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No, I don't want free lunches

Inspired by this post , I'd like to give some perspective on benefits that companies offer to attract and keep their talent. Disclaimer - this is not about my current job or any previous jobs I've had. I am thankful for the position I am currently in! Playing ping pong at lunch Keep your free lunches I don't want free lunches, nor do I want a pizza as consolation for working late hours to finish the project we are behind resources on. I'm an adult, and will brown-bag my lunch ( to save money ) and do the work that's asked of me. I'd rather have realistic goals for the amount of work that we need to do, and get the support (de-scope work, get more employees, etc.) if needed. Don't give me swag I don't need free t-shirts, or mugs or tickets to a basketball game. These are all fine things, but do this out of generosity, not as part of a benefits package . Orange swag Give me the compensation necessary to live off of - it doe
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What am I passionate about?

What are you really passionate about ? Do you really know, are you drifting week by week hoping that magic wish gets answered? Is it a feeling, that  constantly changes ? Do you feel hopeless you'll never find your passion? I've been gone not blogging for a few weeks, and I think I found my passion (for myself, right now). I want to share with you what I found. Passion is the long nights Passion isn't something that gives you life, without taking some away. In Latin, passion means " to suffer ". To be passionate is to ask, what are you willing to suffer for ? Jesus Christ's passion was not for His sake, but for our own. While we will not have to suffer like Jesus, the suffering we have for our passions is real. For me, my passion comes with long nights after work. After I've spent a full day at work, I still manage to get sometimes up to 5 extra hours working on the side. I don't go into this saying, " Ugh, do I have to spend more ti

UI redesigns are mostly a waste of time

To preface the article, I primarily work on, and prefer, back-end code. I've been involved in both web and software development for over 4 years now and worked with many front-end and back-end frameworks. New Twitter UI Before all of the UI designers that read this go out and riot and champion against me for saying UI redesigns are a waste of time, let me say that I do value design . I think at the bare minimum, a product or website needs to be usable , and if you possess a good eye and steady hand , you should feel compelled to create something that looks pleasing. David Just stop redesigning the UI all the time . UI redesigns, in my opinion, are a waste of time 95% of the time. Let me explain further. No one cares Come see our fresh new look ! What about our new  material design , come see! I'm sorry, but besides fixing the UI where it impacts the usability of your application, no one is raving about how a redesign makes the application any better.

Two productivity tricks in Visual Studio you need to be using

Up your productivity game by using these two tricks you probably didn't know existed in Visual Studio. Being more productive F1 key Starting with the best, the F1 key. You didn't know this key did something did you, well, you'll be surprised to know that the F1 key opens up a help page on whatever you have your cursor on. Don't know what a keyword means or does, don't know what the parameters of Parallel.ForEach are, hit F1. Use that F1 key! Clicking the F1 key while your cursor is over the SameSiteMode as shown in the above screenshot, takes us to this page where we can learn more about the SameSiteMode. The task list For when you want to clean up your code base, open up the task list  and get on to fixing those bugs! The task list opens a window that shows all instances of your //TODOs (as well as other symbols in your code). You can open this window by going to View > Task List or (ctrl + \, T). Take this example. An example

Free programming books

There is really no other reason why you shouldn't be picking up these free programming books . If you don't already know where to get them, you will know in a few minutes. Packtpub.com Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with Packtpub. How do I get them Create a free account at  https://www.packtpub.com Every day, visit  https://www.packtpub.com/packt/offers/free-learning and claim your free book. That's it! Enjoy! The books that are free are on rotation, so you never quite know what book you'll be able to read next.  During busy seasons, ie. Black Friday, Packtpub has tended to offer different promotions and I have seen the free learning page unavailable. Once the season ends, they are usually quick to resume the free book offer. Do consider purchasing a hard copy of the book or videos on the site, they can't offer these books for free and still be in business.

Server-side AB testing in ASP.NET Core web applications

You've likely heard of Optimizely , or ABTasty , but what if you don't want to shell out money to do your own server-side testing? You know the benefits of server-side testing, it is invaluable . Whether you are a big shop, or small team, you can implement server-side testing today in your ASP.NET Core web application. Today, we will explore how to implement server-side testing in ASP.NET Core web applications with OSWTF . A/B testing Disclaimer: I am the author of OSWTF; it is based on work I have previously done working in an ecommerce team. The framework itself does not offer any analytics integration, as that is likely company/project-specific and can easily be added yourself. *Please be aware before the package gets released as a major release, the framework is subject to breaking changes. What is OSWTF OSWTF stands for O pen S ource W eb T esting F ramework. The framework is a very simple integration into your web applications to enable server-side testing c

[Guide] How to choose a project to work on

This is the easiest [and shortest] guide you'll ever find on how to choose a project to work on. Follow it to the T and you'll enjoy projects from now on. Thinking of a project idea The process Take some time away from [home]work and do something you enjoy . It can be anything. Think of a project that can help, enhance, or expedite the thing you already enjoy using what you already know how to do. Incorporate all of the requirements in your project if they aren't already there (ie. make your project use a database if it's required to do so in your project). Incorporate 1-2 extra things from this list and learn something new (teachers love that you tried to do something you were unfamiliar with). OCR Reading/writing files. Using AWS Lambda . A third-party library ( NPM libraries are good candidates, or other Javascript libraries ). A new language ( Rust ? Go ? Java ?). Create an API . Interact with social media through their APIs/SDKs. Slack