Sunil Shenoy

I thought I was running late to publish the birthday post I looked forward to writing each year, but scrolling through the feed looks like I am 10 days early from last years blog post. Five days late from the date I used to publish before, but ten days earlier from last year. Progress?

I should start by stating how much I like writing—this blog post and writing in general. Penning down my thoughts bring immense joy, and I always kick myself for not writing more regularly. Besides travelling, programming, hanging out with friends and food, writing has to be up there on the list, bringing joy.

2020 has been one rollercoaster of a ride. A year which I think everyone will remember forever. COVID-19 and so many changes everyone had to make to get by. If you are reading this in 2020, here is a virtual hug from me to you. 🤗 We all have been through enough, and I hope 2021 is better for every one of us.

I went through the list of things I set myself to do in 2020, and I managed to do the following.

• Move to an apartment somewhere close to the city. Cut down on travel time and spend that time reading/learning. ✅ ( Moved away from the city in the second half, more on that below)

• More physical exercise. Joining salsa classes in Jan. ( Salsa got replaced by high-intensity training)

• Buy/rent a car and make more road trips across Australia. (6K on the odometer already since buying the car in July)

• Support more small businesses. Buy local and from Indie / small business owners.

• Spend more time with family and friends.

Things I did not succeed at:

• Write/share more often on this blog. (😞)

• Travel to at least three new countries. I am looking at you, Japan, Nepal and Finland. (travel in 2020.. naaaa)

Overall, 2020 went well with the things I had set myself to do.

Personal

I moved into an apartment close to the city in Feb 2020 and was so excited about the move. COVID hit in the third week of me moving into the place. One of the reasons for moving to the city was to be closer to work, and with work from home being the norm for a few months, paying the high rent did not make sense. Moved back to a new place in the same suburb I lived before the move and I have loved it here. The apartment is excellent, and living close to friends has been incredible. Move again in 2021? Maybe.

I joined F45 in the second half of 2020 after having not exercised in the first half of 2020. I did dabble in-home exercise based workouts using a few apps during lockdown but realised that I enjoy group activities rather than exercising alone.

I got my drivers license this year, after four attempts. I guess 4th time was the charm. I should write more about the lessons learnt and what finally worked to help clear the test. Following, the license, I bought a second hand Mazda 3 in the second half after COVID rules got a bit relaxed and it has been fun driving around NSW, Australia. Every second weekend, me and a few friends would head out to explore a new place in the state. One of the best purchases after moving to Australia.

Lockdown did also make me reflect on how much I miss my family and friends back home. At one point, I remember calling a few friends and telling them that at the end of all this, I might pack my bags and move back. Staying away from them for so long was not part of my plan of moving to Australia. I always wanted to have the freedom to visit them when I got a chance and now that the new world did not permit for this or could permit from this, I wanted to make sure that I live as close as possible. A decision I continue to think about from time to time.

Australia has been a great place to live, though. I continue to enjoy the food, the places and people here. A few people have told me that I should try the different kinds of wine Australia offers. Something for me to consider in 2021.

work

I have had a great time working at ELMO this year. From online zoom meetings in the first half of 2020 to move back to the second half office. Moving back to the office has been great in cutting down on the number of Zoom calls, we all had to be part of in 2020.

I enjoy working with the team and all the conversations we have. From work to random banter and the cupcakes. I love the cupcakes near the office, in 2020 it became an every Monday treat. <3

Its been great diving into the code and understand everything a bit better about the software I maintain. I had a conversation with my manager a few weeks ago, and I mentioned this to him. From taking a few days to find the root cause of an issue to now taking a few hours, its been a great learning experience on how to structure software and why everyone needs to spend more time writing tests for the software they build. I cannot think of writing a new software application today without enough test coverage.

Tools I learnt this year:

• Cypress
• Got a bit better at React(still a lot more to know)
• Infrastructure as code(AWS ElasticBeanstalk)
• Pipeline setup for Bitbucket and Gitlab

Things I want to get better at in 2021

• Swift
• End to End testing frameworks.
• Writing better unit tests for PHP and Javascript.

Travel

I would spend the most time writing this section during my yearly blog post. Going through Google Maps and its traced location would take a few hours. This year its been easy. With international travel banned due to COVID, my travel this year was restricted within Australia. However, I did manage to squeeze in one visit to New Zealand the second week of Feb.

Places visited in NSW, Australia:

• Bowral and Mittagong
• Gosford
• Newcastle
• Nelson Bay
• Wagga Wagga
• Port Macquarie

Goals for 2021

• Start to learn Salsa or some other form of a dance routine. It has been a long term goal of learning how to dance—time to get started.
• Try harder to be in touch with friends and family.
• Write/share more often here.
• More road trips.
• If international travelling opens up again in 2021, visit India, Japan and Nepal.
• Build and maintain at least two apps on iOS and Mac OS. Side projects 2021.

I hope you all have an excellent 2021. 🙌🏻

I often think soft skills don’t get talked about a whole lot. Was thinking about this last week and noticed this twitter thread.

soft skills I’d tell my younger, jr software engineer self. 🧵

“We need to have this feature shipped next week”, “we got to add this feature the competition has, or our customers will not use our software”. I have heard these words so many times over the last few years.

My work now primarily involves maintaining software which gets no new features. Just minor tweaks to fix issues which now surface due to data scale not considered for before. A few tweaks to database indexes. No new features, just small improvements and bug fixes.

I considered this peaceful work. There is an urgency to get the issue fixed as the customer has been waiting to generate that report, but improving software already used by a lot of people gives me immense joy. Customers hardly write to us anymore asking for new features to be added. They know what the software has to offer and are happy with how it fits into their day to day workflow. What makes them not happy is when the software is not available to be used or displays a blank screen when generating reports.

Focusing my time on availability and speed aspects of the software, rather than rushing to ship new features has been an area I did not think I would enjoy spending time on.

Sketch published this blog post a few days ago. Why we’re proud to build a truly native Mac app.

I went through Twitter that day and there was a lot of discussion about the post, with people on one side of the camp stating that Sketch was “Feel’n the squeeze from Figma.”

Is having a platform-native app a competing factor? For me, the answer has always been “it depends”. Based on the type of software you are building, native vs cross-platform could be a significant advantage. I would want my coding editor to be a native app. I have tried cross-platform solutions, and they have not been a joy to use. Same with a graphic software program or my web browser. Native has the advantage of not having to go through another layer of abstraction before getting to the action I want to perform.

If your software has a collaborative feature though, then you need to be cross-platform. Not everyone uses a Mac. I hope more software companies considered building native apps for each platform they want people to use them on. I have tried a few electron based apps and they are not what I would call “enjoyable software”.

My daily commute now includes 1 hour 20 mins train ride. 40 mins each way. In Mumbai, India, I would hardly get space to get in and stand. Now, here in NSW, Australia, I have been lucky enough to live in a suburb where I a place to sit down for the entire journey. A welcome change.

I like listening to podcasts on the way to work and on the way back catch up on my Youtube subscriptions. I am always running behind on my podcast episodes, though. From the 12 podcasts that I listen to, I usually get through 4 or 5 episodes during the week, as new episodes include themselves in the playlist.

There is Spotify, which creates excellent playlists for me to enjoy. Some days I switch from listening to podcasts to Spotify and monday reminds me of being extra behind on the podcast playlist.

I have now come to peace with the fact that I might never catch up on all the podcasts that I would like to listen.

My engineering manager James, asked me this question last week “What job would you want to do two jobs from now”.

I was thinking about this a lot last week. I even asked this question to my sister during our phone call over the weekend, and she said that’s a great way to look at career progression.

I have never really given this a thought until James asked me this question. I enjoy building software. I enjoy the whole process from wireframes to thinking about user flow to creating the frontend to writing the backend code. I also enjoy the process of setting up the server and ensuring that the app was up and running. It’s all an enjoyable process in the quest to building software which helps people accomplish the task they set out to do using the software.

I also do enjoy performance monitoring. Part of me wants to focus on ensuring that the software provides good user experience and speed is a significant factor towards good UX.

After giving it a lot of thought, one thing I would enjoy working towards has to be building excellent frontend experience for users and monitoring its performance and usability. Seems like a lot when I think about it, but that’s a goal I want to move towards getting better at.

I have always thought what would make a really good pricing model for software, and after reading through Cabel’s post on Panic’s Dev Issues board, I think I agree with Cabel.

You buy Nova, and you keep it forever. You do not need to pay anything more for the software to keep working forever — it’s yours. In addition, you get one free year of feature and bug updates. After that year, you can pay a steeply discounted price to continue to receive another year of updates — but that is totally optional.

Maintenance is often the most challenging part of software development. Ensuring that the software keeps working/improving and remains bug-free after the initial version is shipped is the most time-consuming part.

I wish more companies did this. You buy, keep it forever at that major version. All future versions come at a cost, which users of the previous version get to buy at a discount.

Not many people read this blog. I don’t write that often either. I should. I enjoy the process of putting my thoughts down.

A few weeks ago, someone asked me what I write about here. Nothing, in particular, I said. Whatever I feel like, it’s usually about tech or travel or something personal. Should I pick a topic and continue to explore it further or keep it general the way it is right now? I have often asked myself this question and have also chosen the keep in general route. It’s more fun for me that way.

I have not written here often though. I should. I miss writing.

The last few months have not been easy. COVID has taken its toll. Somehow writing was the last thing on the mind. Recording podcast was also the last thing in mind.

I miss recording. I packed my mic during my move and am yet to unpack it.

Time to get back to recording and writing. I have said this often before, though. 🙈

I wish all companies followed this advice. Sadly I hear that not many do.

“Clearleft working from home recommendations.”

I heard these words today. “Best Code is No Code At All” and I could not agree more.

I had more thoughts to share about best code being no code at all, but I came across this article written on codinghorror.com and could not agree more with the entire post.

My favourite parts of the post:

As a software developer, you are your own worst enemy. The sooner you realize that, the better off you’ll be.

Every new line of code you willingly bring into the world is code that has to be debugged, code that has to be read and understood, code that has to be supported.

If you love writing code— really, truly love to write code— you’ll love it enough to write as little of it as possible.

Food for thought for all the future projects and tasks I work on.

COVID-19 is affecting almost everyone. A quick look at the stats here and the number of cases around the world are on a constant rise.

The pandemic also means that many of us are now working from home. Although a good thing for the greater good, I hope all employers are lenient with their employees for a few weeks while they come to terms with the new way of working.

Having worked from home the last ten years and now from an office, I thought I would share my experience working from home the previous week.

• Working from home the last week has been stressful vs before the pandemic. Working from home before was a choice, and the mind did not go racing thinking about the future. Your future, your family and friends future, the future of your work and the future of the entire world.

• Working from home is not the same now. For a lot of people, it means having to juggle family life, looking after kids, looking after parents while also concentrating on getting work done.

• I see a lot of tips and tricks on getting work done from home, and some of them are quite helpful, but I do agree with this twitter thread.

Having been not so productive the last week, here is my plan to get more work done in the coming weeks.

• Get ready and start work by 8:30. Means waking up a bit early to make breakfast.

• Stay away from the news. If I achieve this one thing, I think I will be a lot more productive in the coming weeks.

• Focus on one thing and spend 30 mins just working on that task before walking around the house for a short break.

That’s it for now. I hope you and your loved ones are keeping safe and healthy. Take care 🤗

[Make 2020 the Year of Less Sugar] (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/30/well/eat/sugar-diet-healthy.html) was one of the few articles I read at the beginning of 2020.

One of the best things you can do for your health is to cut back on foods with added sugar. Our 7-Day Sugar Challenge will show you how.

Read any research paper about sugar and its side effects and everyone will tell you sugar is something you should avoid.

I tried the sugar challenge at the beginning of this year, and its effect has been nothing but life-changing. I would highly recommend you try it too.

Am I avoiding sugar entirely from my diet? No. I love cakes, hot chocolate and a few Indian sweets(gulab jamun I am looking at you) way too much to give up on sugar. I have just been mindful about how much sugar I consume on a day to day basis.

Found this really well made video here.

I have been thinking about recording a podcast for almost a year now. Jan 2nd, I finally decided this year I am going to give it a shot.

Here we go:

Episode 1

I initially thought of getting an external mic to record episode 1, but later realised that would be too much commitment from the get-go.

I remember reading this post from gaping void which said, you don’t need the best tool to get started, you need to get started, and that’s what I decided to do. Using the iPhone and using mic from my SoundSport® wireless headphones

🤞

Following up on my previous post about Infrastructure as Code (IaC), I have been working with Github Actions the last few days, and I am excited about making it part of my daily workflow on how I deploy software.

As of now, I am using it to deploy my application to ElasticBeanstalk. In future, the aim is to automate server setup and deploy to Linode and DigitalOcean.

How does the YAML file look like as of now? Github Actions YAML

We use Bitbucket Pipelines at work, but I have not had time to extensively work with it due to a lot of work being done by the DevOps team. Github Actions is my playground for learning DevOps skills this year.

The last few months, I have had good discussions with a colleague at work about how infrastructure as code is the future of how we set up servers and manage deployments across multiple servers.

The last two weeks during the holiday season, I could not agree more with him. More and more, I see the benefit of having Infrastructure as Code as practise more of us should follow.

What is Infrastructure as Code? - Azure DevOps | Microsoft Docs

I looked at a few options.

Templates overview - Azure Resource Manager | Microsoft Docs

Customizable Distribution Templates - StackScripts | Linode

Terraform by HashiCorp

CloudFormation

Ansible

As of now, Terraform looks like a winner to me, since I plan to deploy on [Linode](Cloud Hosting & Linux Servers | Linode and DigitalOcean in 2020.

Not having to log in and set up servers from scratch will be a considerable change in how I build software going forward.

I read this meme yesterday describing 2019. The first half of 2019 and the second half of 2019 felt like two different years, and I could not agree more.

Having spent about two months this year in India and the rest in Vietnam, New Zealand and mostly Australia, for me the first two months and the rest of 2019 did feel like two different years.

I wondered if I would be as excited about writing these birthday posts as I was five years ago, and the excitement continues. Having to think about the year that was gives me great joy and documenting it is something I immensely enjoy.

From the goal I had set for myself in 2019, some I managed to achieve. 😊

• More road trips. (Around NZ and Vietnam)
• Continue learning new languages/tools. (Learning Docker and CI/CD)
• Spend more time with family and friends. (Yay!)
• Pick up a new hobby/activity to do. (Learning Muay Thai)

Things I failed at 😔

• Travel to at least three new countries. (Only managed to visit one. Vietnam)
• Make time to date someone seriously( Made some progress on this but not as much I would have loved to)

Personal

I moved from India to Sydney, Australia this year. Moving to a new country had its own set of challenges. A lot of lows and a few highs. I remember being in Hong Kong airport in Feb on my way to Sydney and almost booking tickets to head back to Mumbai. Staying away from my niece, family and friends for a long time was not something I wanted to do at that moment.

Sydney has been kind. Lots of new memories, lots of fresh food experiences, and getting back to flatting has been an exciting change. From having to cook dinners on some nights, ironing clothes to figuring our rent each month. A lot of exciting changes. I remember being scared of these changes in Jan this year when I was thinking about the move. I am glad it was not as scary as I imagined it to be.

Although I do continue to miss family and friends back home, meeting and spending time with people in Sydney has been remarkable. A lot of Whatsapp and voice calls were a personal highlight of this year.

Work

If anyone asked me a few years back if I would consider taking up a full-time job, I would have answered “no” without giving it a second thought, but here I was six weeks after moving to Sydney, applying for full-time opportunities.

I initially told myself and a few friends that this was going to be a scary move. Its been long since I worked with an organisation of 5+ employees, and here I was signing an offer letter to join a 200+ company. (as I write this post, the company has now 300+ employees)

Working with ELMO has been great. The first few weeks were spent in panic mode, trying to learn Symfony framework and brushing up on Design Patterns. I have also had the most exciting programming based conversations this year and learnt so much about what it takes to write good code.

I also learnt the importance of using a debugging tool this year. Although I had read about Xdebug before, using it daily has been a big personal change for how I write software.

Tools I spent the most time with this year: Symfony, Xdebug, Docker, Bitbucket Pipeline, Github Actions, AWS Code Deploy and Vue.js.

Travel

This year has been terrible when it comes to travelling to new places. Although I am quite happy about exploring South Island in New Zealand a whole lot. Rented a caravan with and drove around South Island for 5 days.

Travelling around Vietnam with Mayur was great fun. We ended up eating at a few places recommended by Anthony Bourdain.

Visiting India in August to surprise my niece for her birthday was also a personal travel highlight of this year.

Goals for 2020

• Move to an apartment somewhere close to the city. Cut down on travel time and spend that time reading/learning.
• More physical exercise. Joining salsa classes in Jan.
• Buy/rent a car and make more road trips across Australia.
• Write/share more often on this blog.
• Travel to at least three new countries. I am looking at you, Japan, Nepal and Finland.
• Support more small businesses. Buy local and from Indie / small business owners.
• Spend more time with family and friends.

I hope you all have an excellent 2020. 🙌🏻