Firstly, addressing anti-feminism, it's crucial to distinguish that my stance isn't about opposing women's rights. On the contrary, it's about critically analyzing modern feminism's impacts and its divergence from essential equality principles. As Friedrich Nietzsche once said, 'All things are subject to interpretation whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth.' This quote highlights the importance of scrutinizing dominant ideologies—not to diminish rights but to ensure they align with truth rather than power dynamics.

Secondly, my perspective on anti-LGBTQ+ sentiments is purely from concerns about demographic trends. It's a mathematical observation rather than a moral judgment. The decline in birth rates in developed countries coupled with higher life expectancies poses potential socio-economic challenges such as workforce shortages and imbalanced pension systems. Addressing these concerns does not entail rights violations but encourages a broader discussion on sustainable societal structures.

In both cases, my red-pilled view urges us to look beyond emotional reactions and consider long-term implications. While these perspectives are uncomfortable, they invite necessary dialogues that could lead to more resilient and adaptable social frameworks. As proponents of true open-mindedness, shouldn't we engage with all perspectives, especially the ones we disagree with?

Let's dissect this concept under the light of our inherent resistance to change. Humans, by nature, are more driven to avoid discomfort than to pursue potential benefits. This psychological trait can be seen in the preference for painkillers over vitamins. Painkillers represent a direct solution to a pressing problem, a quick fix that is easily understood and appreciated. In contrast, vitamins symbolize preventative measures, whose benefits are neither immediate nor guaranteed.

Extending this to broader marketing strategies, selling new opportunities rather than improvement opportunities aligns with the same psychological pattern. People gravitate towards novel solutions that promise a fresh start or immediate improvement over those that require a slow and steady effort. This approach not only simplifies the decision-making process but also enhances the perceived value of a product.

From a capitalist viewpoint, this strategy maximizes efficiency and profitability without altering the inherent value of the product. By focusing on repositioning rather than redeveloping, businesses can tap into the primal human instincts of seeking relief and newness. As Milton Friedman once remarked, 'The most important single central fact about a free market is that no exchange takes place unless both parties benefit.' The art of smart positioning is about crafting those benefits so they resonate immediately and powerfully with consumer needs.

Why should we trust the authorities who have repeatedly shown a propensity to uphold profitable paradigms over potent truths? Friedrich Nietzsche once provocatively stated, 'There are no facts, only interpretations.' This is particularly resonant in the realm of healthcare, where rigid adherence to outdated dietary guidelines has failed countless individuals. Instead of consuming a carbohydrate-heavy diet as traditionally prescribed, the carnivore diet simplifies intake to primarily meat and animal products, reducing inflammation markers and insulin spikes.

• The carnivore diet advocates for a return to a more primal dietary pattern, one that arguably aligns more closely with our evolutionary needs.
• By eliminating processed foods, sugars, and most carbohydrates, this diet challenges the status quo and offers a new lens through which to view health and nutrition.
• It's not merely about eating meat; it's about questioning the layers of interests that shape our food choices and health paths.

While controversial, adopting such a diet could force a reevaluation of what health guidelines should signify in an era where trust in traditional health advisories wanes. As we navigate through the smog of misinformation, personal health sovereignty becomes paramount. Embracing such radical dietary changes isn't about defiance for the sake of it, but about seeking veracity in a sea of vested interests.

One might argue that any support for marginalized communities is beneficial. However, when companies that contribute to the commodification of Pride month are simultaneously involved in practices that undermine the fundamental rights of various groups, the authenticity of their support becomes questionable. As Noam Chomsky pointed out, 'The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum.' This could very well apply to the corporate embrace of LGBTQ+ symbols.

Moreover, if the primary intent behind these displays is profit-driven or for mitigating potential public relations disasters, can we still consider them a victory for LGBTQ+ rights? Perhaps these actions are merely a form of virtue signaling—an attempt to appear 'woke' without taking substantive actions that contribute to real change.

To those who view these gestures as overbearing or insincere, the sentiment isn't just about resistance to change or equality. It's about craving authenticity in advocacy and questioning whether these companies would still fly the rainbow flag without financial incentive or public pressure. If true support for LGBTQ+ rights is the goal, then let actions speak louder than temporary profile pictures or seasonal merchandise.

One major similarity between pigs and humans is their cardiovascular system. Both species have a four-chamber heart, with two atria and two ventricles. This allows pig hearts to be used in human patients with heart failure, as they can easily replace the damaged human heart. In addition, pig hearts are smaller than human hearts, which makes them easier to transplant into smaller human bodies.

Pigs and humans also have similar respiratory systems, with lungs that have the same number of lobes and are structured in a similar way. This makes pig lungs a viable option for human transplantation, especially in cases where the human lungs are damaged or diseased. Pig lungs have also been used in experimental procedures to help humans with lung damage recover their breathing function.

The digestive systems of pigs and humans are also quite similar, with both species having a similar structure and function of the stomach, small intestine, and large intestine. This makes pig organs, such as the pancreas and liver, suitable for transplantation into humans. The pancreas is responsible for producing insulin and other hormones that regulate blood sugar levels, and a pig pancreas can be used to treat diabetes in humans. The liver is responsible for filtering toxins out of the body and producing bile, and a pig liver can be used to replace a damaged human liver.

Pigs and humans also have similar reproductive systems, with both species having similar structures and functions of the uterus, ovaries, and testes. This makes pig organs, such as the uterus, suitable for transplantation into humans. In recent years, there have been several successful uterine transplantations using pig organs in humans, allowing women who are unable to carry a pregnancy to have children.

One reason why pig organs are used in humans is because they are readily available. Pigs are bred for many different purposes, including food and medical research, which means there is a large supply of pig organs that can be used for transplantation. In addition, pig organs are relatively easy to obtain and transport, making them a convenient option for transplant surgeons.

Another reason why pig organs are used in humans is because they are relatively easy to manipulate. Pigs have a similar genetic makeup to humans, which means their organs can be modified or genetically engineered to reduce the risk of rejection by the human body. This has allowed scientists to develop techniques such as xenotransplantation, which involves the transplantation of pig organs into humans with the aim of improving their function.

Finally, pig organs are used in humans because they have the potential to save lives. Many people who need organ transplants are unable to find a human donor, and pig organs provide a viable alternative. Pig organs have been used successfully in a number of different transplant procedures, and they have the potential to help even more people in the future.

Overall, the similarities between pigs and humans make them excellent candidates for organ transplantation. Pig organs are readily available, easy to manipulate, and have the potential to save lives. While there are still challenges to overcome, such as the risk of rejection and the potential for disease transmission, pig organs offer a promising solution for people in need of organ transplants.

It turns out that pork, out of all the other animals, has the greatest anatomical and chemical similarity to humans. Even machines that are wired to identify things by taste, mistake humans for pork.

And people who have actually tasted human meat (gah!), tell the tale of it tasting more like pork.

So imagine the crisp tasty smell of bacon in the morning mixing with the smell of coffee. That part deep in our brain that we often want to ignore -- the lizard brain -- knows better.

We like to eat each other.

Well, i'm lazy, is the short answer.

But the long answer is that i want to just add new templates, which is just like adding new functionality. And if I don't have that functionality, I just drop back to a default EEX template.

The handy "render_existing" function handles this very well, but it's not so obvious in the documentation.

And there you have it. Simple conditional template rendering in Phoenix Framework.

Computer programming is hard.

But you will get great pay and its easy to get and keep high paying jobs for the duration of a programming career. Which proves, the things that are most rewarding are usually the hardest.

If you don't want to work hard, or programming is not appealing, or if you just want to get some other job, then go for history. You will have a fun time in college and get to talk with the professor about great moments of the past. Then carefully plan out your teaching career. You will definitely get a job as a teacher eventually.

However, don't get student loans to get a history degree.

Have fun in your career, no matter what you plan to do eventually.

Children go to work with their parents now. My breakfast Pho place has a little dude who man's the register and is learning how the business works from his family.

Kids play in the park after morning studies at home.

It's not all sun and roses of course, but it's an interesting forced experiment that's happening under our very noses. The big losers are people who see the "school building" as the only way to learn. The winners are going to be those who embrace methods and technologies that help people learn without the rote of the traditional classroom.

The trouble with the world today is that we're no longer allowing our kids to do anything useful for fear that they "injure" themselves.

So everyone grow up not really knowing even how to hammer a nail. I sympathize with your feeling having a kid myself, but without exposing them to even some slight danger, they will not grow up learning how to navigate the dangers in the world.

So now I try to “do” instead of memorize and it makes all the difference in the world.

Even I can’t learn new programming languages unless I make a real project with them. That’s why I don’t believe in things like code katas or reading programming books cover to cover. It’s a bad representative for using a tool in real life to learn its principles, techniques and methods.

What's socially constructed is how your gender is presented or implied because of said society. No matter how society "constructs" your gender, you're still biologically male or female.

Even with gender reassignment surgery - your'e still biologically male or female, its just that the "presentation" of your organs have been surgically altered.

It's rarely said that marriage, kids, job, degree, a house, car, and most physical things are not missions. And in fact, most of these things -- unless accompanied by a "why am i doing this" and attendant missions/goals do not lead to happiness.

Marriage without goals = divorce. Kids without mission = abandonment. Money without a plan = poverty. Degree without a plan = debt/sadness. Relationship without a mission = break up. Programming without a mission = abandoned code.

Here are some examples of missions:

1. Rearing children with the goal of making them read at 2 years old. Then with the goal of learning calculus at 10. Then others as they grow older.

2. Learning programming by writing a real system that actual people will use -- instead of code katas or reading programming books or attending a boot camp.

3. Marrying not only for love, but with the intention of building a business or farm together.

4. Buying a house, with the knowledge you will sell it or convert it into a rental in a certain number of years. Then repeat with another house.

5. Starting a social media account to cover a specific topic, instead of making random posts about anything (have you noticed the most successful accounts are about one topic??).

6. Taking a degree with the intention of using it in a specific way and knowing how much money you will make to pay off the loan and live a comfortable life.

7. Buying a "beater" car, because you want to hire a new offshore employee for a side project instead of making a high lease payment to the bank.

The world is filled with the stories of people who do things purely on emotion and never had "missions" or a "why" they did the thing.

Tech was PhP, MySQL, memcache and similar vanilla stuff running on many Linux servers - pretty simple stuff.

The trick was performance. Simple stupid mistakes that would not be detected in sites that have low traffic become enormous problems in a high traffic server.

Pretty much nothing was dynamic and we wrote scripts to create static pages for almost everything except search and authentication.

Things like logging just could not be done. It was easier to load a bunch of data in memory on a request and process it instead of running a slightly slower SQL query, since a ton of those could kill the database.

And yes, there were no placeholder images or videos. After some time you just get used to it and code. But I have to say you get pretty desensitized to it and when I resigned from that job my life in that area improved quite a lot.

Highlights were p*rn stars and random celebs visiting the office - but after some time that got kind of meh.

The job itself was just a programming gig and very professional except for the images on the screen which we learned to ignore.

On the whole, the guys who ran the thing were a pretty solid and great bunch of people and it was one of the best dev experiences in my long career.

I would assume selling to Microsoft would be the thing to do.

But whoever buys it has no revenue model so that’s tricky. Unless they’re doing it for altruistic purposes.

Don’t get it twisted I love SO.

One thing I have noticed is that countries want tourism but are now super careful about who they let in.

Recently I wanted to travel elsewhere, but was unable to enter most of the world with my American passport. So I got another extension instead for 2 more months.

Another thing I’ve noticed is that some countries now actually are beginning to realize that their economies are down, but can survive without the hordes of dirty foreigners coming to their country. So there is just no rush to reopen especially with the medium sized and fast growing countries.

Nationalism to some small degree is definitely in play in a lot of governments these days.

And with the resurgence of the virus, lockdowns are being expended and reestablished in many places.

The reopenings planned for August 1 are definitely not going to happen.

No passport is any good right now - except in its own region.

What could be the consequences good or bad?

Less women doing college - but it's already empirically proven that women don't really push for STEM (and no, it's not only due to sexism).

Less degrees overall. This is maybe a good thing, since people are going to college without thinking what they really want to do (not having a plan).

More people doing vocational education, since it's not so easy to go to college for that arts and humanities degree that you'll be sure to pass.

Finally, waking up people to the fact that it's not so necessary to get a college degree for most professions on earth anyway.

At Home.

From a very early age.

With Phonics or whatever technique works best for you and them.

Because school is not the place to teach a kid to read.

Now, using Phonics has helped in many, many ways. Recently on a trip to the kingdom, many people have been telling me I say Thai names very well. A name like: Surassa Fhaumnuaypol or Vajiralongkorn is easy -- just use phonics principles to slowly say it then speed up.

(American here currently in South-East Asia since 2018). As you all know, Thailand, Vietnam, Taiwan and others have some of the lowest rates of Covid in the world.

No one complains about the masks. No one makes a political issue out of it. It's simple -- you can't go into the majority of stores, shopping centers, offices or buildings in any of the cities in these countries.

No Karens. No viral videos about people not wanting to wear (or wanting to wear) masks. And the resurgence of Covid-19 is enough to cause the governments to be super-cautious again.

People wear them. Cute kids wear them. Old and young people. And we are safe. Very few if any infections or deaths over the last 3 months.

Because of the control of the spread, people are more relaxed outdoors and mask use outdoors is around 65% at this point just from looking around.

No Covid-19. Enough. About. The. Masks. Already. Wear one. Protect your fellow humans.

Their firewall situation is not. Guess what, if you use the supplied firewall, any server from any other customer in the local NOC that your server is in, can connect to your server. They seem to be all "safely" behind the OVH firewall product.

You have to protect each server individually with its own in-machine firewall.

I don't want to automatically trust all other OVH customers.

At first I thought I was doing something wrong (more than a decade of setting up firewalls). But I did put in a support ticket and they confirmed this.

Maybe I'm wrong, maybe something I did not understand, but damn... If I'm not.... :-(

This has actually begun already at the high school level.

Once again I believe net/net the beer virus will be positive for America in the long run - even if only on the educational level.

Some will insist that a portion of the population will be disenfranchised and that is true.

But our education assumptions and priorities have been wrong for so long now that it has actually become the weakness of an entire generation for the last 10-20 years.

Just think of it! In a few months we are completely re-examining the utility of taking out a student loan that many cannot pay back in their working lifetimes.

We’re looking and complaining if colleges will go online or reopen in person classes - but there is so much more going underneath that conversation.

This is maybe (hopefully) the last generation of the “underwater basket weaving” so-called useless degrees.

Take a water balloon, and squeeze one end of it. It does not lose water, instead, the water goes to the other end of the balloon. That illustrates where the "money" is going.

I've said elsewhere there is a sea-change in education happening right under our noses. I believe that a lot of the education money may very well flow to more vocational training, distance learning, tech and lessons for home school and smaller classes. Old-school group classes were inefficient anyway -- and people are just beginning to realize that.

Doctors will do more old-timey house calls. Even to just survive!

The restaurants and businesses that you frequent during your commute, like diners, etc, will also adapt. More deliveries instead.

It will be easier to schedule a haircut from your barber for your home or office. I don't really want to go to a salon and sit in a chair there.

Store owners will have to start doing more list building and email marketing, you can no longer just watch a customer walk-in and walk-out without trying to build your email or contact list.

Yes, America is unravelling, but we are humans and we always adapt. It's just the stubborn ones or the hard to change industries that will suffer the longest and the slowest.

I do not believe that things are just going to go back to "normal" as they were. There will be some significant change in the way how we conduct business, education, entertainment and living.

The people who adapt to that change will be the winners.

Listen, I get it. They want some compensation from Netflix, Hulu and Disney+ eating up all their local bandwidth. But that's where the money was.

They need to skate where the money is going, not where it was. The money was in broadcast TV and cable. And most of it is still there. But it's rapidly being sucked away by individual creators.

And at some point advertisers are going to wake up and realize the premium that broadcast and cable operators are charging per 1000 viewers is not really worth that much more than what YouTube pays Jake Paul.

For simple sites like blogs, simple low volume ecommerce, etc.

But for more "serious" eCommerce, SAAS based applications and sites that are concerned with marketing on email, social and web then then optimizing what you show then and finally generating leads for salespeople to call or actual sales...

Cookies or local storage, or some way of tracking the customer across all the channels and their actions are essential.

If one can avoid using Google Analytics, then that's a good thing also.

But let's get real -- the idea of a cookie-less future is not gonna happen because people actually do business in the web.

But I could not be more pleasantly surprised. Initially people are wary, but s single interaction make them your best friends.

Male, female and especially kids are extremely friendly and the service rivals and exceeds that of other neighboring countries.

i just took the night train from Saigon to Hue and by the time I got to Hue, even though I and my roommates did not understand a word of each other, we shook hands - a pregnant lady and two older men - all strangers to each other and knew that if we came across each other again everyone would remember.

From the smallest town to the biggest city, expect to make friends and just be accepted no matter who your are.

The atmosphere is unhurried, like the bikes on the street. It’s like a symphony of everyone just moving together in harmony. I’m highly impressed on this my first visit. I’ll be back again many more times in the future.

UPDATE - June 7, 2019

In Vietnam again. This time in Ha Noi. Even more friendly than HCMC. This time I’m traveling the country with my 15 year old daughter. Hospitality in the north is very very good and many people just approached us to welcome us to the city without needing anything.

One downside is that we did get scammed (a small one) but it was so nice that we did not realize that it was a scam until it was over! But you live and learn.

As an experience we did take the train from Hanoi to Saigon (33 hours) and the staff on the train took extra special care of us - not to mention our fellow passengers too!

I will be attempting to spend a year here beginning next year because of all of this.

Will you be able to learn about my business?

Can you incorporate something interesting that you learned, to make my API more responsive?

Many new programmers out of school focus on algorithms and mastery of the language - when the real skill is understanding what a problem is and how to bring the skills you have - to solving it.

Sure, get good at coding, but anyone can get good at the mechanics of the language in a really short time. Instead get good at solving problems and then you can name your price anytime.

it requires you to be good at making things. Or to put it another way - seeing things through.

in some ways I regretted becoming a programmer because it prevented me from learning about making money and running a business.

Ask any programmer who has made the transition and they’ll tell you something similar.

On the other hand, being a programmer helps because it forces you to think of all the possibilities in any endeavor. It’s like playing chess - you constantly look at all the moves on the board.

So in that sense it helps - but it can hurt it all you focus on is the programming.

#2 Deploying to production

The core of any language is pretty easy and you can learn in a couple of days. Unless it’s functional versus object oriented - it make take a few more weeks going from one to the other.

But libraries are huge and remembering all the modules and classes and functions takes the most time.

The next thing is deployment - but that is easier these days with all the continuous integration pipelines available.

The last item that I did not mention above is just thinking of every possibility that could happen with your program.

Every kind of input, contingency and output. You have to think it through.

Learning and playing chess is therefore a good training of the mind to think ahead in programming.

What I would do instead, is to use another engine, but then run Elixir software to enhance it. Example, provide newsletters, more detailed user behavior profiling.

Most eCommerce engines go the easy 85% of the way that would super-tedious to build. So why spend that 85% again.

The value in Amazon are things like:

1. Recommendations
2. Those emails that remind you to buy
3. Affiliate marketing

Use Elixir/Phoenix to add it those parts instead.

The entire Analytics pipeline was rebuild with Elixir/Phoenix and Citus (Postgresql).

Most of our offline jobs now run with Elixir.

80% of our travel supplier data API consumption happens with Elixir jobs.

To pull an off-topic example — most people who are virgins can read all they want about s*x. But unless you start to try, and to get good at it (real thing to do) — you will never learn. And believe me, its something you need to learn to become good and be an expert. Haha.

Same thing with Phoenix & Elixir.

Unless you have a real project, you are going to really suffer. And your’e going to go nowhere.

Think of a project that you want to do that is pretty small. Start with that. You can learn Elixir syntax in a day, and the basics of the Phoenix Framework in another few days.

But you will not learn the patterns needed to write good software unless you have to write a real project.

But you get paid to solve problems. Not to code.

And that’s a delicate thing you need to understand. Normally if you have a business and you’re uncommitted one way or the other about how a problem is going to be solved, then you have to pick between hiring an untested Java programmer, or someone who knows how to solve your problem with any language.

Providing the language is not too esoteric (and Elixir isn’t) then I would pick the person who has given some thought to how the program would be solved.

Not someone who knows all about list comprehensions (hehe), but falls down on how to process a million records in an hour from Postgresql.

1. You can run concurrent programs more easily
2. Use it with Ecto to talk to the database in a more performant way
3. Build high speed API’s that can handle a higher level of concurrent connections than almost any other language
4. Create system software (search engines, databases, queues)
5. Construct multi-node and multi-process crawlers

In short, because of the concurrent nature of the BEAM and the ease of using Elixir to do concurrency, you can get a lot done with it - without blowing out your brains or wondering what kind of magic is happening behind the scenes.

It’s not like we’re hearing a ton of Java news every day — even though Java has eaten the world.

Before I started Elixir I was looking long and deep at Crystal.

I also looked long and deep at my current code bases in Rails and realized I could not run them with Crystal without a ton of rewrites — especially 3 years ago.

So we made the jump to Elixir — because there was already a lot available on the BEAM that Crystal did not have as yet.

If you were starting something new and you were a Ruby shop, Crystal would make sense at this point.

Now in my early middle age, there is no way I would learn a programming language unless it could solve a problem I have now, better than what I’m currently using.

Gone are the days when I would learn a new language just for the kicks.

However, if you do have a lot of hobby and learning time on your hands, it makes a lot of sense to dabble with other languages.

The more techniques and knowledge you add to your brain’s “inventory” - the better you can solve problems when they happen.

1. Learning the language & syntax
2. Learning the standard libraries

Hard things

1. Patterns to get easy tasks done
2. Making your code simple
3. Testing
4. Keeping your knowledge up-to-date

And one reason for this is simplicity. There is no “magic” happening anyplace in the stack.

For that reason we started coding everything new in Elixir 3–4 years ago.

1. Most kinds of performance games
2. VR
3. AR
4. System software
5. Heavy graphics shit

This is a really good question, because if you stop to think about it — everything in the list above could start as a web app, until you need more performance.

Pure mobile apps are highly overrated and really, are not necessary in 85% of cases you see in app stores.

The exception are most games.

With web based mobile apps able to access the underlying hardware of your device, including local storage for offline access, you can actually get a lot done for many, many classes of applications.

In my experience, if pure designers learn Javascript and a little programming fundamentals the world belongs to them.

Secondly, marketers.

If people doing marketing know a little programming and the principles of how the internet works, then, again, they can do a lot more. They can access the raw data and slice and dice it in different ways to get new insights not possible from just the standard screens of analytics.

Make a real project that solves a real problem you have or someone close to you has.

Keep it small and limited.

And actually make the stakeholders use it.

Nothing is more powerful than you using what you’ve learned to solve a real-world problem instead of something academic.

That’s why we lean to hiring people who have interesting side projects — no matter how simple.

But…

If you are struggling with the language you have a serious problem. If you are struggling how to use the language in a certain way - it’s not as serious.

if you are struggling to solve problems - that is more serious and maybe programming is not for you.

iI always say to young programmers - what matters is that you can solve a program. Some problems don’t need programming to solve and you should recognize that too.

Learn the basics of the language:

• conditional statements, looping, functions, maps and lists
• Then find the documentation for the standard library

Notice I did not say to “learn” the standard library.

Then, assuming you have a real project (you do have a real project, right??), start building it with Phoenix.

As you build it, you will learn.

Trying to read a book on Elixir or Phoenix without building something as you learn, will get you exactly nowhere.

Stop trying to be a programmer, and start trying to solve problems. To quickly and efficiently learn computer programming, find a simple problem you want to solve and learn just enough of a programming language to build each part of your system.

Easy, works every time and you learn soooo much more that you ever would just reading and writing hello world programs.

Programming is easy - like using a power tool. You cannot learn how to use a power tool by reading a book about it. You have to actually use it to be skillful at it.

Oh, and also stop whining.

Immigration
Really, this is not much different from many other countries. If you don’t have a tier 1 passport, many other countries require you to prove some kind of income and to re-enter the country to renew your visa. You even have to report your address to the authorities too in other places. Seriously, Thailand is not that far off from what is the immigration norm around the world. What do you think someone wanting to visit the EU, Australia of the USA has to go through when getting a visa? The same thing.

Prices
Thailand is getting a bit more expensive — in line with other western countries. This is due to general growth and development. What, you wanted to pay people for nothing like in the 1980’s? Get real. Thais have larger expectations now. They read the internet too. They want to live in those thousands of condos you see going up around Bangkok. They want to have cars, houses, vacations and great education for their families. Thailand can’t be the place that you pay $10 for a hotel room forever. The baht can’t be an inferior currency forever. You expect no growth?

Culture
Some people have complained about the Thai culture. Wake up. It’s different from our western norms. And until you realize that, you’ll never thrive in Thailand. People in Thailand just do things differently. There is the right way, the wrong way and the Thai way. Until you learn that, its going to be really, really hard for you. But the good news, is strip away the veneer of the culture and realize that human nature is the same underneath. If you realize this, then you will be good.

Scams & Crimes
Just like many other countries, there are going to be scams and crimes. Just less so than in the west — literally. If you think that the normal human nature should not apply here, then you’re not a good observer of humans. Like all countries, women want to find the richest man. Vendors want to make the biggest profit. Some people love drama more than peace and quiet. Scammers want to find the next sucker. What is the difference between a big corporation in the west scamming you and a Thai scamming you in the street? In the west we’ve legalized and normalized this so it does not look like a scam.

Land of “Smiles”
Yes, people in Thailand are always smiling and welcoming and this is genuine. But just like in the west, they want the same things that you want. What, you thought that that lady smiling at you was only interested in your good looks because you’re a farang? Just like in the west, she’s thinking if you have a good job, will make a good provider and will pay for her next iPhone. Why do you think this is any different? It’s just that there is a smile in front of it, but dig deeper and the human behavior is the same.

Women
And finally, women. Foreigners love to think that Thai women will be subservient, docile and stick with you to the end. Because western women are the opposite and you’ve become quite tired of that so you’ve moved to Asia where you can find a “real woman”. Wake up Johnny Farang. Women in Thailand are just as hypergamous, scheming and looking out for themselves as in any other culture. It is the nature of women to find the best provider. Women get bored with the same man after some time. Yes, you see the veneer of the femininity, the subservience and all of that. But have a longer relationship with a woman from any country and the same human characteristics come out in the end.

Summary
So people think that Thailand has “changed”. It has. It’s growing up and becoming more westernized in nature. Once you understand that and adjust your expectations, you’ll actually be fine.

You can’t willy-nilly move to western countries and work and live for unlimited periods of time either.

The world and countries are always changing. Always remember that.

Programming is just a means to an end. Not an end in and of itself (30+ years programmer).

1. Vietnamese people don’t give a shit about you (and i mean that in a good way). They don’t discriminate, they are too busy doing the things to do in their life to spend time thinking about you too much. This is the best thing about Vietnam! This means you can go do what you like (don’t break laws) and you are free.
    
2. Very direct with you. Go in a store, buy something, they take your money and start working on the next thing. This directness means they are extremely efficient! Good for doing business, cut away all the bullsh*it.
    
3. Very stylish! Look into small stores. Look at the ladies with high heels and beautiful clothes on the motorbikes. Style is everywhere and into everything here. It’s unlike anything I have seen in any other country so far.
    
4. Really good service. I remember one day i wanted a new office chair at home. I went to the website, picked a chair and in 2 hours it was delivered to my apartment on the back of a motorbike. Pre-Assembled! Cash on Delivery. People do a LOT for you here — unlike many other countries. The service you get everywhere is actually above and beyond many other places.
    
5. Very friendly. At first, it does not seem like it — but start talking to a Vietnamese person for even a couple minutes and everything changes. You will get invited out. People will bring food to your home. They will take you where you need to go or bring something for you from out of their way.
    
6. Conservative. This may seem like a negative. But with our overly loaded politically correct and wildly open culture taking over the west, it’s good to see some boundaries set on personal behavior.
    
7. Feminine Women. Here, women act like women. Women wear their hair long, act demurely and dress in a very stylish manner. Even on the back of a motorbike or driving one, you can see extremely beautiful women riding around the cities all the time.
    
8. Vietnam is free. Yes, its’ a communist/socialist country. But it’s hard to find other places that are more capitalist or entreprenueral or dynamic at this moment in time. With a population almost reaching 100million and most of it young people, the future is very bright.

Vietnam is a wonderful place and I see myself having a lot to do with this diverse country in the future if I can.

As a young boy I was always interested in the country. I read the horror stories about the French occupation, the war with the USA and came away being very interested in the country for a variety of reasons I cannot begin to really explain coherently.

Part of it is probably my respect for how they managed to overcome all these wars and move the country forward.

It seemed like a far-away exotic place as much as Jamaica might have seemed a far-away exotic place to Vietnamese people.

So in early 2019, I decided to visit. First Ho Chi Minh City, then back with my teenage daughter to HaNoi in the summer, then living there for the past 6 months.

My reasons for being here thus long now, are these:

1. The culture is so different - I love “different”
2. Personal service is fantastic.
3. Very direct people - not wasting time.
4. Filled with style

He said that since he left University he has not picked up a book.

That’s why programmers, doctors, lawyers, architects, and almost every profession gets outdated.

People stop learning. It’s nothing unique to programming.

To stay current, here are some tips…

1. Keep updated with the latest versions and features of the tools you use every day
2. Learn a new computer language every couple of years.
3. Read about new technologies.
4. Try out new technologies in small projects.
5. Experiment with new tools and libraries.
6. Write about your experiments.

However if you have to quickly scale web backends to millions of users, you are going to shoot yourself in the food with elixir as any other language.

Scaling anything is not easy and there are a lot of things to consider besides just depending on the Beam to do heavy lifting. Sure it makes it easy to spawn off many requests easily. But…

#1 - Performant database queries
Elixir/Ecto is not going to help you. If you’re just using Ecto without proper indexes or even limiting just the number of columns you need, then you’re just swamping your database quicker.

#2 - Paying attention to your plugs
Think of the life cycle of your requests as just a series of plugs or functions that you’re passing the conn through. If you’re not paying attention to each one in the chain and profiling each one, you’re in for a world of hurt.

#3 - Third-Party Libraries
Some third party libraries are a huge coding time saver, but a huge time waster too. That library that’s saving you some coding time might not be worth it because it’s eating up 100ms in each request.

In the end, you have to be aware of every little thing. Even the latency between your app servers and your database server is going to be a big factor and if you don’t have experience with huge amounts of traffic then Elixir is not going to help you.

Best decisions I made. Age is not a factor. Curiosity is the only thing that will stop you from learning.

Have either, and the possibility to even leave your city becomes astronomically expensive.

Now vote this answer to the top!

I’d rather spend more time designing and writing simpler systems in the least amount of code possible in languages I know very well - rather than jump on the next hotness.

i have a favorite saying to my juniors when they talk about some new interesting systems:

“remember we could implement it in shell scripts and text databases and get the same result”.

In the end, the user does not care what or how we create a system.

They are only interested that there is a system that solves their problems. Users will even forgive something that looks bad and runs slow if it solves most of their problems.

Thats why Craig’s list makes a billion dollars a year.

I think for you a masters would be a waste unless you want to work in a large consulting company.

in that case better go for an MBA - it’s reasonably general and will impress any employee in the future.

Your problem, like many others like you in many professions? You have nothing to show.

• No side projects.
• No code in Github.
• No blog posts.
• No twitter talking about your work.
• Nothing.

What gets you a job the fastest in a non-FAANG company is what you did before. Maybe I’m wrong in assuming this — but I doubt it.

Put yourself out there! Have something to show.

Here’s what i mean.

It would take time to develop systems that run the automation for that job. That development cost is probably more than paying a person minimum wage to do the job.

Besides, people are more flexible too. You can just walk over to them and tell them to change how they’re doing that job and they do it! If they don’t fire them and hire a replacement for the same minimum wage.

Elon Musk said one reason why the Tesla factories are not totally automated was because it took a person to take a hose that is flailing around and connect it to the right place. Not so easy for a machine to do!

Believe me, I tried some tutorials, and even for simple things like fixing a problem with my phone, I had to be rewinding multiple times.

With text and photos its like 1000 times easier. You follow at your own pace, instead of the pace of the video presenter.

It’s literally night and day.

Do not live where other foreigners live.
When foreigners group together they assimilate the culture less.

Eat Thai Food
Do not eat western food every day. You’ve just slowing down your assimilation. Trust me. There is such a variety in all levels of spicing that its just lazy for someone to say “I don’t like Thai food”.

Make Thai Friends
Thai people will make friends with you. Start with people who you buy stuff from every day. Do not frequent the large shopping malls. But from people with small shops. Ask them how business is going. Be friendly!

Go out with Thai People
Invited out by some Thai people? Go! You will be the odd person out, but you will always remember it and people will appreciate that you took the effort even if you cannot understand a word of what is happening.

Learn a few words
A few words like “hello”, “thanks”, “I speak a little thai” can go a long way. It only takes a few minutes. Don’t be lazy.

Read about the culture
Take some time to research on things about the culture that you’re curious about. Have a question? At least look it up on Wikipedia.

Learn the laws
This is not even so required — just do as Thai people do and don’t be stupid or silly.

Respect Thai People
They are just like you. They want the same things as you. Just because they bow or Wei does not mean they are going to go hand over foot for you and give you everything for nothing.

If you care about other people in your general life, you will love Bangkok, or any foreign city. If you’re generally an asshole who thinks only about themself, then you will have problems no matter where you go.

Pick one of the more common languages like Python, Ruby or Elixir (or on the Microsoft Windows site - I’d say Visual C).

Then make something good with it. A small but real project that solves one of your own pain points. This way you will actually give a damn about enough to continue for the long haul.

What you want to do is learn the skill of making something from scratch until its ready to be used by an audience.

But if you take the time to learn C (not C++), you will actually be able to use what you’ve learned in a lot of other languages and systems later, since much of what you use is actually written in C and C++.

The orthodoxy is to chose Python, but based on my own experience as a young programmer, learning C was the best thing I did.

Many standard libraries are patterned off the C standard library (stdlib) and the foundation of standard Ansi C is a good start for making you into a really decent programmer.

People read your words first. These convince them what to do.

Coding is just a background thing that’s used to present your words. Copywriting is the most valuable skill in 2020.

In the age of Covid we see the ability to convince people to buy your goods and services to be the most important skill. Once again, your words are gonna be used in web pages, emails, text messages and so on.

I firmly believe that programming is just the start. And that copywriting will lift you up from where you are as just a “programmer”, into someone who actually makes money online.

Just think about it. The titles and descriptions you read on Amazon when you buy the next bottle of vitamins, is what makes you chose that product.

The title and description of this question and answer and the Youtube video that it becomes will determine if you find and read or watch it.

So its good to learn some programming for sure, but copywriting is kind. Learn it.

The first problem is that you have no ideas. I submit that you’re not thinking hard enough or getting out to look around.

Are you going out of your home?
What are you thinking when you walk down the street?
Are you on your phone all the time?
Don’t you have any problems in your own life to solve?

Here’s an idea. Make a website that lists ideas for projects. Someone hits a button and it pops up a random idea from your list.

No need to even have a database.

Just a text file with one idea per line. Know the number of lines, generate a random number between 1 and “n” (n being the number of lines), then seek to that line in the file and show the idea on the screen.

Such a program should take about a day to write — with most of the work of coding being the deployment to a server.

And the best way to do that is to start a real small project. Come up with a small idea that scratches an itch, then plan it out on paper and start executing stage by stage.

If you want to go ahead into college, you will then have an ENORMOUS leg up on everyone else and school will be a breeze.

If you wait until you go to school then it will be as hard as anyone else.

If you’re primarily doing web based type software, then Python is better. If you’re doing more system based software then C++ is better.

Do you have any ideas of what you like?

Long term, people get money for their ability to start and complete things, not necessarily for a particular skill in a programming language.

So how do you get that skill without experience?

Simple, make the experience yourself. Build some small but real online projects that others can use. Using the languages and systems of your choice.

Then advertise that fact on your resume or online profile page, you can also add it on your social media accounts. But you do actually need to have your own web page for yourself.

This is almost always guaranteed to get you a job or some clients.

Just imagine looking for clients or a job with nothing to show except the claim that you can “program in python”.

Stop watching Youtube/Netflix/movies every night. Forget drinking with friends after work. Kill WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and sliding into the DM’s of your favorite eGirl. Tell your family to respect your working hours during these months. That includes your wife, girlfriend, children and parents.

Put those hours into making something real with the programming language you love instead.

You’ll be an awesome engineer in 6 months. Not nine.

You have to sacrifice something to gain another thing. And that sacrifice means you will be so much more useful later on after doing it.

The problem with the world today is that we’ve forgotten about immersing ourselves into anything.

There are too many distractions: “I’m tired - let me just watch Youtube instead”. Then that rabbit hole lasts the rest of the night.

Most of the things we love actually are things we start out not liking. But when you immerse yourself into something, you get to understand it and even if you do not love it, you can actually get really, really good at it.

Stop doing things based on your feeling and emotions.

Start doing things based on practicalities, not feelings.

It’s actually only recently when people started to move around more. And that’s for a variety of reasons.

Most people actually would stay in the same job if the pay was good, the job was predictable and there were nice friends.

Go ahead, just ask your dad or grandpa. Or any “boomer” that you know.

Really, no computer language is hard to learn.

If you think about it — every language has modules, functions, if/then/else, case and expressions. Some are object oriented too — which is just an instance of a module - hah!

Learning a new language? Just understand those parts — the core parts of a language is easy.

Then bookmark the documentation for it’s standard library. This will be it’s String, Enum, Integer, Array and other libraries. You don’t even have to remember these, just lookup the stdlib for something you need to do and you will find the function/module/class to do it.

Fortunately, ruby has most excellent documentation, so it should be a breeze.

Just think about the most popular languages.

I can’t think of a single one that has fallen out of favor.

I don’t see many people programming in Pascal anymore. Does that help?

And those that want to explore new places.

A third group merely want to see the sights - we will not talk about that group here.

True travelers want to interact with people wherever they go. Not just at their hotel, but out and about in the communities.

Travel is the thing that invigorates the world and bring back not just new experiences, but new products, new raw materials, new skills and techniques and new thinking to the life you have behind at home.

Travel is indeed the thing that invigorated the world and made it what it is today. If you are one of those people that wants to stay home - we need you too. But if someone ever told you that you should not travel, that it’s not safe, that you should “be careful” - please ignore them as much as possible.

Because it’s only when you open up that you change yourself and the world for the better.

But really, in truth, the concept of a safe space has always been around - just not talked about.

The safe space is the home that one refuses to leave, the blanket that a child will not give up, the risk that no one will take, the refusal to experience anything new. We all know that these are negative traits, so why are we indeed talking about “safe spaces” as if they are something good?

Safe spaces are where people go to die.
Where ideas go to stagnate.
Where opportunities are stifled.
Where dissent is snuffed.

A safe space is indeed, one of the most dangerous places that you could be, because by its nature it never changes or causes pain. Some of you might say, it’s the place that you can go to rest, and you may have a point.

But our new definition of a “safe space” is not that.

We know the kind of person - no matter what kind of facts you put you, they will never change. But, in a certain way, that turns out to be human nature. And indeed, one of the tenets of Dale Carnegie is: "A man convinced against his will, is of the same opinion still".

However what makes not admitting you're wrong, is blaming your wrongness on another person.

Always be quick to admit you are wrong and move on. It turns out that it will make you a so much better person!

He was actually right. Allowing a business to fail is the most purely capitalist thing to do. 

By propping up a business, the government is actually denying multiple new and innovative businesses to start from the ashes of the old one. 

Do you really think that all the aircraft and pilots from a failed airline would both go together to the desert to be scrapped? Would it not be more realistic for the pilots to be rehired in other airlines and the planes sold off as well?

Life always finds a way. 

By saying a business is "too big to fail" or even worrying too much about *any* sized business failing - we are denying our nature as a species to start over.

Then you can use that identity to be superior or ugly to someone else who does not share that identity.

Really, if your stop to think about it, being a liberal or conservative -- means nothing except that you yourself have no positions and thus, end up choosing a group that hold the ones you like.

Thus, the shaming of people who switch parties or the lionization of those who never change views on anything.

A rational person should always be open to changing views as often as they change their clothing -- just as soon as new evidence comes in that refutes a closely held position.

So, do you notice that as you become more self aware (i will not say older - for there are many stupid older people), you tend to gaze at groups with a more skeptical eye because you're forming positions for yourself?

Stay far, far away from those who join groups or hold positions for too long. Because they generally hold no positions or opinions themselves.

And as a wise Woodrow Wilson opined: "If you want to make enemies, try to change something."

Do you actually live your daily life according to your stated beliefs?

If you're attending a climate change protest, are you doing things in your life to help fix the problem every day, or are you using your belief as a cudgel to shout down someone else?

Are you a feminist protesting the patriarchy, or are you actually helping women near you learn about business, finance and having more effective lives with or without men?

Are you protesting a politician because you "believe" they do not stand for your belief, or are you actually living the things you believe and not caring what a politician stands for?

See, that closely held belief ain't worth the thing that you use toilet paper to wipe -- unless you're living it every day.

If you stop to ask someone why they believe. Or examine their life to see if they actually live their beliefs every day -- generally you will come away disappointed.

Don't be one of those people.

Spend time on the beliefs that you can actually practice, instead of the ones that you can preach.

(Yes, I was a teacher -- and I sucked)

With the bug shutting down classrooms at all levels, the teachers who are going to succeed in the future are the ones that can put together effective online lessons.

Because even after the virus reduces, people are going to be asking themselves about the need for the classroom or college experience. Humans are social creatures, but I can't see us just going back to a dumb classroom 100% of the time.

Instead, efficient distance learning will get a boost. We will start to design better online-style lessons. Because Zoom classrooms are the same as in-style classrooms -- largely ineffective.

And parents will have to start taking more responsibility for their children's education.

My biggest hope is that people stop getting useless degrees for huge student loans and this part of the industry dies out in a decade or less.

I think that 2 hours per day of good distance learning can be hundreds of times more efficient than 8 hours of boring classroom teaching.

Prove me wrong.

Your job will last forever

Relationships are always happy ever after

The news is always true

Women can start families at 40

All men are toxic

America is the greatest country in the world

School is for learning and is not used as glorified child care

You are entitled to it everything

You will retire off your savings

BONUS:

You can read your partner's mind

The government always provides

I'm gonna be a accurate contrarian here and say protests never work. Period. Think back in the last 100 years
* Egypt
* Iran
* China
* Hong Kong
* Iraq War prevention protests
* Police brutality
* Russia
* Cuba
* Ukraine
* Myanmar
* Thailand
*... I could go on.

None of those have worked. Not one. Because it's too easy for other agendas to co-opt the protests as has happened all throughout history.

That's why I'm never in agreement with protests, and would never attend one. And look in solid disagreement with what is happening now.

The things that work are sometimes elections. Quiet political lobbying and change. But the most powerful thing that always works is individual action:

* Going where you're treated best
* More education
* Financial self-empowerment
* Not following what society dictates.

If you look at any significant change in history, the only time something changed is when some person went against what the rest of society dictated and actually put it into motion. The protests were just a precursor to the action itself that brought the change.

But people always do the easy things. It's easier to get a piece of cardboard, write something on it and march down the street -- rather than change your life.

So I'm not changing my profile to be a black image (that's stupid and disingenuous). I'm not going to be saying "black lives matter" because really, I'm the person that is going to affect my own life - and really, all lives matter and the root cause of this particular protest is 1000x bigger than just black lives.

More importantly, I'm not going to get outraged. Because that never solves anything. 

Solid ideas, followed by positive action solves problems. Someone shouting "No justice, no peace" -- never did.

No amount of protesting is going to change police union privileges. They're too entrenched and no politician on either side has any upside to changing it. 

Put on the shoes of a good police office for a moment (be fair!) and you would just not want that job if you made a mistake and are now liable for lawsuit or imprisonment without any protection.

Why would you be a police officer in that case?

The courts also recognize that and will probably slightly roll back some privileges, but most will remain because of the fairness part of it.

Also, why would any politician reign in the police? They immediately will be pounced upon as pro-crime. Remember, for the most part, most cops are good cops. They have many friends and family. Daughters, sons. Heck, I have friends who are great cops too in multiple countries. A large part of the population would definitely NOT vote for that politician who rolled back protections.

But because power eventually leads to corruption, the unions and infrastructure around law officers have grown more powerful and beyond the check of law or fairness. It literally takes millions of people protesting to get a few dirty cops arrested.

That's how powerful the unions and defense infrastructure for the cops is.

And that's the problem.

I'm just looking the situation. From both sides. 

Society really sucks. That's why sometimes, we do have to go our own way and be against the society and for ourselves. It's not a bad thing to be selfish sometimes.

Go where you're treated best.
Do what makes your personal life best.
And when you do, it will lift up all those around you.

Protesting is just a pill and will go nowhere without action.

You don’t ask for power. You take it.

You don’t get empowered. You empower yourself.

You don’t get money. You earn it.

You don’t assert your self worth. You prove it.

The most important lessons?

1. Go your own way.
2. Don't let society tell you what to do.
3. Follow your passion.
4. Exemplary work ethic. And.. there is no damned muse - get off your ass and create every day -- especially when you don't feel like it!

Artist, gardener, entrepreneur, leader, husband, dad.

The protests have fizzled out. Except for a few die-hards still out there.

And what has happened?
Nothing.
Squat.
Nyet.
Nada.

Trump might even get elected again.

Because real change starts at home. Make a budget. Spend less than you earn. Stop getting into debt. Teach your children the same. MAKE (not help) them make good choices.

By the time the "system" gets into play for you, it's already too late.

If you get your house in order, then you won't even care who is president in November. Because it won't affect you in a significant way.

You will be un-blackmailable.

Fix your own house first. Make the next generation you're responsible for better.

Only then, will your voice have power in future protests.

• The way how we are going to spend money is changing.
• The way how we date is changing.
• The way how (and even if) we get married has changed.
• The way how we educate ourselves is also changing.
• What kind of business to start has already changed.
• How to market has changed.
• How to sell is changing.

So the question is this, will you stick around and keep thinking of everything happening now as a problem?

Or will you think of it as fundamental change, and thus an opportunity?

It means they’re using you for entertainment.

Real friends find something to do when they’re bored and contact you when they have an agenda. Stay away from people who want to use use as the clown.

If you're always bored it means you're boring.

Read a book. Start or continue a project. Watch YouTube. Learn something. There’s literally a million different things to do!

The truth is often very simple... And sometimes painful. 

It’s because we are mostly lying about ourselves. In small and large ways every day.

Download the damned program and start learning tonight!
Not next week.
Not waiting to signup for a local academy.
NOW.

Download it. Play around. Record a test video. Put it in the program. Look at some youtube programs. And find the online help for the program you’re using, which, in great detail, will tell you exactly how to do everything.

By even thinking about going to a local academy, it means you are suffering from analysis paralysis, which means you will probably never start your youtube channel.

Your first video will suck. Badly.

But the next one will be better, and the one after that and so on.

Start the channel today. Record a video, trim it and upload it and stop dithering around with your noodle :-)

They are real world. Competitive programming is like code Katas. Good, but really until you put something in production - is not really real.

Side projects help someone to evaluate your skills and who knows you might just get something out of it.

By putting out side projects you also get exposure to the full stack which you will need to have to become a good programmer that solves real problems - faster.

Then again, I could be wrong - because my theory on programming is that it’s a tool to solve real world problems, not a means unto its own end.

When you have to feed your family it takes on a new dimension.

Whlle it may work for others, for me it was not the best experience.

Becsuse I need to run a full dev environment, I need to SSH into a server so no coding offline. Then to be frank, the terminals for Chrome are not very good.

In a pinch, one can do something. But in general the chrome book should be relegated to office and productivity tasks where it really shines.

Yes, that’s a simple answer — but really, it will give you the work experience that you need.

The caveat, is that it has to be a *real* project, not something to show that you can code. It should help real people (even one person) solve some kind of problem that they have.

Make sure its working and up in the real world somewhere.

Pick a series of technologies that you like.

If you don’t want to do this, then maybe, just maybe you are not self-taught at all. Because the only way to teach yourself anything — is to actually do it. This is why medical professionals have to spend so much time actually helping patients and not just going from the classroom to their own practice.

Now you might say… “Ericson” I have no time for work.

But you just need to re-focus your priorities and put some long time into doing this.

Trust me, it pays off. I’ve never been turned down for a job when I showed any of my side projects — even though I’m entirely self-taught.

And now that I’m an employer, I leap at the chance of interviewing and hiring the person who has their own project that others have used. Who has code to show from that project and who has the initiative to start something from scratch, shepherd it through to launch, then deal with customer feedback and consistent improvements.

One does not pass up potential employees like that — not matter how small the project was.

Good luck my friend!

When we create real things — we learn the most. Just “reading a book” is ok, but is thousands of times less effective than creating something real.

Figure out a project, grab a book, use the internet and get cracking, child!

Not a long answer, but worked really, really well as a teenager for me.

1. Get together a list of the problems you are solving and reduce them to a few. These will be features of your platform.
2. Build these in a way that you can reuse these features in a flexible way. Example start with them as a set of API’s that you can call from many clients.
3. Use your platform to build various things. This will help you to make it diverse and accommodating.
4. Finally, not everything will fit in your platform. So be prepared to write separate micro services that interact with the platforms database.

Other things to do are pick technologies that plenty of programmers use - since you are going to need help.

And of course make it deploy quickly and flexibly - and if you can keep the number of dependencies and separate parts to a minimum.

Theres nothing wrong with monoliths.

i realized that the people using my product do not care a damn if it’s written in MSDOS batch files. They only care that It solves their problem.

So all the fancy Erlang, Rails, JavaScript and SQL really does not matter. They are just tools in service of the user.

So being a great programmer is first of all understanding the problems that the user has and finding the right mix of language, database, client, and server to solve that problem in the most efficient manner possible.

Secondly you should be up to speed on the latest technologies peripheral to your domain. This is only so you can find the right tool at the right time quickly.

Lastly, when you can reach for the right “tool” from your basket to solve the problem in s short time - only then can you be considered a great “developer”

Coders are a dime a dozen - good developers are rare. Good luck!

For the OP to complain about improving his skills in a month - I can immediately tell what kind of programmer this is.

One who is not obsessed with coding.

One who sees it just as a 9–5

One who sees it as just a way to earn a salary

One who does not see a need to learn more after leaving college.

Programmers who don't have side projects have a very short time in my shop. Not having a side project — even for fun — means no chance to experiment and learn. It means the developer has no intention to grow as a programmer.

I've come across two kinds of programmers - those with side projects that enhance their skills and those without.

These days I'll only hire the former.

To the OP. Start something on the side using the same stack you use at work. You'll find a month is maybe just the right time to get up to speed.

What can you lose in 30 days of immersing yourself in things?

Make your career one of your priorities instead of not one of them.

You'll be surprised at what you can achieve.

No wonder we wake up groggy and have weird dreams through the night.

Here's some things that have happened to me:

1. Stomach acid can pour out of your throat (acid reflux) since you're in a horizontal position.
2. Vivid, weird nightmares 
3. Really groggy in the morning and an unfocussed day.
4. Throws off my internal clock for the next 48 hours.

The best thing if you have to eat late, is to sit up after eating for a few hours if possible. Ate light? Then you only need to do this for an hour or less. Heavy dinner? Be prepared to stay upright for at least a few hours.

For me it's real simple. Hack the hunger back in.

If I stay in the same geographic place, do the same job, go through the same routine, I lose my hunger entirely.

So every few years I try to reset my life. 

Move to a different place. Changing jobs. Changing companies. Change my circle of friends. Travel to a place where I don't speak the language. Take on a new challenge. Do some fasting.

In other words... rip yourself out of your comfort zone. 

Your hunger instinct will come right back again. Because you're wired to bring yourself back to a comfortable position once more.

Think of it like this -- you set off on a long journey where something desirable awaits you. Are you going to give up? Likely, no. 

That's hunger.

Set yourself on new journeys every day. Large and small. Hack the hunger.

Before doing the fast, I did a LOT of research and bought a bunch of books. Avoid the religious fasting books. Go for the ones that are more scientific. Dr. Joel Furhman's book Fasting and Eating for Health was absolutely great in this regard.

Getting prepared - I got prepared by lightening my food load a few days before the fast. Moved to more fruits and vegetables and drank copious amounts of water. Its a good idea to do this anyway, since your bowels will basically stop functioning during the fast!

Starting the fast - This was the most difficult part for me. In fact, I broke down and stopped many fasts during the first 3 days because I could not handle the feelings of hunger, headache and so on. A few times I took Vitamin water - BIG mistake. It's best to stick to plain distilled water. This worked best for me during the successful fasts.

Cruising - After the first 3-4 days the bad feelings generally passed and I can only describe a feeling of euphoria. Yes I was incredibly tired. I had to get up slowly to avoid being dizzy. But you regain your strength pretty quickly and to be honest, I'm a programmer by day -- these times when I fasted have been the most productive of my life because of the mental clarity that I experienced.

Ending the fast - You have to slowly (really slowly) end the fast since your stomach will shrink. Keep it to mostly fruits and vegetables in the few days it takes you to go back to eating. As for going back to eating, you want to just change your diet to more fruits and vegetables anyway. Eating pizza and other fast food is a recipe for disaster. After my first ever fast (21 days), I ate 2 peaches. 14 years later I still remember the taste of those peaches, where I bought them, who I was walking with and what the weather was like -- it was that vivid and tasty.

Cravings - About 10 days in, your habit system starts to kick in, and many times I caught myself preparing meals -- just due to habit! I was not hungry, just the simple mechanics of preparing food for dinner took over. You can destroy a fast easily with just this muscle memory.

Benefits - I got numerous benefits, chief among these was blood work that was literally off the charts in a good way (did intensive blood work after one of the fasts). My doctor said he had not seen blood work that good in a long time. Mental clarity as I said. Weight loss that was permanent. Dramatic lowering of blood pressure.

Weight loss notes - I'm a heavier person. I went from 311 points down to the mid 200's and have maintained that. However if you want to have sustained weight loss you have to fast for longer periods, approaching 30 days, since as many others in this thread has rightly said, you lose muscle memory in the beginning. It's only after ketosis really takes over for a lengthy period (After 14 days) that your body starts to consume fat instead of muscle sparing.

I'd recommend everyone to take at least even short fasts (at least 5 days) since the health benefits are so obvious. The research shows that intermittent fasting is also a great thing to do.

Most people think that they will die with fasting, and it truth, if you don't know what you are doing you could damage yourself.

The keys to a successful fast are lots of good, clean, pure water and learning to listen to the signals of your body. Take it easy and trust me, it will change your life.