Jason Felix

https://lnkd.in/ei3FCeZA Here is a blog post for my on-going rewrite of my Uni dissertation project. I was trying to implement an example of Type-Safe Builder Patterns https://lnkd.in/ebkEusU3

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Struggling to land a job as a Software Engineer with 0-3 years experience? Here's how to shoot to the VERY top of the pile: I won't BS you, the junior market is brutal right now. There's very few roles, and I've been hearing stories of adverts getting over 1000 applicants... So how do you stand out? The truth is, out of those 1000 applications, only 20% will be in Australia, and only 20% of those will be software engineers. That's 40 people. No hiring manager wants to interview 40 people. Especially when very few of those 40 will have the right communication skills, attitude and aptitude to get through the interview process. In fact, 99% of hiring managers would prefer to interview just 1 person. Do this, and that 1 person could be you: - Prepare some personal projects (to show willingness to develop skills) - Do some research on the company (to prove genuine interest) - Practice communicating (poor communicators fail interviews) - Apply with CV + personal project links (so you can be found easily) - Identify specifically why you are a good fit (if you don't know, nobody will) And then - CALL THE HIRING MANAGER. Or video message. Or voice note. In 30 seconds you can: - Introduce yourself and say that you've applied - Reference the personal projects on your CV - Mention why you like the company and why you'd be a great hire - Give availability to discuss the role further in an interview - All whilst proving you are a strong communicator with a great attitude Do this well and you'll be a 1/1000 candidate, I promise you.

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Returning to Java from Kotlin has me thinking again about nulls and null-safety. Kotlin has softened me somewhat on the subject of nulls, because its handling of them is safe and elegant: declaring a type as T? is more or less equivalent to declaring it as Maybe T in Haskell, and null is just a compact representation of None in that case. The compiler will simply reject anything that tries to pass null, or the unchecked value of a variable of nullable type, to a non-nullable receiver. It's one of the two things about the language I'm really going to miss (the other being the Ruby-like block syntax). After a phase of thinking Optional<T> should be used to do the same thing in Java, I'm actually swinging back more towards annotating optional fields and parameters as @Nullable, and relying on tooling (the IDE, build-time linting) to enforce Kotlin-like null-discipline. But there's a skeleton in the closet: older (pre-record-type) Java often has a lot of POJOs with default no-argument constructors lying around. You construct one, everything's null, you set fields one by one with the setters. It's much harder to impose null-discipline of any kind in this scenario. People depend on this behaviour, too - they create test value objects by newing up instances of POJOs and setting only the fields the code under test is interested in, and everything works. You can say "you should make it impossible to construct an object in an invalid state" all you like, but you're going to break all those tests if you actually take the ability to partially populate a value type away from them. Lombok doesn't help, either - there's no way to compile-time check that all the mandatory fields have been added to a builder before calling build(). And even with record types, the ability to use builders to supply field values by name, rather than relying on their order in the constructor signature, is going to be hard to take away from people working with value types with a dozen or more fields. Java is just an ever-burning tire fire around these issues, and always has been, and it's a major reason why "legacy" code tends to suck so much. At the moment the best I think I can do is try to promote a general pattern: if you can't ensure correctness on construction, validate correctness immediately after construction (and prevent illegal mutation after that). At least then you can eliminate ad hoc null checks downstream of validation, and be clear about when missing values are actually to be expected.

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I gave a talk at the most recent London Ruby User Group (#LRUG) on how experienced programmers solve problems, and what that means about how we think and communicate as human beings: https://lnkd.in/eBzTM53t I am really proud of this talk and care deeply about this subject; I'd love if you could give it a watch! (slides available here: https://lnkd.in/eXX89qXe)

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Programming tests are: ❌ Often stressful ❌ Take-home tests are usually time-consuming ❌ Rarely representative of the approach and conditions of the job that they're testing for ❌ Many times online code testing platforms will penalise you for clicking away from the screen and sometimes they penalise you for any copying and pasting ❌ Usually theoretical "best practice" based - showing how you might do something if you were working in a vacuum, not accounting for business needs / interdependencies with legacy platforms etc ❌ Typically they favour those who have more recently come from education over more seasoned professionals ❌ In some cases the results are ignored or overlooked anyway if the candidate has done well enough in interviews rendering the test itself pointless ❌ In other cases companies take a "line in the sand", "computer says no" approach where even someone who is a known entity to the team or business will be rejected if they don't do well enough on the test   I have NEVER heard a developer say that they enjoy technical tests.   Some of the most senior, capable, accomplished developers I have worked with refuse to complete them as part of a process - particularly timed ones.   How often do you write code in a real life production environment with a timer counting down? And when would you ever want your team to not have access to Google or GitHub or Stack Overflow on a difficult task? A significant part of an Engineer's role is to research potential solutions critically, not to be a walking programming encyclopedia!   Even if your test is a less pressured, more representative take-home task rather than a recorded or monitored time-pressured task, they're not always that informative and they often take up a large chunk of time, which, particularly for someone who is currently in full-time employment and interviewing for multiple other opportunities, is a lot to ask. They also often lead to excellent candidates withdrawing from the process.   To quote a senior dev I spoke to the other day: "It doesn't matter how great the pay or the company or the work are. I'm a professional with over 10 years' experience, treat me like it. Don't set me bullsh1t homework"     👉 So why is it that so many interview processes use them? 👉 And what are the genuine legitimate alternative approaches to be able to ascertain someone's technical capability?   Keen to hear your thoughts Linkedin? Futura Talent #technicaltesting #techrecruitment #developerlife #softwaredeveloper #softwareengineer

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Check out our mock interview with my dear friend, Alex. If you're preparing for an interview and are interested in a mock interview session with us and receiving feedback, comment on the original post. You could see our feedback to Alex at the end of the interview.

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*Bracing myself for the response I might get for asking this* Software Engineers: Would you ever consider working on an EQUITY ONLY basis (ie no salary, just owning a portion of the business, the value of which would increase as it progresses and scales)? Assuming: - The product is really interesting and so is the work - The product is in the "tech for good" space and would be a really positive contribution to parts of society - Seed funding is confirmed to be coming with several backers keen & they will able to offer a salary in the near future - The product is super early stage, you would be writing the software from the ground up, but the concept, design and business model once funding is received are all solid I know that there will be many who would never consider this under any circumstances and I totally get why, but just curious to hear if any of you would if it was for a product you believed in enough? And would you look at it on a full-time basis or a part-time basis? It's something I got asked about and so I thought I would throw it out to Linkedin to see what you all think rather than assuming that I know the answer on your behalf. #startup #founder #softwareengineer

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I wanted to share an interesting article I read yesterday and really recommend everyone in my network - CTOs, Heads of Engineering and Software Developers - to really understand the benefits of #Kotlin in server-side development if: 1. You haven't had a play around with the language before 2. Are considering modifying your existing tech stack and looking at more modern and performant options Compared to #Java, the Kotlin programming language developed fantastically by JetBrains removes a lot of the 'nitty gritty' work you would otherwise have to work through and requires WAAAAY fewer lines of code than doing the same work in Java! Not to mention, the incredible features around #NullSafety and #Coroutines. Have a read to understand more on the positives of using Kotlin in the JVM languages as well as the benefits of migrating your tech stack to this optimised language. #Tech #SoftwareDevelopment #Coding

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If you're into Clojure and/or what's going on in the Clojure-for-data-science community, I post an update every other month about what I've been working on. The last couple of months were much less productive because I got married and started a new job, but still, here's the latest update, mostly about my thoughts on the conj: https://lnkd.in/eDpyMHFk

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The 2024 StackOverflow survey is out, and for the 8th year in a row, Clojure has ranked near the podium in the Top Paying Technologies category—often occupying rank 1. I don't talk much about why I choose to use a weird Lisp—mostly because nobody cares—but the results speak for themselves. If you can hold your nose long enough to learn something very different, you'll find yourself in a high-productivity environment that features: 🔥 Hot code reloading 🦆 Dynamic typing ♻️ Best-in-class garbage collection 📂 Highly performant immutable data structures 📚 Access to the entire JVM's ecosystem of libraries 🧩 Cross-platform compilation to JavaScript 🧠 An unbelievably smart and humble community Sure, you'll pay a high mental price to learn the language, but as a reward, employers will pay a high price for *you*.

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We’ve spent the last couple of weeks filtering down over 90 applications for our software engineering roles so here’s some of the good practice I’ve seen: 👉take the time to create a good quality application. When there are so many candidates looking, it is much better use your time doing fewer applications well than spamming lots of roles in the hope that something sticks. 👉 if they are asking for x-years experience in something (or another key criteria) make sure it’s easy to see that you have it (or clearly explain why you think you have the equivalent in your cover letter). When there are so many candidates there isn’t time to deconstruct all the experience in someone’s cv in case they fit. 👉 write a cover letter explaining why you want the role and how you fit (or could grow to fit). Every cover letter I read gave me more depth into the candidate and helped me understand what they would bring to the role. 👉 use the layout to highlight the key skills you bring - it really doesn’t matter if it’s 1 page or 2 pages and whether you have columns or any other fancy bits - just make it easy for me to scan read. 👉the more you can quantify (with numbers) what you’ve done or the value you’ve delivered, the better. The numbers don’t have to be big - they just give me an idea of the size and scale of what you’ve been involved in. And finally, I know it’s tough getting a rejection but please don’t take it personally. I’ve seen some amazing applications come through, but they’ve just not been right for what we need. #jobapplications #careers #cvtips

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"You interview all your software developers face to face?" 🧑‍💻🗣️🤝 There doesn't seem to be a uniform opinion on how interview processes should be structured, what should be online, and what should be in person. Personally, I like the hybrid process. Early stages take advantage of the efficiency of Virtual Interviews. Late stage(s) take the opportunity to invest in quality, dive deeper, and establish connection only possible with face to face meetings. An interview process exclusively online misses out on the opportunity to gain further buy in from your prospective employee. Show them what the work space looks like. Shape up what the commute will be like. Build some human connection. (Personally, I don't know how I would feel accepting a role and putting my career in the hands of people I haven't even met yet!) An interview process exclusively in person will result in slower turnaround times, and risk top candidates dropping out from a lengthy, and consuming process. What interview structure works best for you?

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Clojure & Editors. Trying them all and finally landing on emacs after 4 years 👇 I started Clojure 4 years ago when I was fully into VSCode. Calva had weird vim issues, which were a dealbreaker. I landed on Cursive, which checked all the boxes. The only issue was that it consumed 10-12GB of RAM, which affected my laptop. I kept seeing devs from my job using emacs and being super lightweight. It felt like they were super productive (they were) I tried emacs 3 times and quit every time. It's very unfamiliar, and the keybindings are hard. I tried Doom emacs, which seemed good enough, but it still had some issues, and it felt like I wasn't in control. I read Mastering Emacs, and things finally started to make sense. Spent 2-3 weekends fully customizing my emacs config Now I'm fully in emacs, and it's the best experience I have had. I'm looking at NVIM, and I like the speed of completion popups. It might be something to check out, too. Cursive is still the best for Java Interop, and I use it occasionally when I do Java-heavy development. For the best “done for you” experience, calva wins. It's the most beginner-friendly Emacs (and possibly vscode) is better than cursive in clojurescript support since it doesn't rely much on static analysis. Cursive doesn't use the JetBrains javascript analyzer because it is a premium feature, and the author didn't want Cursive to rely on premium tools. Nowadays, with Clojure-LSP, you can browse code without starting a REPL. This used to be exclusive to Cursive. Conclusion: Beginner and bad laptop? Vscode Beginner and awesome laptop? Cursive Want more customization? Emacs or Nvim

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Hello Everyone, Welcome to Part 2 of our series on Building a Cache Iteratively. In this instalment, we'll delve into the concept of introducing threads into the equation, understanding the challenges of concurrent access, and devising a solution within a data structure. We'll tackle these issues in the most basic yet effective manner, gradually building a reliable system. You can find the detailed discussion in the following Medium article: https://lnkd.in/gsKYTyzN For those interested in exploring the code base, it's available on GitHub: https://lnkd.in/gp-dTVdU Feel free to dive in, explore, and share your thoughts! #LRUCache #Cache #LLD

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Oh man, jumping back into #Angular after a few years (I still mostly work on #AngularJS legacy apps), requires a lot of cleaning-off of mental cobwebs. This set of routes literally took me 2-hours to design. I keep forgetting that complex routes can map to sibling components (not just nested components). I'm looking forward to seeing if I can get this to work proper with lazy loading of the route trees. This morning's episode of Shop Talk Show with Chris Coyier + Dave Rupert felt very on-point for me. They talked about embracing the struggle. Sometimes, it just feels like there are no "easy days". I'm almost embarrassed that setting up a router isn't something I have immediate muscle-memory for. But, how often do I actually have to do this? Whether it's problem solving or just trying to figure out how to best make use of your limited time, every day has its own kind of struggles. Such a great pod cast. Keep up the great work you two! Episode: https://lnkd.in/ev9SpUXu

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🤖 Here's a fun new ChatGPT productivity idea: 🎤 If you're practicing a presentation and you know exactly what you'd like to say already, but haven't written out good slide notes as a backup, use ChatGPT's speech-to-text mode to write them up. 🗣️ Start by telling it what you're doing, and to listen for "Next slide please" (Sir Christopher Whitty style), and to send through slide-by-slide bullet points of the key talking points when you're done. ☝️ Incidentally, I'm going to be speaking at Beam HQ tomorrow night, getting into some specifics of how we're using generative AI tools to improve the software used by hundreds of people working in welfare services. My slide notes will be the only bit I asked GPT to do for me, I promise 😉 Can't wait to see you there! https://lnkd.in/eDGwcXwa

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Recruiting software engineers can be easy as pie. (Guess what I made this weekend btw) But a lot of the time it’s the opposite. 🤦🏻‍♂️Unrealistic expectations 🤦🏻‍♂️Stakeholders not on the same page 🤦🏻‍♂️Long interview processes 🤦🏻‍♂️Taking too long to make decisions 🤦🏻‍♂️Not investing enough time into a search 🤦🏻‍♂️Being too reliant on direct applicants 🤦🏻‍♂️Partnering with the wrong agency We try to make things simple at 💚🖤Bounce Digital💚🖤 But if you’re not willing to change your approach Hiring engineering talent might just be pie in the sky 🥧 *Excuse the terrible puns. 

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This is a cool new blog post by David Vella, Mate Szvoboda and George Malamidis about recent challenges faced testing our loveholidays systems with even higher loads. Contains lots of GitHub links to follow along with! https://lnkd.in/esZn5rsV

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For the aspiring software engineers out there (assuming that profession still exists :), this article provides some great insights into how to think about a typical coding interview problem. https://lnkd.in/eB_Zw2D7

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