Brighton pier on my weekends Fuck it it was worth it It was all worth it Codin...

Hey Shiva Shankara Parameshwara  Nothing we are really here to do. But to enact the love of God. When I dance I know that it is pure consciousness that is dancing. In fact I never feel closer to God than when I am dancing. The effortless and ineffable joy I feel when I am dancing are all I need to know, to live out a beautiful life. If only all of life could align with the joy I feel when I am dancing. Many years ago I asked a question of my spiritual teacher that made me cry and made him cry and made the whole room cry. It was a lot. That night we had a disco (yes really) and I danced on the podium.  He and his wife (a professional dancer) couldn’t stop watching and the next day they told me it was the highlight of their night. (This all sounds so wrong but it is true). Then after one more retreat. I knew that it was time to stop. I had gone too far. I stopped going and I used the £200 odd pounds I put aside a month for retreats to dance instead  It has not disappointed ...

Sorry sorry sorry it’s me again I feel as if I have fresh new inspiration on my software engineering journey. But I also need to go and reply to some WhatsApp’s from my family. Like seriously. If I am not related to you I will probably not even reply to you on WhatsApp. That’s how busy life can be right. I went to explore the downs today and I really wanted to do a meditation.  I am tempted to just sit down and write down my software engineering goals for the week. I did it at the weekend last week and it seems to be becoming a pattern again. I am terrible at multitasking. A lot of my life adhd friends are better at it but because I am autistic too I have that deep deep deep focused side. I get really into one thing and find it hard to shelve while I am doing another  But anyway I think it might be time to get some rest or something okay bye  I would love a bit more structure in my life please can anybody help me No matter what I do There’s never enough structure  I ...

when the party’s over, part 2 I’m falling into a habit again of thinking about work outside of work and that’s not good. I had managed to stop for a long time - like not just processing the people and the events but actually thinking about my strategy etc. That’s not good right. But I find as a neurodivergent person If I really want to grow I have to have periods where I am  Idk just like really obsessed with my work  But I don’t want that  That’s not good I want to dance I want to sing I want to meditate I want to go out in nature I am doing that but my brain can’t reconcile all of my new tickets. And my react learning plan. And the react hook form work that I’m doing. I’m very grateful I have people who believe in me and support me idk. There are one or two things about my current tickets I’m not clear on  Like how literally to take the designs from the designer - that is probably something I need to have a chat about as a relatively new FE engineer And I am strugg...

I could lie, say I like it like that, like it like that So much is going on with my work. I have a massive react plan. That involves some CSS. After this monstrosity I will tackle some more typescript after this but I’m happy to be sticking to mostly react and some css for now. But I’m also doing a lot of para-tutoring with a mentor. He is teaching me how to read docs and helping me to read software documentation which has been a real challenge for me. The code is okay. It’s the structure and the words. But we are getting there. After react and css and TS I want to do some accessibility courses I told my manager I want to bring love and kindness into my work. It’s not enough for me to just be a software engineer  I want to do something more meaningful. And apparently even just renewable energy wasn’t enough But let’s see how it goes It’s a lot of stress managing all of this learning with my work but I can protect myself by saying NO sometimes when I know it’s right and I want to sa...

Why I No Longer Hate Living With Flatmates in a House Share Living in Brighton on entry level salaries has never been easy and I have never had the chance to live alone. I have lived in a flat share and I have seen the craziest things. I have seen flatmates pull some illegal stunts and I have seen their friends do some crazy things and for a while it didn’t feel safe but ever since a certain point everyone has felt safe. And it feels good to be here. I still have always wished I live alone too. Apart from when I have nightmares. Then boy am I so glad they are home. I just realised the nightmares have stopped. They were so bad for a while. Especially the last year. I would wake up consistently every day with the lights on. And I would have no recollection of turning them on. Things peaked when I tried to break a door down in my sleep on Christmas Day… yep you read that correctly. Luckily the pain woke me up. It’s not the first time something like this has happened but thankfully it wasn...

You Make Life Worth Living Over ten years ago I dropped out of university. It was a horrific low point. I had done everything I could to stay, fought every battle but I couldn’t stay. Now of course I have three degrees but I couldn’t have known that when I was 21. Being out of uni was a tough year. I was so ambitious. I always have been.  But it fuelled my ambition and fuelled my fire. One night late at night “Life Worth Living” by Laurel came on. It was unlike anything I have ever heard. I went to one of her gigs and met her and I believe she is still with a guy from my old school in Luxembourg which is nuts. I am not 21 anymore I don’t want to watch gym bro videos in the night. I got told today that trying to work when I am not up to working doesn’t help me. But normally I am up to working. Today I just got so upset it was hard to eat etc. I was upset by lack of progress. I was upset by a lack of a clear outcome. But  It feels much better by the end of today. I sat down with...

Emotion Regulation  I have written two blog posts about this now and I want to address it directly: if you are feeling upset, you should stop working. If you are feeling overwhelmed, you should stop working. If you are feeling tired confused frustrated all these things - you should take a minute to take care of yourself - and then you should only work again when you are ready to work. The crazy stress of my first couple of roles in engineering broke this healthy response in me - or maybe it was even just my first jobs in general where I was often upset from taking drastic customer calls  And was just expected to keep on working. But I mean it probably broke long before when I went through really difficult stuff and that is beyond the scope of this blog post  What I have learned in healthy Product and Engineer Jobs though (I'm ex-product) is that it always pays to take a break. So if you are feeling upset, tired, and/or frustrated about your work - it is best to take a bre...

Learning the Ugliest and Grimmest Lessons  Yep, if you wanted ugly and grim lessons from my software engineering career - you have come to the right place. If you have never been a neurodivergent software engineer or for a lot of other reasons someone who has challenges with emotion regulation some time - this blog post is not for you. Unless you are nosy as I am  Emotion Regulation Will Always Trump Skill "Your emotional and cognitive state determines how well you work and learn - more than effort or intelligene." I believe the direct quote from my notes is "am I in a good state to learn XYZ now? No, I am not in a good state to learn XYZ now." I can get to the state where I am so stressed out that making a cup of tea would throw me over the edge. So when I get upset I should always prioritise getting back to a normal emotional state. So much so that - this morning I was exhasuted - if I could turn back time I would've rested some more and even missed standup an...

What causes a re-render to happen? There are three main things which can cause a re-render  I found a cool blog*. This dude bro says: " Every re-render in React starts with a state change. It's the only `trigger` in React for a component to re-render." HMMM. Is that true? MY BRO adds an asterisk. WHY DOES HE ADD AN ASTERISK? Great so this dude bro adds an asterisk and then he doesn't answer his own asterisk. why my bro why  I NEED MORE ANSWERS. I asked my team and they said "Everything." "Mars aligning." Come on my dudes. You can do better than that  I asked chat gpt as I remembered there a three main ones  State Changes Props Changes Context value Changes MY COLLEAGUE CONFIRMS THAT THIS EFFECTIVELY COVERS EVERYTHING  JOB DONE  He shows me a live demo; running loops to create rows in a table and running a loop to create comments in a table. Tables are really dangerous because it's easy to create a loop that really makes the code slow and sluggi...

When All Else Fails When all else fails, and sometimes it does, I think about Alan Turing. I see him smiling at me. I see him being proud of me. It’s not easy becoming a software engineer, you know. I have a sociology degree (and two environmental masters degrees). What am I doing here. My a levels were in art and English and French and sociology. What am I doing here. How did I get here. How did I end up here. All of my friends at uni were computer scientists. I was always the artsy one. I only ever dated mathematicians or computer scientists. I saw my first AI movies because my maths PhD boyfriend back in 2014 thought that they were cool. I never dreamed that I would be a programmer. I wanted to be an actor or a writer or a singer or a teacher. Not once ever did I see my future with computers. Then 2022 happened and it came along and I fell in love with coding. Never once as I dreamed and dreamed of this job did I imagine the pain and the frustration it would bring me. They say that ...

I’m not strong, and I’m not wide, and I’m not long Song quote from “Dark Undercoat” by Emily Jane White. There are so many things I want to say.  I’m not always nice. I’m not always happy. I’m not always positive. I don’t always want to help you. I don’t always want to do the right thing. I feel so trapped in the pressure of saying yes to other people. Of having to keep people happy and to give into peer pressure. Sometimes I wonder if the people who have done best in their careers  Are the ones who learned how to say “no” to everyone. I conversely know how to say “no” to few people. And when I do I feel so so guilty. I feel so guilty for saying “no” to people at work. I find it really hard and challenging. I wonder if it has held me back. I don’t always know if I am being kind and helpful or not. I don’t always know if I’m giving too much of myself or not. I’m not tall, I’m not wide and I’m not strong I am not strong  “And if I was a deep bath tub Would you sink down To ...

Why Lana Del Rey Has Always Been My Software Engineering Hero That’s right. You read it correctly. Read it again. I vowed from the beginning of my software engineering career that I wanted to be like this: I wanted to be soft. I wanted to be gentle. I wanted to spread love. My sole purpose in coming into this industry was to spread love. And to save the planet. It feels good to come back to this purpose again. To come back to the softness and gentleness of love. After three years in this industry do I still believe in this?  And the answer is yes. Yes. More than ever. More than ever. More than ever we need software engineers who are gentle. More than ever we need software engineers who are kind. More than ever we need software engineers who walk gently across the earth. More than ever we need software engineers who are soft and gentle and kind and who know how to care. Because caring means responding to the need of the moment - not imposing but listening carefully and gently. So wh...

The Princess and the IDE Over 3 years and thousands of blog posts I have tried to tell a story. It is the story of a girl who went through a lot and lived with a really complicated illness  And dealt with huge learning challenges at work. But it is more than that. It is the story of a girl who could feel the wind farms. I look at wind farms and they have a feeling. They feel a certain way to me. WIND FARMS ARE LITERALLY THE THING I LOVE THE MOST IN THE WORLLD. This is the story of a girl. Who overcame everything. Who did two masters degrees while collapsing almost every day (I saw 58 ambulances in my first masters year) and who worked every day for years while collapsing every day (thankfully that’s not the case anymore). Who was dealing with even bigger personal stuff in private. I am someone who so many people never saw a happy ending for. But I don’t care about all of that I care about the way it feels when I see a wind farm I care about the way that it feels when I see a pylon ...

One Million Thoughts From The Day of The Universe I have to face a very hard reality; I wanted to recover completely but this might not be possible. My desire to never have another seizure represents what we all want. We want to be returned back to our original state. Before we were ever hurt. „There is a place inside of you that has never been wounded.” I think it is possible. But that time hasn’t come yet. Enter phase B. Caring, not curing. This is a very Buddhist principle. I can’t fix everything. I can’t fix my body, the past, not yet anyway, not even after 16 years of trying. I can’t fix an immense neurological condition over night. My brain rewired itself when I was a kid. I have to accept that. What I will not accept Is blame or judgement or the suggestion  That I have got any choice in a seizure That is laughable and disrespectful. To someone who has never driven a car or who has been in hundreds of risky situations. It happens to me all the time. I get treated like I am ex...

Slight Amendment on useState notes  So in my last technical blog post I answered the question: "what problem does useState solve that linear variables can't solve?" And a super cool colleague gave me some thing I missed out:  "One of the more useful features of `useState` is that changing the state triggers a re-render. Not only will state stay persistent across re-renders, it can also trigger re-renders itself." Okay that is exciting because that will be my next writing task. I will write about what causes a re-render in React. And there is more to come. But right now it's just to say this  Changing state in a component triggers a re-render. What does this mean? What is a render exactly? "Rendering is react calling your components" ?? "Render is when react figures out what your UI should look like and puts it on the screen?" "React reads your component and draws the webpage based on it" ?? " A re-render is what happens whe...

I Was Sent Forth I do not let anyone make me small. Very often people think I am not strong or tough. This makes me laugh. I have been through more than most human beings could ever survive. I just don’t talk about it publicly, because I choose not to. People often assume that I am not smart or not a lot of other things. So I knock those assumptions down one day at a time. I knock them down through my career, I knock them down on the dancefloor and I stay grounded in myself when people are trying to pull me away from myself. I don’t always manage. But the people who trip me up are often the ones worth being tripped up for. And I am trying to bring my confidence from work into the real world. If I can stay grounded in a meeting then why not in the real world?  But look life is really tough right now and I am struggling with my memory. That reminds me I have a technique I can use for the week for listing my goals. It’s on my laptop. Do I want to work at 11pm on a Saturday? No way. Bu...

There’s a danger inside Today was the first time I got to dance properly in months. Not just be there but really be well enough to go for it fully. In fact I got to the end of the two hours feeling like I have more to give. This is why physical fitness is so great. It allows me to keep up with the crazy impulses inside to move. The dance moves that flow through me are so wild I actually need to be really muscular to be able to land in them safely etc and to keep up with the paces of my internal rhythm. So it was good to be back. I’m all about authentic movement. I don’t let the music control me. I listen to my body. My energy levels. And my feet To be a dancer and a physical practitioner and an embodied movement person  Is a wilder dream than I could ever have dreamed And I’m so grateful  Dance has changed me. I am more assertive. I am stronger. I am less afraid of confrontation  Dance has made me able to look inside more and to bring more energy to a group. I have opened...

What Problem Does useState solve that variables don't? Okay I am starting this new program alongside my work to deepen my React knowledge. The outcomes of this session are a blog post (this), reading some docs, and of course a Miro diagram (As always).  "Components often need to change what's on the screen as the result of an interaction."  "Components need to 'remember' things: the current input value, the current image, the current cart." "In React, this kind of component specific memory is called state." (from the Docs). " Local variables don't persist between renders."  "When React renders this component a second time it renders it from scratch."  "Every time React re-renders the component, it runs the function again from the top"  "A state value - this stores the value and remembers it between renders." Why not just use a local value?  "React only updates the screen when it knows somethi...

Cinnamon When you are telling a story: keep telling it. Even when it’s hard to keep on telling and even when it’s hard to keep on going. Just keep on telling the story. So what is there to tell. I picked up my guitar the other night and I started writing some music. It was amazing. Then I started learning a new Taylor Swift song and I transposed it into a much higher key and it felt great. I have been making my diagrams  I have been enjoying my local Tescos. For years I didn’t know how to engage properly with supermarkets. I never looked closely enough and never realised all the hidden treasures that they have. You can make almost anything with ingredients from a supermarket and I didn’t know. I didn’t know that the coolest and smallest things are often the most hidden. So that’s it. I was meditating a lot but I got tired and now I’m taking a little break. I would like to pick it up again now. I’ve had a lot of family stuff going on, there has been a lot on TV. This is everything I...

The strange truth about saving money This month I decided it was time to be responsible. I’ll omit the backstory. And so I have been running my home and eating on a much tighter budget. And the craziest thing is that I actually seem to have more food that I can actually eat than when I was spending more money. There is so much to say here. For one. Every purchase I make is a conscious decision now. If I buy a vegetable it’s because I know it will go well with whatever carb (usually rice or quinoa, sometimes potato or gluten free noodles) I have and whatever protein (beans, tofu etc). I do no more just randomly shoving things in the basket I think I should buy. Everything is stuff I really want or need. I bought some frozen spinach. It is crazy. I put it in aubergine curry. I put it in Dahl. I had it as a side to one of my mains. That stuff is like Mary’s Poppins’ bag. I eat and eat it and eat it and I still have so much spinach. And it was like one or two pounds. Stuff like this makes ...

"Things that only Carolina will ever know", part 2 - overcoming my React nervous breakdown  Lana del Rey and Taylor Swift have more blog post titles named after them then you will ever know. So many of my blog post titles are Taylor and Lana quotes. I think that's beautiful. Two beautiful and strong female writers, who have been with me since I was 14 (Taylor) and 19 (Lana). I have grown up with these two beautiful ladies.  And here I am.  A woman with my own voice. A female on my own writing journey. How fitting that two of the greatest writers of all time should be with me on that journey.  Anyway I calmed down after my react nervous breakdown. I went on miro and created a diagram  I made a mind map of all the react things I have to learn still. It made me feel so much better. It didn’t seem so bad anymore. It made everything seem realistic and achievable and possible. I know it was naughty of me to work at 7 pm  That might not sound bad but consider how ...