If you could do it all again... would you do anything different?

[AstonJ]

@dimitarvp

Buuuuut, we are making this thread a bit like a late night beer conversation now.

Thta’s ok - this has been tagged as a community thread after all

@dimitarvp

We cannot spend 100% of our life actively learning every day and only ingesting material and hoping it will all make sense one day. At certain point we have to put our foot down and say “I learned quite a lot, I want to put it to use now”.

I get the feeling that is aimed at me it’s ok, I realise people may think that of me and I totally understand why In my defence, I just hate being in the dark about something - I like to get a relatively good idea about what is possible, even if I know I will not remember everything. I think it helps me plan things out in my head and helps me from feeling lost (and therefore frustrated) (despite loving it, I don’t think I am a ‘natural’ programmer either). Also, I kinda put my Elixir learning on hold for about a year as the forum took up so much of my time, so I don’t think I am too far behind. That said, after I finish Programming Phoenix (which I am loving btw!) I am going to start on my first Elixir project. I can’t wait!!

(If it wasn’t aimed at me, I think that means the red wine is doing the interpreting and talking on my behalf )

@dimitarvp

This does not mean to ever stop learning. It means that if you spent 80% time learning and 20% doing up until a certain age, from then on you should switch to, say, 20% learning and 80% doing.

That is definitely a good idea! That sort of happened to me with Ruby, after I read quite a few Ruby/Rails books I was only reading about new things afterwards. Hopefully it will be the same with my Elixir journey. Here’s hoping anyway!

And what about you? Do you have any projects you’d love to do? What’s stopping you…

[dimitarvp]

@AstonJ

Thta’s ok - this has been tagged as a community thread after all

You are pushing your luck, mate! I try to keep quiet, don’t encourage me, you will regret it!

@AstonJ

I get the feeling that is aimed at me

But but but… I know nothing about you? How could I allude to you?! Keep at the red wine though, it’s healthy for the body.

@AstonJ

And what about you? Do you have any projects you’d love to do? What’s stopping you…

Lower back problems, low oxygen amount in the blood (for 7-8 years now I wake up refreshed like 2-3 times a year at the most… I am always tired, every waking moment), extra weight – that’s easier to fix though – and a pretty solid burnout (I suspect this is gonna be the hardest one to fix and since recreational drugs are banned in my country I will have to recollect my meditation skills). I finally started to address all health issues: was in a hospital for full-night sensory readings of my blood oxygen levels and sleep rhythm, got an MRI scan of my lower back, got in contact with a dietician and a yoga instructor, and another person who is a kinesio/physio therapist said they will fix me up once my doctor tells me if my trauma can be fixed without meds or operations (the doctor already admitted that most people’s complaints of back problems are fixable by professional massages or therapy). I will do 2-3 more hospital exams and then I am starting to work actively on my health with a new diet and very likely tai-chi or yoga.

I am a pretty relentless guy but never took care of myself and things caught up with me so I have to step back and show some patience (and money). I can do a lot but I need my energy so I’ll be working on that almost exclusively. Explains why I am active in the forum and not working.

Additionally, I had two very good gigs for 10 months or so, they were pretty lucrative and I caught up on debts and a lot of tech at home. I needed both of them for like 4 more months and I could have bought the maxed out iMac Pro (~$13,000) but alas, it was not meant to happen yet – one of them I stopped because they were really stubborn about using Rails and PHP and I could not bring myself to work on their crap for a day more, and the other one got an order from the CEO to only use Microsoft tech and our Elixir project which was awesome and brought so much business value was just scrapped out of the blue… Tried another gig after that but realized that their promise for working with Elixir was false; they dangled it in front of me and then revealed they want me to work for months on a Rails app first.

Colorful picture.

In the end I figured I will live off savings for a while. Those savings are now 45% of what they were 2-3 months ago but I am not worried, gives me plenty of time to arrange my next endeavors. Not willing to do compromises with tech and ways of work yet so that narrows things down quite a bit, for the better or worse.

As for what I wanna do… quite frankly, if I had the choice I would just buy the maxed out iMac Pro together with 200 or so TB worth of external HDDs, a beach house with 2x 1Gigabit connections and would work on inventing generic artificial intelligence until the end of my life. (That’s why I also wanna familiarize myself with the book a guy mentioned above, as a start.) Since that dream is not happening yet, I will look for Elixir or Clojure gigs (accepting some Go sprinkled in) and will gather money to buy an own flat or house and some extra tech. And will do my utmost to NEVER let my health slip ever again.

So… this is long but… you asked for it!

[StefanHoutzager]

–Immutabilty changes everything.

-It does indeed

What does this twisted icon mean? My reaction was on qqwy’s (I wrote the reaction after pushing the reply button in qqwy’s mail). I do not see that in my reply, seems a bug in the software.

[StefanHoutzager]

I was in doubt for a moment, shall I send a private reply or not? But maybe my reaction might mean something for others also. The following mindsets can be conflicting I think:

Not willing to do compromises with tech and ways of work yet so that narrows things down quite a bit, 
for the better or worse.

And will do my utmost to NEVER let my health slip ever again.

The last is most important, without health you cannot work, not optimal at least and what satisfaction do you get from it? A lot of satisfaction can come from being valued by people in your surroundings. There may be a conflict in what you and others find valuable of course. For me all this means that I’m working again now as contractor with a totally inferior language. I just cannot find contractor work with elixir. The language is not that much used, other contactors / hired companies keep me out at “their” customers, they do not like my opinions about their sacred agile cows, sometimes it is my age, etc. So I just create and learn the things I like in times between jobs. This attitude often brings me more interesting work when I’m on a contractor job also. Of course I keep hoping some day I can make money programming in a decent language. But there is more in a working environment than a decent language.

[Linuus]

Have you seen The Imposter’s Handbook?

The Imposter's Handbook, Second Edition

I haven’t read it yet but it sounds perfect for you

And now I saw that someone else already gave this advice…

[dimitarvp]

@StefanHoutzager

The following mindsets can be conflicting I think

Maybe? Can you clarify?

If things get real bad, I will start making compromises alright. That was the whole point of the money savings: even if I don’t manage to work with Elixir again then at least I will have chilled and wound down so my mind is more at ease with what follows next.

(Private replies are okay, I am not a celebrity with a PR team and it is me who responds to them. )

Another way is to start somewhere with a mainstream technology and try to push for Elixir down the line but I will admit that I no longer have the patience for that. But it might be the best way.

Admittedly my lack of patience stems hugely from my ruined health. When I have more energy and I am in a better shape, I am much more benevolent and patient. So after I handle my health issues I’m willing to assume that I’ll be much better equipped mentally to get back into the fray.

[AstonJ]

I’m sorry to hear you’ve had some health issues, and I hope you get back to full health soon Dimitar.

I don’t regret encouraging you either, what you have said after all is very relevant to this topic and it might prove helpful for anyone reading the thread.

Health is a huge topic, one that is very close to my heart. The food industry and our governments’ attitudes towards food is shocking. Did you know, for instance, that gluten, the protein in wheat, is a known neurotransmitter blocker? And that it can have lasting effects if fed continually, particularly in the formative years? It’s one of the reasons whenever I am asked about the topic I mention why I feel a species appropriate diet is best for us. Scientists are even predicating that the human species may evolve into two and I feel this too, is down to health, i.e. food.

Humans and our closest relatives have been around for around 2 million years, and for almost all of that time, up until the last 10,000 years, we have eaten a mostly Palaeolithic diet, and that is what’s commonly considered as a species appropriate diet for us. So it is one of the first things I mention when people ask me for my opinion on ‘getting healthy’. It’s certainly not the be all and end all, but it is a fantastic place to start. The rabbit hole, actually, goes much much deeper - I have even started on writing my own protocol, but just don’t have the time to make it public yet.

I feel that you (your health) is probably one of the most important, if not the most important thing in your life - what good are you to the world, or your loved ones (or yourself) if you are not alive or not running to your (or near your) full potential? Pretty much everything else can wait - your health should always come first.

Thank you for sharing and I really do wish you get well soon, being poorly is no fun at all. If you’re interested, I can send you some book recommendations

[AstonJ]

I was merely agreeing with you, and since that phrase is widely used by mostly ‘those in the know’, I thought the smiley (which to me really is more of a mwahahaha) was quite fitting

Also while I have your attention, please do not use code tags (backticks) when quoting text. There is some info on various ways to quote text here. Thanks!

[dimitarvp]

Thanks for the kind words.

I am well aware that our modern way of eating is destructive, yes. Me and my wife started educating ourselves gradually in the last year and at times we indeed were quite shocked. I was disappointed – but definitely not surprised, I know Homo Sapiens quite well – that the sugar industry smeared fat and coconut oil so as to avoid the press talking about the damaging effects of sugar, in the 70s I think. A South-African professor who turned dietician was relentlessly pursued in court by several food chain companies until the judge finally found him innocent several weeks ago. So many more examples exist.

I would be interested in proper eating material but truthfully, I much more want concrete prescriptions – “if you have high blood pressure, avoid this and that and eat those foods”, or “if you have a regular fatigue stop eating this, drink X liters of water a day and eat these 20 foods”, etc. etc.

I am kind of disappointed by the dietician internet material so far. A lot of philosophy and theory and not enough concrete advice. Example: I reduced carbs and I do feel slightly better alright, but what else? How do you ingest a protein that doesn’t bloat you? How do you hydrate better than before if your throat almost refuses to let the water in and you are NOT feeling thirsty? (Note: I still feel better several hours later after I swallow more water but I feel awful while doing it.) So many questions!

[AstonJ]

@dimitarvp

I would be interested in proper eating material but truthfully, I much more want concrete prescriptions – “if you have high blood pressure, avoid this and that and eat those foods”, or “if you have a regular fatigue stop eating this, drink X liters of water a day and eat these 20 foods”, etc. etc.

That’s actually what I was planning - a prescriptive protocol that can be followed for 3 to 6 months. However as you might imagine, it’s quite a task putting that together. It is more of a “this is what I have done” if other’s want to try it.

While I think it’s great that science is catching up on a lot of things, I also pay attention to the pearls of wisdom handed down over the centuries… and try things for myself and judge them accordingly. That’s what I think may be helpful for others too, we’re all different after all.

@dimitarvp

I am kind of disappointed by the dietician internet material so far. A lot of philosophy and theory and not enough concrete advice. Example: I reduced carbs and I do feel slightly better alright, but what else? How do you ingest a protein that doesn’t bloat you? How do you hydrate better than before if your throat almost refuses to let the water in and you are NOT feeling thirsty? (Note: I still feel better several hours later after I swallow more water but I feel awful while doing it.) So many questions!

Sounds like you might benefit from such a clean diet - which starts off with no or few known allergens or items known to be intolerable by some - so avoiding lactose, dairy (milk protein casein is difficult to digest), man-made creations like baker’s yeast and MSG and any artificial colours and flavours etc, anything with processed/added sugar, even staying away from natural foods that contain naturally toxins or are difficult to digest (such as items from the nightshade family, tomatoes, potatoes etc). I even stay away from tap water - do not even cook with it.

There is also something else that is a significant factor in health - your Microbiome - as well as bugs that we pick up and that we’re (our microbiome is) not longer strong enough to deal with anymore.

[StefanHoutzager]

Maybe? Can you clarify?

Your mindset about work could have caused your burnout. You could talk to a psychologist, I’m not a therapist. If that is a cause then I do not see much in yoga, meditation etc. to solve the problem as you are not dealing with the rootcause.

[runexec]

Younger me, in order from greatest to least, would

1. Prioritize sleep and hydration over everything else.

2. Intentionally think and move slower.

3. Study how the world really works.

[balbin]

As some background, I had previous coding experience in python/R but only in a statistical analysis context. I flirted with NodeJS for a bit, but when I found Elixir and Phoenix I dived right in.

So naturally, being a junior developer with no commercial experience, only having personal development experience with Elixir is a bit of an issue. Most employers (out of the 5 or so I can find in my country) are looking for much more experienced developers, maybe with a Ruby or Golang background.

If I could do it all again I’d probably take a different route and deep dive into Ruby first, so it doesn’t feel like a downgrade, and then have more opportunities to get experience with that before commiting to Elixir. It feels a bit backwards right now to learn Ruby, get a Ruby job and then use that as a foundation to build a career in Elixir. Although, I haven’t exhausted all my potential opportunities yet with Elixir, so hopefully I won’t need to regret anything.

There are probably a lot of changes I’d make, but they’d all eventually end up Elixir if I had my way.

[dimitarvp]

@StefanHoutzager

Your mindset about work could have caused your burnout.

Oh, I see how I might have been misunderstood. I got burned out because I was making all sorts of compromises when I really should not have; it was a matter of personal immaturity and insecurity and I am not blaming anyone for that. It was all my fault for my burnout and I accept full responsibility.

The damage is done however. And nowadays it’s really hard for me to make compromises so I will delay that as long as possible. It has a partial therapeutic effect while it lasts and as mentally encumbered I am, every little bit helps. I am gasping for air so I can get energized and achieve more afterwards.

Sorry for confusion.

[kb1flr]

This is a fascinating thread. I have been programming professionally for 33 years having graduated from the University of Pittsburgh in 1985 with a fairly early CS degree. I started out with COBOL on punchcards and now find myself enjoying elixir.

I have used many languages, frameworks, programming methodologies, etc during these years. I still enjoy programming very much although I don’t always like what I am programming.

My biggest regret is that in all this time I have only programmed for others. I have had lots of ideas for programs that I thought a business could be built around, but never acted on them. Fat, dumb, and happy with a good salary.

That has been my story. I am nearly 60 now and still hope to write one good app from my own brain before I hang it all up.

[StefanHoutzager]

I hope the best for you. Talks with a good psychologist where you can get along with could help, re-entry in a real world job could be tough.

[StefanHoutzager]

I would not start at age 2 programming 24 hours a day. Or adapt that silicon valley or Zuckerberg idea that you should start programming without having breakfast first, dream in code and die (or retire) after your thirtieth birthday.

[AstonJ]

@runexec

Prioritize sleep and hydration over everything else.

Don’t forget diet and exercise but yes, sleep is definitely up there as well as hydration (with natural mineral, not tap, water - which is often chlorinated and/or contains fluoride).

@runexec

Study how the world really works.

I’d be interested in hearing your findings

@balbin

So naturally, being a junior developer with no commercial experience, only having personal development experience with Elixir is a bit of an issue. Most employers (out of the 5 or so I can find in my country) are looking for much more experienced developers, maybe with a Ruby or Golang background.

Sometimes experience isn’t the only thing that employers look for. Around a year after I started out in Ruby I was offered work by one of the leading Ruby/Rails dev shops in the US - they said they loved my enthusiasm! I had written some blog posts at the time and had just started getting active in the community. It’s often said that people make their mind up about you within the first two minutes of meeting you - and so I suppose on the web that could mean browsing or clicking through several blog posts/github account, and perhaps even the way you are on online spaces. If people think you’ve got that something special which is important to them, it could well tip the balance in your favour.

Good luck and welcome to Elixir

@kb1flr

This is a fascinating thread. I have been programming professionally for 33 years having graduated from the University of Pittsburgh in 1985 with a fairly early CS degree. I started out with COBOL on punchcards and now find myself enjoying elixir.

Nice!!

@kb1flr

I have used many languages, frameworks, programming methodologies, etc during these years. I still enjoy programming very much although I don’t always like what I am programming.

Which have been your favourite?

@kb1flr

My biggest regret is that in all this time I have only programmed for others. I have had lots of ideas for programs that I thought a business could be built around, but never acted on them.

I’d love to see you follow through on one of these ideas

@kb1flr

That has been my story. I am nearly 60 now and still hope to write one good app from my own brain before I hang it all up.

I am sure your years of experience will help give you a unique perspective and a big advantage - do it!

[kb1flr]

Hi Aston,

Elixir has really reignited my enjoyment of programming.

I have to confess that after all these years, I have no use of agile, pair programming, design patterns and all of the fluff that seems to accompany a maturing field. All of those things by nature put boundaries on your solution exploration. Rather than try to conform to all that, I just try to think of the best, most efficient solution I can and then apply the tools and techniques that I feel solve for my solution best.

[brightball]

I’d have taken a sales class right after I got out of college.

Other than that it’s hard to say. Everything in the path I’ve taken has gotten me to where I am now, and aside from wishing I was using Elixir more day-to-day I’m pretty happy with that.

Aside from that, when I was younger I wish I would have gotten more sleep instead of thinking that anybody was going to be impressed by my willingness to work all-nighters to hit deadlines. I also wish I would have invested more outside-of-work free time into becoming a better cook.