{"id":21,"date":"2013-09-22T18:39:57","date_gmt":"2013-09-22T22:39:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/127.0.0.1\/blog\/?page_id=21"},"modified":"2022-10-17T21:44:53","modified_gmt":"2022-10-18T01:44:53","slug":"archives","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/archives\/","title":{"rendered":"Archives"},"content":{"rendered":"<!--themify_builder_content-->\n<div id=\"themify_builder_content-21\" data-postid=\"21\" class=\"themify_builder_content themify_builder_content-21 themify_builder tf_clear\">\n    <\/div>\n<!--\/themify_builder_content-->\n\n<div class=\"sya_container\" id=\"sya_container\"><a id=\"year2024\"><\/a>2024<ul><li class=\"\"><div class=\"sya_postcontent\"><span class=\"sya_date\"> <span class=\"sya_sep\"> <\/span><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/managing-state-with-react-context\/\" class=\"sya_postlink post-7526\" rel=\"bookmark\">Managing state with React Context<\/a><div style=\"padding-left:0px\" class=\"robots-nocontent\"><cite>Managing state with React doesn&#8217;t need to be complex, and the built-in Context in React is a great way to do that. The documentation is a bit lacking around some frequent use cases like fetching data from a backend API service efficiently, but it&#8217;s possible to go pretty far with just the context. I&#8217;ll take [&hellip;]<\/cite><\/div><\/div><\/li><\/ul><a id=\"year2023\"><\/a>2023<ul><li class=\"\"><div class=\"sya_postcontent\"><span class=\"sya_date\"> <span class=\"sya_sep\"> <\/span><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/my-philosophy-for-life-business-and-homesteading\/\" class=\"sya_postlink post-4728\" rel=\"bookmark\">My philosophy for life, business and homesteading<\/a><div style=\"padding-left:0px\" class=\"robots-nocontent\"><cite>I&#8217;ve started out my business less than a year ago, freelancing and now attempting to build out a few SaaS ideas, but I&#8217;ve been a homesteader for many years. Homesteading has been instrumental in shaping my current business philosophy. When you&#8217;re homesteading, you&#8217;re doing many things yourself that most people would instead buy, such as [&hellip;]<\/cite><\/div><\/div><\/li><li class=\"\"><div class=\"sya_postcontent\"><span class=\"sya_date\"> <span class=\"sya_sep\"> <\/span><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/coming-up-with-with-my-new-micro-saas-technological-stack\/\" class=\"sya_postlink post-4586\" rel=\"bookmark\">Coming up with with my new Micro SaaS technological stack<\/a><div style=\"padding-left:0px\" class=\"robots-nocontent\"><cite>For my next project, I&#8217;ve been assembling a new technological stack to create micro SaaS apps quickly and cheaply before jumping in the code. I&#8217;ve not put it to the test yet, but I figured it would be interesting to share how I&#8217;ve reasoned about it. I&#8217;m now working with small clients, but I was [&hellip;]<\/cite><\/div><\/div><\/li><\/ul><a id=\"year2022\"><\/a>2022<ul><li class=\"\"><div class=\"sya_postcontent\"><span class=\"sya_date\"> <span class=\"sya_sep\"> <\/span><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/cranking-out-a-new-project-making-socks\/\" class=\"sya_postlink post-4207\" rel=\"bookmark\">Cranking out a new project making socks<\/a><div style=\"padding-left:0px\" class=\"robots-nocontent\"><cite>I&#8217;m starting an handmade business making socks! Why socks? Read on&#8230; I&#8217;ve been fascinated for a long time by the idea that a single machine can be an income stream and wanted to experiment more around this. I have many for my personal use, but the purchase of a 3D printer, a sewing machine or [&hellip;]<\/cite><\/div><\/div><\/li><li class=\"\"><div class=\"sya_postcontent\"><span class=\"sya_date\"> <span class=\"sya_sep\"> <\/span><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/hosting-a-static-website-for-free-in-15-minutes-with-cloudflare-workers-sites\/\" class=\"sya_postlink post-4427\" rel=\"bookmark\">Hosting a static website for free in 15 minutes with Cloudflare Workers Sites<\/a><div style=\"padding-left:0px\" class=\"robots-nocontent\"><cite>I&#8217;ve had an old school PHP hosting for ages, and I&#8217;m currently moving all the sites I&#8217;m hosting there to newer and more effective technologies. I have a few static sites included in the mix: I&#8217;ve been writing pure HTML + CSS for so long that it&#8217;s still my favorite solution if I want to [&hellip;]<\/cite><\/div><\/div><\/li><\/ul><a id=\"year2021\"><\/a>2021<ul><li class=\"\"><div class=\"sya_postcontent\"><span class=\"sya_date\"> <span class=\"sya_sep\"> <\/span><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/how-to-close-a-react-native-modal-with-a-button\/\" class=\"sya_postlink post-4221\" rel=\"bookmark\">How to close a React Native modal with a button<\/a><div style=\"padding-left:0px\" class=\"robots-nocontent\"><cite>I&#8217;ve been working with React Native lately, and I&#8217;ve come across a few unimplemented features I needed to add to the basic components. One of those components is the React Native Modal component that is used to show a view above another one. It doesn&#8217;t promise more features than that, but it can be very [&hellip;]<\/cite><\/div><\/div><\/li><\/ul><a id=\"year2020\"><\/a>2020<ul><li class=\"\"><div class=\"sya_postcontent\"><span class=\"sya_date\"> <span class=\"sya_sep\"> <\/span><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/charting-data-quickly-with-chart-js-in-react\/\" class=\"sya_postlink post-4134\" rel=\"bookmark\">Charting data quickly with Chart.js in React<\/a><div style=\"padding-left:0px\" class=\"robots-nocontent\"><cite>I&#8217;m working on a small weather station project, and I was looking for a way to plot the weather data quickly on a chart. My first idea was to use the big visualization libraries such as D3.js and Fabrics, but they were way too heavy to get started with for my needs. They can do [&hellip;]<\/cite><\/div><\/div><\/li><\/ul><a id=\"year2019\"><\/a>2019<ul><li class=\"\"><div class=\"sya_postcontent\"><span class=\"sya_date\"> <span class=\"sya_sep\"> <\/span><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/create-a-minimal-custom-gutenberg-block-in-wordpress\/\" class=\"sya_postlink post-3062\" rel=\"bookmark\">Create a Minimal Custom Gutenberg Block in WordPress<\/a><div style=\"padding-left:0px\" class=\"robots-nocontent\"><cite>I&#8217;ve started playing with the new Gutenberg editor in WordPress, and the experience is a lot more modern than the old TinyMCE editor that&#8217;s been around for a good 15 years (and I&#8217;ve had blogs for almost that long!). Instead of editing all the content of the post at once, the Gutenberg editor works with [&hellip;]<\/cite><\/div><\/div><\/li><\/ul><a id=\"year2017\"><\/a>2017<ul><li class=\"\"><div class=\"sya_postcontent\"><span class=\"sya_date\"> <span class=\"sya_sep\"> <\/span><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/fixing-the-networkonmainthread-exception-in-your-android-app-with-asynctask\/\" class=\"sya_postlink post-2219\" rel=\"bookmark\">Fixing the NetworkOnMainThread exception in your  Android app with AsyncTask<\/a><div style=\"padding-left:0px\" class=\"robots-nocontent\"><cite>As soon as you start doing long-running operations such as network calls or anything else that can take more than a few seconds in your Android application, you&#8217;ll come across one of the following problems: The [Application] not responding (ANR) popup is shown while you run your application, and the The application may be doing [&hellip;]<\/cite><\/div><\/div><\/li><li class=\"\"><div class=\"sya_postcontent\"><span class=\"sya_date\"> <span class=\"sya_sep\"> <\/span><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/how-to-get-started-with-android-development-layout-managers\/\" class=\"sya_postlink post-2167\" rel=\"bookmark\">How to get started with Android development &#8211; Layout Managers<\/a><div style=\"padding-left:0px\" class=\"robots-nocontent\"><cite>At the end of my last article, I left you hanging after describing activities, without telling you how to build a UI, so here we go. In the Android SDK, layouts are separate from the Java code that defines how an activity behaves. Using this separation of concern, it&#8217;s easier to modify the layout without [&hellip;]<\/cite><\/div><\/div><\/li><\/ul><a id=\"year2016\"><\/a>2016<ul><li class=\"\"><div class=\"sya_postcontent\"><span class=\"sya_date\"> <span class=\"sya_sep\"> <\/span><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/are-you-hard-to-convince\/\" class=\"sya_postlink post-2153\" rel=\"bookmark\">Are You Hard to Convince?<\/a><div style=\"padding-left:0px\" class=\"robots-nocontent\"><cite>When discussing a new technology, I&#8217;m rarely the first one to jump on the bandwagon. In fact, I&#8217;m usually the killjoy that ends up arguing against using a new library or a new language feature when the enthusiasm is high and everybody is eager to get started. It&#8217;s not that I want to stay comfortable [&hellip;]<\/cite><\/div><\/div><\/li><li class=\"\"><div class=\"sya_postcontent\"><span class=\"sya_date\"> <span class=\"sya_sep\"> <\/span><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/connecting-esp8266-to-your-network\/\" class=\"sya_postlink post-2122\" rel=\"bookmark\">Connecting the ESP8266 chip to your network<\/a><div style=\"padding-left:0px\" class=\"robots-nocontent\"><cite>I&#8217;m working on a project to automate our chicken coop (see my article Getting over myself and doing things the easy way for more details on the project). Right now, the lights open and close by themselves: it needed to be done now since the chickens had trouble laying eggs with our short Fall days. [&hellip;]<\/cite><\/div><\/div><\/li><li class=\"\"><div class=\"sya_postcontent\"><span class=\"sya_date\"> <span class=\"sya_sep\"> <\/span><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/embrace-your-weirdness\/\" class=\"sya_postlink post-2102\" rel=\"bookmark\">Embrace your weirdness and stop worrying<\/a><div style=\"padding-left:0px\" class=\"robots-nocontent\"><cite>Once you&#8217;ve reached the point where you&#8217;re a proficient programmer with a good understanding of a useful tech stack, you&#8217;re now faced with the sisyphean task of Keeping Up with New Tech. Polishing your professional skills becomes trendsspotting, starting with daily Hacker News browsing sessions to find out what&#8217;s going to be the new hotness, [&hellip;]<\/cite><\/div><\/div><\/li><li class=\"\"><div class=\"sya_postcontent\"><span class=\"sya_date\"> <span class=\"sya_sep\"> <\/span><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/how-the-css-for-a-website-works\/\" class=\"sya_postlink post-2093\" rel=\"bookmark\">Figuring out how the CSS of a website works using Firebug &#8211; Screencast<\/a><div style=\"padding-left:0px\" class=\"robots-nocontent\"><cite>The basis of using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to apply formatting to an HTML document is deceptively easy to understand, but hard to master. You define selectors that designate HTML elements, which contains formatting rules that apply to those elements and their children. If more than one rule applies to an element, they are applied [&hellip;]<\/cite><\/div><\/div><\/li><li class=\"\"><div class=\"sya_postcontent\"><span class=\"sya_date\"> <span class=\"sya_sep\"> <\/span><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/how-to-get-started-with-android-development-basic-structure\/\" class=\"sya_postlink post-1583\" rel=\"bookmark\">How to get started with Android development &#8211; Basic structure<\/a><div style=\"padding-left:0px\" class=\"robots-nocontent\"><cite>In a previous article, I wrote about how you can launch your first Android application from the samples provided with Android Studio. Now that you&#8217;ve had a chance to poke around a few samples, I&#8217;m going to tell you a bit about the basic structure of an Android application. A good place to start understanding [&hellip;]<\/cite><\/div><\/div><\/li><li class=\"\"><div class=\"sya_postcontent\"><span class=\"sya_date\"> <span class=\"sya_sep\"> <\/span><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/writing-a-book\/\" class=\"sya_postlink post-1587\" rel=\"bookmark\">Writing a book: how to work on many projects<\/a><div style=\"padding-left:0px\" class=\"robots-nocontent\"><cite>After quite a bit of pondering, writing and editing, I shipped the Learning as a Software Developer book last week. The whole process took about 6 months to complete, so I had time to experiment with a few ways to work. During that time, it was important for me to keep the blog going and [&hellip;]<\/cite><\/div><\/div><\/li><li class=\"\"><div class=\"sya_postcontent\"><span class=\"sya_date\"> <span class=\"sya_sep\"> <\/span><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/the-joy-of-batching\/\" class=\"sya_postlink post-2016\" rel=\"bookmark\">The joy of batching<\/a><div style=\"padding-left:0px\" class=\"robots-nocontent\"><cite>The garden is winding down, so I need to can, freeze and otherwise preserve the harvest so it doesn&#8217;t go to waste. It&#8217;s a time-consuming task: a single batch of pickles takes a few hours, from slicing the cucumbers to processing the jars. Still, it&#8217;s a decent time investment since I like homemade pickles. It [&hellip;]<\/cite><\/div><\/div><\/li><li class=\"\"><div class=\"sya_postcontent\"><span class=\"sya_date\"> <span class=\"sya_sep\"> <\/span><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/getting-over-myself-and-doing-things-the-easy-way\/\" class=\"sya_postlink post-1986\" rel=\"bookmark\">Getting over myself and doing things the easy way<\/a><div style=\"padding-left:0px\" class=\"robots-nocontent\"><cite>During the summer, I usually spend a lot less time working on the computer. I&#8217;m outside instead, taking advantage of the short Canadian summer to garden and soak up sun while it lasts. When I do work on something, I keep it light and try new technology that piqued my curiosity just for the fun [&hellip;]<\/cite><\/div><\/div><\/li><li class=\"\"><div class=\"sya_postcontent\"><span class=\"sya_date\"> <span class=\"sya_sep\"> <\/span><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/what-you-are-is-what-you-do\/\" class=\"sya_postlink post-1943\" rel=\"bookmark\">What you are is what you do<\/a><div style=\"padding-left:0px\" class=\"robots-nocontent\"><cite>We define our work and our skills using various labels. Right now, I could say that I&#8217;m a software developer, a programmer, a product owner, a web developer, an Android developer and all those would be true. Still, those labels don&#8217;t tell you much about what I really do, or how much experience I have [&hellip;]<\/cite><\/div><\/div><\/li><li class=\"\"><div class=\"sya_postcontent\"><span class=\"sya_date\"> <span class=\"sya_sep\"> <\/span><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/your-job-will-never-be-done\/\" class=\"sya_postlink post-1923\" rel=\"bookmark\">Your job will never be done<\/a><div style=\"padding-left:0px\" class=\"robots-nocontent\"><cite>As a software developer, you have to become comfortable with the fact that your work is never truly done. The software you create will always be a work in progress. When you code that last feature or fix that last bug, another one will pop up soon enough. Also, as you keep learning, you&#8217;ll find [&hellip;]<\/cite><\/div><\/div><\/li><li class=\"\"><div class=\"sya_postcontent\"><span class=\"sya_date\"> <span class=\"sya_sep\"> <\/span><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/what-is-the-next-step-when-learning-a-new-skill\/\" class=\"sya_postlink post-1890\" rel=\"bookmark\">What is the next step when learning a new skill?<\/a><div style=\"padding-left:0px\" class=\"robots-nocontent\"><cite>Getting started with a new skill is hard, but the steps are clear. You&#8217;re completing a course or a tutorial , and someone else laid out a list of exercises you have to master as a beginner. But what can do after you&#8217;ve finished that first application to keep learning? How can you improve on [&hellip;]<\/cite><\/div><\/div><\/li><li class=\"\"><div class=\"sya_postcontent\"><span class=\"sya_date\"> <span class=\"sya_sep\"> <\/span><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/simple-code-is-beautiful\/\" class=\"sya_postlink post-1860\" rel=\"bookmark\">Simple code is beautiful<\/a><div style=\"padding-left:0px\" class=\"robots-nocontent\"><cite>Despite the large number of languages and tools that will get thrown at you if you mention web development (Ruby! React! Node.js! AngularJS! Gulp! Python!), the simplest web application you can create includes HTML, CSS and a bit of JavaScript for the interactivity. You don&#8217;t even need to setup a web server: just open it [&hellip;]<\/cite><\/div><\/div><\/li><li class=\"\"><div class=\"sya_postcontent\"><span class=\"sya_date\"> <span class=\"sya_sep\"> <\/span><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/basic-javascript-arrays-reminder\/\" class=\"sya_postlink post-1839\" rel=\"bookmark\">Basic JavaScript arrays reminder<\/a><div style=\"padding-left:0px\" class=\"robots-nocontent\"><cite>I&#8217;m pretty bad when it comes to remembering syntax details for languages I don&#8217;t use every day, especially since I work with a few languages that use C-syntax and not just JavaScript. Also, it&#8217;s not the kind of details I want to spend a lot of time studying since this information can easily be found. [&hellip;]<\/cite><\/div><\/div><\/li><li class=\"\"><div class=\"sya_postcontent\"><span class=\"sya_date\"> <span class=\"sya_sep\"> <\/span><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/the-curse-of-staying-up-to-date-with-new-technology\/\" class=\"sya_postlink post-1809\" rel=\"bookmark\">The curse of staying up to date with new technology<\/a><div style=\"padding-left:0px\" class=\"robots-nocontent\"><cite>Keeping up to date is a major part of the job of a software developer and why we love it. Most developers are curious and love to tinker, so learning a new technology pushes all the right buttons. Still, trying to absorb all the news from your source of choice, be it Twitter, Reddit or [&hellip;]<\/cite><\/div><\/div><\/li><li class=\"\"><div class=\"sya_postcontent\"><span class=\"sya_date\"> <span class=\"sya_sep\"> <\/span><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/embrace-the-limitations-to-complete-projects\/\" class=\"sya_postlink post-1789\" rel=\"bookmark\">Embrace the limitations to complete projects<\/a><div style=\"padding-left:0px\" class=\"robots-nocontent\"><cite>As makers and creatives, we hate it when bosses and clients put limits on what we can do when we build new software. We believe that we should be free to try anything we want with the code and the features, and that we would automatically build and innovative software that could rival Apple&#8217;s if [&hellip;]<\/cite><\/div><\/div><\/li><li class=\"\"><div class=\"sya_postcontent\"><span class=\"sya_date\"> <span class=\"sya_sep\"> <\/span><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/can-t-remember-detail\/\" class=\"sya_postlink post-1759\" rel=\"bookmark\">You can&#8217;t remember every detail, so stop trying<\/a><div style=\"padding-left:0px\" class=\"robots-nocontent\"><cite>There are more details involved in writing an application that anyone can remember. You can&#8217;t hope to retain everything you&#8217;re told: it&#8217;s easy to slip and forget something important. What can you do so you don&#8217;t feel overwhelmed when you&#8217;re sitting down alone at your computer? You don&#8217;t want to ask your clients or colleagues [&hellip;]<\/cite><\/div><\/div><\/li><li class=\"\"><div class=\"sya_postcontent\"><span class=\"sya_date\"> <span class=\"sya_sep\"> <\/span><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/review-web-tooling-and-automation-course-on-udacity\/\" class=\"sya_postlink post-1744\" rel=\"bookmark\">Review : Web tooling and automation course on Udacity<\/a><div style=\"padding-left:0px\" class=\"robots-nocontent\"><cite>In the last few weeks, I&#8217;ve gone through a few courses on the Udacity since I&#8217;ve been looking to update my JavaScript skills. The Udacity courses are mostly videos, but short and to the point. I often have trouble following along with videos when they&#8217;re too long and would rather have the transcript, but it [&hellip;]<\/cite><\/div><\/div><\/li><li class=\"\"><div class=\"sya_postcontent\"><span class=\"sya_date\"> <span class=\"sya_sep\"> <\/span><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/to-learn-you-must-ship-your-code\/\" class=\"sya_postlink post-1733\" rel=\"bookmark\">To learn, you must ship your code<\/a><div style=\"padding-left:0px\" class=\"robots-nocontent\"><cite>When working on a project, the temptation is strong to make everything perfect before showing it to the world, or even just to your co-workers. You know each and every line of code you wrote, but you have a long list of bugs to fix and don&#8217;t want to expose your work until you&#8217;re completed [&hellip;]<\/cite><\/div><\/div><\/li><li class=\"\"><div class=\"sya_postcontent\"><span class=\"sya_date\"> <span class=\"sya_sep\"> <\/span><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/updating-your-outdated-knowledge-by-moving-to-a-new-web-stack\/\" class=\"sya_postlink post-1715\" rel=\"bookmark\">Updating your outdated knowledge by moving to a new web stack<\/a><div style=\"padding-left:0px\" class=\"robots-nocontent\"><cite>After a few years working with the same framework and language, you have stopped learning new ones. Life got in the way of learning and you let the habit die down, since the knowledge you have is enough to do your job well. But now, you&#8217;re finding yourself worried about your skills and job prospects: [&hellip;]<\/cite><\/div><\/div><\/li><li class=\"\"><div class=\"sya_postcontent\"><span class=\"sya_date\"> <span class=\"sya_sep\"> <\/span><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/how-to-get-started-with-android-app-development\/\" class=\"sya_postlink post-917\" rel=\"bookmark\">How to get started with Android development<\/a><div style=\"padding-left:0px\" class=\"robots-nocontent\"><cite>Learning how to build a mobile application is a good project to improve your programming skills while learning to work in a different environment than the desktop or a web browser. You can get started without worrying about a large stack, making it easy for a beginner to pick it up and start playing with [&hellip;]<\/cite><\/div><\/div><\/li><li class=\"\"><div class=\"sya_postcontent\"><span class=\"sya_date\"> <span class=\"sya_sep\"> <\/span><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/when-are-courses-counter-productive\/\" class=\"sya_postlink post-1668\" rel=\"bookmark\">When are courses counter-productive?<\/a><div style=\"padding-left:0px\" class=\"robots-nocontent\"><cite>When you wish to improve your programming knowledge, choosing the next course you&#8217;ll follow on platforms such as Udacity, Coursera or Udemy is exciting. All the courses descriptions promises that you&#8217;ll learn great new skills you can use to build cool projects and to improve your career. It&#8217;s also very easy to get started by [&hellip;]<\/cite><\/div><\/div><\/li><li class=\"\"><div class=\"sya_postcontent\"><span class=\"sya_date\"> <span class=\"sya_sep\"> <\/span><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/reaching-an-ambitious-goal-takes-time\/\" class=\"sya_postlink post-1634\" rel=\"bookmark\">Reaching an ambitious goal takes time<\/a><div style=\"padding-left:0px\" class=\"robots-nocontent\"><cite>Working toward a goal is easy if you&#8217;re just starting out and everything is fresh and new. For short-term goals such as learning a new programming language, reading a book or completing a course, it&#8217;s not hard to see it through if it really matters to you. You just need to follow the process and [&hellip;]<\/cite><\/div><\/div><\/li><li class=\"\"><div class=\"sya_postcontent\"><span class=\"sya_date\"> <span class=\"sya_sep\"> <\/span><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/take-a-break-go-out-and-play\/\" class=\"sya_postlink post-1630\" rel=\"bookmark\">Take a break, go out and play<\/a><div style=\"padding-left:0px\" class=\"robots-nocontent\"><cite>There is so much to learn and so many cool things I can make as a software developer that I can stay on my computer all day without getting bored. It gets a bit hard to concentrate after a few hours, but nothing that a cup of coffee can&#8217;t fix. If I feel stir-crazy, I [&hellip;]<\/cite><\/div><\/div><\/li><li class=\"\"><div class=\"sya_postcontent\"><span class=\"sya_date\"> <span class=\"sya_sep\"> <\/span><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/gamify-your-learning-goals\/\" class=\"sya_postlink post-1522\" rel=\"bookmark\">Gamify your learning goals<\/a><div style=\"padding-left:0px\" class=\"robots-nocontent\"><cite>Learning a new programming language or framework is hard work, even if you love doing it. You can&#8217;t get around this: to complete a course or a side project, you have to put your head down and do the work to reach the finish line. How do you motivate yourself when there are so many [&hellip;]<\/cite><\/div><\/div><\/li><li class=\"\"><div class=\"sya_postcontent\"><span class=\"sya_date\"> <span class=\"sya_sep\"> <\/span><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/playful-learning-play-while-programming\/\" class=\"sya_postlink post-1520\" rel=\"bookmark\">Playful learning: play while programming<\/a><div style=\"padding-left:0px\" class=\"robots-nocontent\"><cite>The easiest way to get started learning a new framework or language is to go through a course or a tutorial explaining it. Someone has broken down the subject into its most important parts, and you just need to complete the exercises and do the reading or watch the videos. This method of learning is [&hellip;]<\/cite><\/div><\/div><\/li><li class=\"\"><div class=\"sya_postcontent\"><span class=\"sya_date\"> <span class=\"sya_sep\"> <\/span><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/play-to-learn-environments-made-to-learn-programming\/\" class=\"sya_postlink post-1518\" rel=\"bookmark\">Play to learn: Environments made to learn programming<\/a><div style=\"padding-left:0px\" class=\"robots-nocontent\"><cite>Most people get started programming because it&#8217;s a lot of fun to pick something you&#8217;re curious about and start experimenting. Tinkering with code, seeing what works and what doesn&#8217;t, and fixing problems as you come across them is a great way to play with computers while learning new skills. Even if you have a lot [&hellip;]<\/cite><\/div><\/div><\/li><li class=\"\"><div class=\"sya_postcontent\"><span class=\"sya_date\"> <span class=\"sya_sep\"> <\/span><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/introduction-play-and-learn-as-a-software-developer\/\" class=\"sya_postlink post-1516\" rel=\"bookmark\">Introduction : Play and learn as a software developer<\/a><div style=\"padding-left:0px\" class=\"robots-nocontent\"><cite>I first got into programming as a high-school kid because playing around with computers, creating games and understanding how things worked was fun and exciting. Likewise, I choose to study computers and programming in university because it was fun: I couldn&#8217;t believe my luck that people were being paid to play with computers all day. [&hellip;]<\/cite><\/div><\/div><\/li><li class=\"\"><div class=\"sya_postcontent\"><span class=\"sya_date\"> <span class=\"sya_sep\"> <\/span><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/master-each-skill-before-moving-on-to-the-next-shiny-thing\/\" class=\"sya_postlink post-1503\" rel=\"bookmark\">Master each skill before moving on to the next shiny thing<\/a><div style=\"padding-left:0px\" class=\"robots-nocontent\"><cite>Technology moves so fast, it&#8217;s easy to build a never-ending list of skills you need to learn to stay up to date as a software developer. Besides, learning a new technology from scratch is fun and rewarding since you&#8217;ve not seen its flaws yet, and you get to add a new notch to your belt. [&hellip;]<\/cite><\/div><\/div><\/li><li class=\"\"><div class=\"sya_postcontent\"><span class=\"sya_date\"> <span class=\"sya_sep\"> <\/span><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/embrace-the-power-of-teaching-to-learn-better\/\" class=\"sya_postlink post-1483\" rel=\"bookmark\">Embrace the power of teaching to learn better<\/a><div style=\"padding-left:0px\" class=\"robots-nocontent\"><cite>You&#8217;re learning a new programming paradigm, trying to understand functional programming and JavaScript. It&#8217;s going well and you&#8217;re completing tutorials and courses with ease but something is missing. Somehow, you&#8217;re having trouble making things stick in your mind and really using your new knowledge. The most powerful way to master a new skill completely is [&hellip;]<\/cite><\/div><\/div><\/li><li class=\"\"><div class=\"sya_postcontent\"><span class=\"sya_date\"> <span class=\"sya_sep\"> <\/span><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/hear-me-talk-on-the-developer-on-fire-podcast\/\" class=\"sya_postlink post-1484\" rel=\"bookmark\">Hear me talk on the Developer on Fire podcast<\/a><div style=\"padding-left:0px\" class=\"robots-nocontent\"><cite>Recently, I did something that I would never have dared doing only a few years ago: I was interviewed on the Developer on Fire podcast! I started out my career being very shy and afraid to speak up. I&#8217;m more at ease with the written word than in front of a crowd, but I&#8217;ve made [&hellip;]<\/cite><\/div><\/div><\/li><li class=\"\"><div class=\"sya_postcontent\"><span class=\"sya_date\"> <span class=\"sya_sep\"> <\/span><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/can-your-programming-skills-be-rated\/\" class=\"sya_postlink post-1440\" rel=\"bookmark\">Can your programming skills be rated?<\/a><div style=\"padding-left:0px\" class=\"robots-nocontent\"><cite>I&#8217;ve received an interesting question from a reader of the blog last week about evaluating your skills. Do you have some resources that would help me evaluate my own computing skills into categories like weak in one area or strong in another area. [&#8230;] What I am wanting to do is start reviewing my own [&hellip;]<\/cite><\/div><\/div><\/li><li class=\"\"><div class=\"sya_postcontent\"><span class=\"sya_date\"> <span class=\"sya_sep\"> <\/span><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/having-trouble-getting-started-on-learning-a-new-skill\/\" class=\"sya_postlink post-1437\" rel=\"bookmark\">Having trouble getting started on learning a new skill?<\/a><div style=\"padding-left:0px\" class=\"robots-nocontent\"><cite>Working on the same kind of project with the same old technologies you&#8217;ve already mastered is easy and comfortable. You&#8217;ve been telling yourself that you should move on to a more modern web development stack or learn a new library for a while, but you&#8217;re having trouble just getting started. It&#8217;s easier to dream about [&hellip;]<\/cite><\/div><\/div><\/li><li class=\"\"><div class=\"sya_postcontent\"><span class=\"sya_date\"> <span class=\"sya_sep\"> <\/span><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/controlling-your-novelty-seeking-behavior\/\" class=\"sya_postlink post-1412\" rel=\"bookmark\">Controlling your novelty-seeking behavior<\/a><div style=\"padding-left:0px\" class=\"robots-nocontent\"><cite>Getting started with a new technology is always exciting. You see all the things that it does right, unlike your current tools. The tutorial is fun, you have new toys to play with and you&#8217;re looking forward to cracking open that book or course. The first wins come in fast, giving you a rush of [&hellip;]<\/cite><\/div><\/div><\/li><li class=\"\"><div class=\"sya_postcontent\"><span class=\"sya_date\"> <span class=\"sya_sep\"> <\/span><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/every-programmer-is-self-taught\/\" class=\"sya_postlink post-1390\" rel=\"bookmark\">Every programmer is self-taught<\/a><div style=\"padding-left:0px\" class=\"robots-nocontent\"><cite>There are many ways to become a programmer beside getting a computer science degree. If you&#8217;re on that less conventional path, you may be wondering what you should do to catch up to people who do have a degree. How can you compete with someone who spent many years in a classwork learning about computers [&hellip;]<\/cite><\/div><\/div><\/li><li class=\"\"><div class=\"sya_postcontent\"><span class=\"sya_date\"> <span class=\"sya_sep\"> <\/span><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/be-more-productive-with-my-5-hacks-to-learn-new-skills-email-course\/\" class=\"sya_postlink post-1317\" rel=\"bookmark\">Be more productive with my 5 Hacks to Learn New Skills email course<\/a><div style=\"padding-left:0px\" class=\"robots-nocontent\"><cite>Some people seem to be superhumanly productive: they\u2019re always up to date with the latest technologies and techniques, work on cool projects and contribute to open source without breaking a sweat. You\u2019re envious about the productivity and efficiency of all those great hackers you see on Reddit and Hacker News. Reaching their level of software [&hellip;]<\/cite><\/div><\/div><\/li><li class=\"\"><div class=\"sya_postcontent\"><span class=\"sya_date\"> <span class=\"sya_sep\"> <\/span><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/mind-the-learning-gap\/\" class=\"sya_postlink post-1326\" rel=\"bookmark\">Mind the learning gap<\/a><div style=\"padding-left:0px\" class=\"robots-nocontent\"><cite>Learning new things is hard work. When you finally complete a project, you feel like you&#8217;re on top of the world. Everything is going your way, you&#8217;re smart and you can tackle anything. You deserve to take a break for a few weeks because you did such a good job and completed your project earlier [&hellip;]<\/cite><\/div><\/div><\/li><li class=\"\"><div class=\"sya_postcontent\"><span class=\"sya_date\"> <span class=\"sya_sep\"> <\/span><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/year-long-goals-are-too-long\/\" class=\"sya_postlink post-1279\" rel=\"bookmark\">Year-long goals are too long<\/a><div style=\"padding-left:0px\" class=\"robots-nocontent\"><cite>With the new year, everything you wish to improve about your life and your skills come back to the surface. Everybody is making lists and sharing them online, so it&#8217;s hard not to join in the fun even if you don&#8217;t believe in New Year&#8217;s resolutions. Don&#8217;t get me wrong: I believe it&#8217;s useful to [&hellip;]<\/cite><\/div><\/div><\/li><li class=\"\"><div class=\"sya_postcontent\"><span class=\"sya_date\"> <span class=\"sya_sep\"> <\/span><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/introduction-learning-as-a-software-developer\/\" class=\"sya_postlink post-1282\" rel=\"bookmark\">Introduction : Learning as a software developer<\/a><div style=\"padding-left:0px\" class=\"robots-nocontent\"><cite>What to learn and when you should learn it is the hardest problem to solve as a software developer. There are tons of things you could potentially learn, with sites like Reddit and Hacker News adding new must-learn skills and technologies to your pile every week. How do you ignore the noise and choose the [&hellip;]<\/cite><\/div><\/div><\/li><\/ul><a id=\"year2015\"><\/a>2015<ul><li class=\"\"><div class=\"sya_postcontent\"><span class=\"sya_date\"> <span class=\"sya_sep\"> <\/span><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/3-awesome-books-improve-soft-skills\/\" class=\"sya_postlink post-1241\" rel=\"bookmark\">3 awesome books to improve your soft skills<\/a><div style=\"padding-left:0px\" class=\"robots-nocontent\"><cite>Productivity as a developer may be measured in lines of code produced by cup of coffee consumed, but it&#8217;s not a very useful metric. Effectiveness, or doing the right thing, is more important that cranking out code and learning yet another new technology. To do this, you need to step away from the keyboard for [&hellip;]<\/cite><\/div><\/div><\/li><li class=\"\"><div class=\"sya_postcontent\"><span class=\"sya_date\"> <span class=\"sya_sep\"> <\/span><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/my-3-steps-process-to-learn-new-skills-as-a-software-developer\/\" class=\"sya_postlink post-1238\" rel=\"bookmark\">My 3 steps process to learn new skills as a software developer<\/a><div style=\"padding-left:0px\" class=\"robots-nocontent\"><cite>In my previous posts, I wrote about mapping your current skills, and using this knowledge to decide which skill you should learn next as a software developer. Once you&#8217;ve went through this, you should have found a few skills that are really worth investing your time and energy into, and have a good idea why [&hellip;]<\/cite><\/div><\/div><\/li><li class=\"\"><div class=\"sya_postcontent\"><span class=\"sya_date\"> <span class=\"sya_sep\"> <\/span><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/what-is-the-next-skill-you-should-learn-as-a-software-developer\/\" class=\"sya_postlink post-1187\" rel=\"bookmark\">What is the next skill you should learn as a software developer?<\/a><div style=\"padding-left:0px\" class=\"robots-nocontent\"><cite>In my previous post, I wrote about mapping out your current skills to know where you stand and take control of your learning. But knowing where you are is a lot easier that knowing what to learn next. Choosing what to learn next requires gazing in your crystal ball to guess if the technologies you [&hellip;]<\/cite><\/div><\/div><\/li><li class=\"\"><div class=\"sya_postcontent\"><span class=\"sya_date\"> <span class=\"sya_sep\"> <\/span><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/taking-control-learning-by-mapping-out-your-skills\/\" class=\"sya_postlink post-1172\" rel=\"bookmark\">Taking control of your learning by mapping out your skills<\/a><div style=\"padding-left:0px\" class=\"robots-nocontent\"><cite>In my previous post, I wrote about what pushes you to learn to help you understand if learning a given skill is the best use of your time or if you&#8217;re just reacting to the deluge of information in the tech world. But, how do you know what is the best use of your time? [&hellip;]<\/cite><\/div><\/div><\/li><li class=\"\"><div class=\"sya_postcontent\"><span class=\"sya_date\"> <span class=\"sya_sep\"> <\/span><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/learning-fomo-stay-relevant-or-grow\/\" class=\"sya_postlink post-1137\" rel=\"bookmark\">Learning: FOMO, need to relevant or drive to grow?<\/a><div style=\"padding-left:0px\" class=\"robots-nocontent\"><cite>Managing what you should learn next as a software developer is a constant struggle. You feel like you suck at knowing what to learn next with all the new technologies and skills you could potentially work on. In fact, with each new skill you&#8217;re gambling with your time. What you&#8217;re learning can easily end up [&hellip;]<\/cite><\/div><\/div><\/li><li class=\"\"><div class=\"sya_postcontent\"><span class=\"sya_date\"> <span class=\"sya_sep\"> <\/span><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/you-dont-suck-at-learning\/\" class=\"sya_postlink post-1092\" rel=\"bookmark\">You don&#8217;t suck at learning<\/a><div style=\"padding-left:0px\" class=\"robots-nocontent\"><cite>I suck at learning, I won&#8217;t be able to do this. I heard this as people were filling in for a introduction to fingerweaving class I was teaching last weekend. The students had varying levels of crafting skills, but all of them were total beginners as far as fingerweaving was concerned. Even then, everybody learned [&hellip;]<\/cite><\/div><\/div><\/li><li class=\"\"><div class=\"sya_postcontent\"><span class=\"sya_date\"> <span class=\"sya_sep\"> <\/span><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/4-tactics-avoid-procrastination-get-started\/\" class=\"sya_postlink post-1075\" rel=\"bookmark\">4 tactics to avoid procrastination and get started<\/a><div style=\"padding-left:0px\" class=\"robots-nocontent\"><cite>Finishing a large project is hard. There are many shiny objects that grabs your attention and prevent you from getting to your goal. To be able to finish projects, you must be able to get a good amount of work done in the long term without being distracted. You&#8217;ll get a burst of motivation when [&hellip;]<\/cite><\/div><\/div><\/li><li class=\"\"><div class=\"sya_postcontent\"><span class=\"sya_date\"> <span class=\"sya_sep\"> <\/span><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/overwhelmed-dont-keep-everything-in-your-head\/\" class=\"sya_postlink post-1062\" rel=\"bookmark\">Overwhelmed? Don&#8217;t keep everything in your head<\/a><div style=\"padding-left:0px\" class=\"robots-nocontent\"><cite>Tasks have a way of multiplying like rabbits, overwhelming you quickly. After a few days on a new project, you&#8217;ll go past the point where you can easily track everything in your head. Those undone tasks will hound you and come to mind at the most inopportune moments, distracting you from the task you&#8217;re currently [&hellip;]<\/cite><\/div><\/div><\/li><li class=\"\"><div class=\"sya_postcontent\"><span class=\"sya_date\"> <span class=\"sya_sep\"> <\/span><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/how-to-find-a-path-to-mastery-as-a-software-developer\/\" class=\"sya_postlink post-1049\" rel=\"bookmark\">How to find a path to mastery as a software developer<\/a><div style=\"padding-left:0px\" class=\"robots-nocontent\"><cite>Planning out a software development career is hard at all stages of the game. There is no well-defined path to mastery for a developer, unlike other fields like medicine or law where you must get a precise degree with clear specialties. It can be terrifying since you&#8217;re never sure if you&#8217;re going in the right [&hellip;]<\/cite><\/div><\/div><\/li><li class=\"\"><div class=\"sya_postcontent\"><span class=\"sya_date\"> <span class=\"sya_sep\"> <\/span><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/youre-not-learning-too-slowly\/\" class=\"sya_postlink post-1031\" rel=\"bookmark\">You&#8217;re not learning too slowly<\/a><div style=\"padding-left:0px\" class=\"robots-nocontent\"><cite>Learning a new framework or language always feels slow and sluggish at first. I&#8217;m working on learning Ruby on Rails right know after a year or two of not learning a new framework and I had also forgotten the feeling. At first, I stumbled at every step on the way and nothing was familiar even [&hellip;]<\/cite><\/div><\/div><\/li><li class=\"\"><div class=\"sya_postcontent\"><span class=\"sya_date\"> <span class=\"sya_sep\"> <\/span><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/highly-productive-web-developers-are-t-shaped\/\" class=\"sya_postlink post-1011\" rel=\"bookmark\">Highly productive web developers are T-shaped<\/a><div style=\"padding-left:0px\" class=\"robots-nocontent\"><cite>Highly productive developers have a deep understanding of their specialization and are incredibly focused. They are rarely confused: they know what&#8217;s going on in their project and can find the source of a problem in a flash. They are also skilled in a variety of other subjects and can discuss the relative merits of other [&hellip;]<\/cite><\/div><\/div><\/li><li class=\"\"><div class=\"sya_postcontent\"><span class=\"sya_date\"> <span class=\"sya_sep\"> <\/span><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/managing-stress-by-working-with-your-hands\/\" class=\"sya_postlink post-991\" rel=\"bookmark\">Managing stress by working with your hands<\/a><div style=\"padding-left:0px\" class=\"robots-nocontent\"><cite>After a long day of coding and problem-solving, it&#8217;s hard to calm down and relax. A major part of a programmer&#8217;s job is working in our heads, being in the flow and handling a ton of details at once. But how to relax your brain for a while so you can keep working at peak [&hellip;]<\/cite><\/div><\/div><\/li><li class=\"\"><div class=\"sya_postcontent\"><span class=\"sya_date\"> <span class=\"sya_sep\"> <\/span><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/maintain-habit-learn-coding-skills\/\" class=\"sya_postlink post-980\" rel=\"bookmark\">How to maintain the habit to learn coding skills<\/a><div style=\"padding-left:0px\" class=\"robots-nocontent\"><cite>Managing to find time to improve your coding skills is hard with all the other obligations you have to keep up with. You don&#8217;t want to burn out: you need to maintain a social life, spend time with your family and have time for a few hobbies away from the computer and get some exercise [&hellip;]<\/cite><\/div><\/div><\/li><li class=\"\"><div class=\"sya_postcontent\"><span class=\"sya_date\"> <span class=\"sya_sep\"> <\/span><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/6-ways-to-code-faster-with-less-bugs\/\" class=\"sya_postlink post-966\" rel=\"bookmark\">6 ways to code faster and with fewer bugs<\/a><div style=\"padding-left:0px\" class=\"robots-nocontent\"><cite>It can take ages to code what looks like a simple feature at first glance. Times flows while you have the impression that you made no measurable progress on that new feature and that everything is hopeless. Outsiders will tell you that you&#8217;re only adding a checkbox or a text field and wiring stuff together, [&hellip;]<\/cite><\/div><\/div><\/li><li class=\"\"><div class=\"sya_postcontent\"><span class=\"sya_date\"> <span class=\"sya_sep\"> <\/span><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/why-should-i-learn-a-new-programming-language\/\" class=\"sya_postlink post-952\" rel=\"bookmark\">Why should I learn a new programming language?<\/a><div style=\"padding-left:0px\" class=\"robots-nocontent\"><cite>>Learning new languages and frameworks is something that every programmer needs to do sooner or later. You don&#8217;t always have the choice of which technology you are working on, and outdated technology is often replaced by something more modern. Even if you don&#8217;t have to do it, learning a new language is worthwhile to add [&hellip;]<\/cite><\/div><\/div><\/li><li class=\"\"><div class=\"sya_postcontent\"><span class=\"sya_date\"> <span class=\"sya_sep\"> <\/span><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/why-your-web-application-is-not-a-one-time-investment\/\" class=\"sya_postlink post-915\" rel=\"bookmark\">Why your web application is not a one-time investment<\/a><div style=\"padding-left:0px\" class=\"robots-nocontent\"><cite>Creating a custom web application is a big investment for a small business. Getting it done requires a lot of work, starting with discussions about needs and specifications and followed by coding, demos and adjustments. It&#8217;s tempting to say that everything is be over and done after all this and that nobody should need to [&hellip;]<\/cite><\/div><\/div><\/li><li class=\"\"><div class=\"sya_postcontent\"><span class=\"sya_date\"> <span class=\"sya_sep\"> <\/span><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/book-leanpub-android-storage\/\" class=\"sya_postlink post-904\" rel=\"bookmark\">Published my First Book on Leanpub About Android Storage<\/a><div style=\"padding-left:0px\" class=\"robots-nocontent\"><cite>I just published my first book on Leanpub last week. The book covers the best type of storage to use for various types of data : Saving files in the internal and external storage. Saving user preferences with the Preferences API. Saving data in a SQLite database. The book also explains what is the best [&hellip;]<\/cite><\/div><\/div><\/li><li class=\"\"><div class=\"sya_postcontent\"><span class=\"sya_date\"> <span class=\"sya_sep\"> <\/span><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/using-the-jquery-ui-datepicker-with-asp-net-mvc\/\" class=\"sya_postlink post-880\" rel=\"bookmark\">Using the jQuery UI datepicker with ASP.NET MVC<\/a><div style=\"padding-left:0px\" class=\"robots-nocontent\"><cite>I wanted to start the real code for my side project by making a small skeleton of the project in ASP.NET MVC. This skeleton includes a basic form to create an event, which will be the starting point of the application. An event has a name with a start date and an end date that [&hellip;]<\/cite><\/div><\/div><\/li><li class=\"\"><div class=\"sya_postcontent\"><span class=\"sya_date\"> <span class=\"sya_sep\"> <\/span><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/minimalist-programming-for-the-web\/\" class=\"sya_postlink post-666\" rel=\"bookmark\">Minimalist programming for the web<\/a><div style=\"padding-left:0px\" class=\"robots-nocontent\"><cite>I&#8217;m not the most minimalist person in real life: I always have a ton of things going on, be it gardening, cooking, crafting or coding projects. This is a pretty common plight for a programmer since we like to tinker. But when I code something for production and not as a toy project, I believe [&hellip;]<\/cite><\/div><\/div><\/li><li class=\"\"><div class=\"sya_postcontent\"><span class=\"sya_date\"> <span class=\"sya_sep\"> <\/span><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/5-great-snacks-for-the-coders-brain\/\" class=\"sya_postlink post-859\" rel=\"bookmark\">5 Great Snacks For the Coder&#8217;s Brain<\/a><div style=\"padding-left:0px\" class=\"robots-nocontent\"><cite>You&#8217;re coding and you&#8217;ve been in the flow for a few hours. Everything is going just fine, but then hunger strikes suddenly. Since you don&#8217;t have anything on hand, you go to the cafeteria or to a nearby caf\u00e9 to grab a muffin or a pastry full of sugar. When you sit down to resume [&hellip;]<\/cite><\/div><\/div><\/li><li class=\"\"><div class=\"sya_postcontent\"><span class=\"sya_date\"> <span class=\"sya_sep\"> <\/span><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/dealing-outside-world-programmers\/\" class=\"sya_postlink post-843\" rel=\"bookmark\">Dealing with the outside world for programmers<\/a><div style=\"padding-left:0px\" class=\"robots-nocontent\"><cite>To work with the outside world where business and entrepreneurs lives, you must understand that we are in an alternate universe. For a programmer, playing with technology is fun. We live in a world where building your own server and rolling out your own custom solutions to every problem is something desirable. If something is [&hellip;]<\/cite><\/div><\/div><\/li><li class=\"\"><div class=\"sya_postcontent\"><span class=\"sya_date\"> <span class=\"sya_sep\"> <\/span><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/saving-an-image-in-a-sqlite-database-in-your-android-application\/\" class=\"sya_postlink post-832\" rel=\"bookmark\">Saving an image in a SQLite database in your Android application<\/a><div style=\"padding-left:0px\" class=\"robots-nocontent\"><cite>When you start caching data to a local database from your Android application, sooner or later you&#8217;ll need to save images in that database too. For example, if you&#8217;re storing reports about observations the users make in the field that will be uploaded to the main system later, it can be handy to add a [&hellip;]<\/cite><\/div><\/div><\/li><li class=\"\"><div class=\"sya_postcontent\"><span class=\"sya_date\"> <span class=\"sya_sep\"> <\/span><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/toast-specific-duration-android\/\" class=\"sya_postlink post-818\" rel=\"bookmark\">How to show a Toast for a specific duration in Android<\/a><div style=\"padding-left:0px\" class=\"robots-nocontent\"><cite>In the Android SDK, an android.widget.Toast is a small message that pops up at the bottom of the screen to display an information. The toast will disappears by itself after a specified duration. Here is an example of what a toast looks like and how to display one : The duration for which a toast [&hellip;]<\/cite><\/div><\/div><\/li><li class=\"\"><div class=\"sya_postcontent\"><span class=\"sya_date\"> <span class=\"sya_sep\"> <\/span><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/javascript-framework-for-my-project\/\" class=\"sya_postlink post-796\" rel=\"bookmark\">Choosing a JavaScript framework for my side project<\/a><div style=\"padding-left:0px\" class=\"robots-nocontent\"><cite>I started looking at JavaScript frameworks to see if I could find something interesting for my event scheduling project. I&#8217;m looking to use them to help me show the schedule itself: when a session of an event is modified, it must be updated in two places on the page since the list of sessions for [&hellip;]<\/cite><\/div><\/div><\/li><li class=\"\"><div class=\"sya_postcontent\"><span class=\"sya_date\"> <span class=\"sya_sep\"> <\/span><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/what-is-signalr-and-why-should-i-use-it\/\" class=\"sya_postlink post-770\" rel=\"bookmark\">What is SignalR and why should I use it?<\/a><div style=\"padding-left:0px\" class=\"robots-nocontent\"><cite>When I first heard about SignalR, I was not sure what was the point of it. The official description says that SignalR is a library that can be used with any ASP.NET application to add real-time communication. But since what they meant by real-time was not totally clear to me, and the only example was [&hellip;]<\/cite><\/div><\/div><\/li><li class=\"\"><div class=\"sya_postcontent\"><span class=\"sya_date\"> <span class=\"sya_sep\"> <\/span><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/getting-started-with-the-lonemans-coder-methodology\/\" class=\"sya_postlink post-733\" rel=\"bookmark\">Getting started with the Loneman&#8217;s Coder Methodology<\/a><div style=\"padding-left:0px\" class=\"robots-nocontent\"><cite>I&#8217;ve embarked on a side project to develop an event scheduler without much planning, but every good software project needs a methodology. Since no methodology I know really suits what I&#8217;m doing, and because the world of software really needs yet another methodology, I&#8217;ll share mine here. This methodology will be called the Loneman&#8217;s Coder [&hellip;]<\/cite><\/div><\/div><\/li><li class=\"\"><div class=\"sya_postcontent\"><span class=\"sya_date\"> <span class=\"sya_sep\"> <\/span><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/new-post-on-medium-working-one-day-at-a-time\/\" class=\"sya_postlink post-754\" rel=\"bookmark\">New post on Medium : Working one day at a time<\/a><div style=\"padding-left:0px\" class=\"robots-nocontent\"><cite>For this week, I wrote a post on Medium about working one day at a time and the habits my side project, EventScheduling.io, is teaching me. This is my first post on Medium, you can check it out here: https:\/\/medium.com\/@CindyPtn\/working-one-day-at-a-time-88e27e734617 I&#8217;m still working on prototypes with SignalR for real-time page refresh and it&#8217;s going well, [&hellip;]<\/cite><\/div><\/div><\/li><li class=\"\"><div class=\"sya_postcontent\"><span class=\"sya_date\"> <span class=\"sya_sep\"> <\/span><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/prototypes-for-my-event-scheduler-project\/\" class=\"sya_postlink post-717\" rel=\"bookmark\">Prototypes for my event scheduler project<\/a><div style=\"padding-left:0px\" class=\"robots-nocontent\"><cite>I&#8217;ve written a lot about prototypes since starting my event scheduler project, but I didn&#8217;t go in deep about why I was doing it, so here is it. In short, there are many unknowns in my project, both technical and product-wise, and I don&#8217;t want to go too far in a direction without knowing if [&hellip;]<\/cite><\/div><\/div><\/li><li class=\"\"><div class=\"sya_postcontent\"><span class=\"sya_date\"> <span class=\"sya_sep\"> <\/span><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/starting-the-prototype-building-the-database\/\" class=\"sya_postlink post-697\" rel=\"bookmark\">Starting the prototype : building the database<\/a><div style=\"padding-left:0px\" class=\"robots-nocontent\"><cite>This week, I started working on a prototype of the UI for my event scheduler software to test if it makes sense on a tablet and on a desktop. Since this is a prototype, I&#8217;m not putting any effort in the architecture, error handling or on tricky edge cases and business logic for now. What [&hellip;]<\/cite><\/div><\/div><\/li><li class=\"\"><div class=\"sya_postcontent\"><span class=\"sya_date\"> <span class=\"sya_sep\"> <\/span><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/my-software-side-project-an-event-scheduler\/\" class=\"sya_postlink post-687\" rel=\"bookmark\">My software side project : an event scheduler<\/a><div style=\"padding-left:0px\" class=\"robots-nocontent\"><cite>Last week, I spoke about starting my new side project and why I wanted to do it. But now, it&#8217;s time to define what I&#8217;ll be doing so you can follow along. I&#8217;ve toyed with many concepts over the last year, but most of them were pretty bad or would have taken too long to [&hellip;]<\/cite><\/div><\/div><\/li><li class=\"\"><div class=\"sya_postcontent\"><span class=\"sya_date\"> <span class=\"sya_sep\"> <\/span><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/starting-my-new-side-project\/\" class=\"sya_postlink post-678\" rel=\"bookmark\">Starting my new side project<\/a><div style=\"padding-left:0px\" class=\"robots-nocontent\"><cite>Last year, my big goal was to start this blog to help me learn to share things publicly and write better. It turned out pretty well: I don&#8217;t have a wild amount of traffic, but I moved the needle for a few hundreds hits a month to a few thousands. This year, I decided that [&hellip;]<\/cite><\/div><\/div><\/li><li class=\"\"><div class=\"sya_postcontent\"><span class=\"sya_date\"> <span class=\"sya_sep\"> <\/span><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/display-a-string-list-in-an-android-listview\/\" class=\"sya_postlink post-639\" rel=\"bookmark\">Display a string list in an Android ListView<\/a><div style=\"padding-left:0px\" class=\"robots-nocontent\"><cite>Showing a list of items is a very common pattern in mobile application. This pattern comes up often when I make a tutorial: I often need to interact with data, but I don&#8217;t want to spend a lot of time just on displaying that data when that&#8217;s not the point of the tutorial. So, what [&hellip;]<\/cite><\/div><\/div><\/li><\/ul><a id=\"year2014\"><\/a>2014<ul><li class=\"\"><div class=\"sya_postcontent\"><span class=\"sya_date\"> <span class=\"sya_sep\"> <\/span><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/new-article-localizing-an-android-application\/\" class=\"sya_postlink post-643\" rel=\"bookmark\">New article : localizing an Android application<\/a><div style=\"padding-left:0px\" class=\"robots-nocontent\"><cite>One of my article was published by Tuts+ recently. It&#8217;s a beginner&#8217;s guide on how to localize the strings, dates and times of an Android application and it&#8217;s exclusive to the Tuts+ site. Check it out! http:\/\/code.tutsplus.com\/tutorials\/how-to-localize-an-android-application&#8211;cms-22154<\/cite><\/div><\/div><\/li><li class=\"\"><div class=\"sya_postcontent\"><span class=\"sya_date\"> <span class=\"sya_sep\"> <\/span><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/many-web-config-seems-to-be-merged-together\/\" class=\"sya_postlink post-603\" rel=\"bookmark\">Many Web.config have merged together<\/a><div style=\"padding-left:0px\" class=\"robots-nocontent\"><cite>You can have more than one Web.config in an application and they will all be merged in the end, which is fine. Also, if you have a problem with the configuration for a given project it will usually show up in your development environment right away and will not make it to production. But here [&hellip;]<\/cite><\/div><\/div><\/li><li class=\"\"><div class=\"sya_postcontent\"><span class=\"sya_date\"> <span class=\"sya_sep\"> <\/span><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/storing-the-state-of-an-activity-of-your-android-application\/\" class=\"sya_postlink post-495\" rel=\"bookmark\">Storing the state of an activity of your Android application<\/a><div style=\"padding-left:0px\" class=\"robots-nocontent\"><cite>This is the last post in my series about saving data in your Android application. The previous posts went over the various way to save data in your application: Introduction : How to save data in your Android application Saving data to a file in your Android application Saving preferences in your Android application Saving [&hellip;]<\/cite><\/div><\/div><\/li><li class=\"\"><div class=\"sya_postcontent\"><span class=\"sya_date\"> <span class=\"sya_sep\"> <\/span><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/building-maintanable-android-applications\/\" class=\"sya_postlink post-242\" rel=\"bookmark\">Building maintainable Android applications<\/a><div style=\"padding-left:0px\" class=\"robots-nocontent\"><cite>Why should you care about maintainability when everything already works? It&#8217;s not a bad thing to try out new things with prototypes to increase your knowledge, but when you start building applications that will be used for many years and that will grow larger and more complex, you want to make sure you can keep [&hellip;]<\/cite><\/div><\/div><\/li><li class=\"\"><div class=\"sya_postcontent\"><span class=\"sya_date\"> <span class=\"sya_sep\"> <\/span><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/saving-to-a-sqlite-database-in-your-android-application\/\" class=\"sya_postlink post-194\" rel=\"bookmark\">Saving to a SQLite database in your Android application<\/a><div style=\"padding-left:0px\" class=\"robots-nocontent\"><cite>This is the fourth post in my series about saving data in Android applications. Here are the other posts : Introduction : How to save data in your Android application Saving data to a file in your Android application Saving preferences in your Android application The previous posts described how to save files to the [&hellip;]<\/cite><\/div><\/div><\/li><li class=\"\"><div class=\"sya_postcontent\"><span class=\"sya_date\"> <span class=\"sya_sep\"> <\/span><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/saving-preferences-in-your-android-application\/\" class=\"sya_postlink post-176\" rel=\"bookmark\">Saving preferences in your Android application<\/a><div style=\"padding-left:0px\" class=\"robots-nocontent\"><cite>This is the third post in my series about saving data in Android. The other posts can be found here : https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/introduction-how-to-save-data-in-your-android-application\/https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/saving-data-to-a-file-in-your-android-application\/ A preference is a type of data that needs to be saved by most applications. Preferences allow users to change how the application works by giving choices about things like the layout, the [&hellip;]<\/cite><\/div><\/div><\/li><li class=\"\"><div class=\"sya_postcontent\"><span class=\"sya_date\"> <span class=\"sya_sep\"> <\/span><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/saving-data-to-a-file-in-your-android-application\/\" class=\"sya_postlink post-147\" rel=\"bookmark\">Saving data to a file in your Android application<\/a><div style=\"padding-left:0px\" class=\"robots-nocontent\"><cite>This is the second post in my series about storage in Android applications. The other post is available here : https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/introduction-how-to-save-data-in-your-android-application\/ This post is about saving to a file from an Android application, which is the easiest way to store data. There are many situations where you may need to save a file : you [&hellip;]<\/cite><\/div><\/div><\/li><li class=\"\"><div class=\"sya_postcontent\"><span class=\"sya_date\"> <span class=\"sya_sep\"> <\/span><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/introduction-how-to-save-data-in-your-android-application\/\" class=\"sya_postlink post-133\" rel=\"bookmark\">Introduction : How to save data in your Android application<\/a><div style=\"padding-left:0px\" class=\"robots-nocontent\"><cite>This is the first post in a series explaining the various ways to save data and application state in an Android application. There are many mechanisms in the Android SDK that can be used to save data, and it is something confusing to decide which one to use and when the operation should be triggered. [&hellip;]<\/cite><\/div><\/div><\/li><li class=\"\"><div class=\"sya_postcontent\"><span class=\"sya_date\"> <span class=\"sya_sep\"> <\/span><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/character-encodings-with-razor-helpers\/\" class=\"sya_postlink post-119\" rel=\"bookmark\">Character encoding with ASP.NET MVC helpers<\/a><div style=\"padding-left:0px\" class=\"robots-nocontent\"><cite>In ASP.NET MVC, one of the ways to reuse parts of a web application template is to use helpers. There are two kind of helpers that can be used with Razor templates: helpers created directly from Razor templates using the @helper directive and helpers created from a C# class. To declare a helper with the [&hellip;]<\/cite><\/div><\/div><\/li><li class=\"\"><div class=\"sya_postcontent\"><span class=\"sya_date\"> <span class=\"sya_sep\"> <\/span><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/formatting-dates-with-java-in-android-applications\/\" class=\"sya_postlink post-78\" rel=\"bookmark\">Formatting Dates with Java in Android Applications<\/a><div style=\"padding-left:0px\" class=\"robots-nocontent\"><cite>To format dates in an Android application, you must keep in mind that dates formatted using the Android SDK take into account the locale, which includes the country and language (this is also called a culture). The locale is configured in the Settings application of the device. In general using the locale of the device [&hellip;]<\/cite><\/div><\/div><\/li><li class=\"\"><div class=\"sya_postcontent\"><span class=\"sya_date\"> <span class=\"sya_sep\"> <\/span><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/5-tips-to-improve-performance-in-android-applications\/\" class=\"sya_postlink post-82\" rel=\"bookmark\">5 tips to improve performance in Android applications<\/a><div style=\"padding-left:0px\" class=\"robots-nocontent\"><cite>If your application has many time-intensive operations, here are some tricks to improve the performance and provide a better experience for your users. Operations that can take a long time should run on their own thread and not in the main (UI) thread. If an operation takes too long while it runs on the main [&hellip;]<\/cite><\/div><\/div><\/li><li class=\"\"><div class=\"sya_postcontent\"><span class=\"sya_date\"> <span class=\"sya_sep\"> <\/span><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/creating-logs-in-android-applications\/\" class=\"sya_postlink post-80\" rel=\"bookmark\">Creating logs in Android applications<\/a><div style=\"padding-left:0px\" class=\"robots-nocontent\"><cite>For Android applications, logging is handled by the android.util.Log class, which is a basic logging class that stores the logs in a circular buffer for the whole device. All logs for the device can be seen in the LogCat tab in Eclipse, or read using the logcat command. Here is a standard log output for [&hellip;]<\/cite><\/div><\/div><\/li><li class=\"\"><div class=\"sya_postcontent\"><span class=\"sya_date\"> <span class=\"sya_sep\"> <\/span><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/introduction-to-less-an-easier-way-to-create-css-stylesheets\/\" class=\"sya_postlink post-56\" rel=\"bookmark\">Introduction to LESS : an easier way to create CSS stylesheets<\/a><div style=\"padding-left:0px\" class=\"robots-nocontent\"><cite>In web pages, HTML elements are used to represents the content of the page, while CSS styles sets the look and feel of those elements. CSS styles works with pairs of property\/value that define for example a size, a border or a color. In most cases CSS stylesheet files are created to define selectors (http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/css3-selectors\/) [&hellip;]<\/cite><\/div><\/div><\/li><li class=\"\"><div class=\"sya_postcontent\"><span class=\"sya_date\"> <span class=\"sya_sep\"> <\/span><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/using-android-traceview-in-eclipse\/\" class=\"sya_postlink post-47\" rel=\"bookmark\">Using Android Traceview in Eclipse<\/a><div style=\"padding-left:0px\" class=\"robots-nocontent\"><cite>The best way to solve a performance problem with an Android application is to profile the application by tracing the execution. This way, you can make decisions on what to improve based on real data and detect bottlenecks in the application. In the Android SDK, the Debug object handles the profiling, and the TraceView utility [&hellip;]<\/cite><\/div><\/div><\/li><\/ul><a id=\"year2013\"><\/a>2013<ul><li class=\"\"><div class=\"sya_postcontent\"><span class=\"sya_date\"> <span class=\"sya_sep\"> <\/span><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/adding-a-favicon-to-a-site\/\" class=\"sya_postlink post-51\" rel=\"bookmark\">Adding a favicon to a site<\/a><div style=\"padding-left:0px\" class=\"robots-nocontent\"><cite>I forgot to make a favicon when I created the theme for this site, so let\u2019s fix this. A favicon is the small icon that appears beside the title in the tab, and that is shown when the user bookmarks your site. According to the W3C, the favicon should be a .PNG, .GIF or. ICO [&hellip;]<\/cite><\/div><\/div><\/li><li class=\"\"><div class=\"sya_postcontent\"><span class=\"sya_date\"> <span class=\"sya_sep\"> <\/span><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/less-web-configdotlessconfiguration-options\/\" class=\"sya_postlink post-43\" rel=\"bookmark\">.LESS Web.config\/DotlessConfiguration options<\/a><div style=\"padding-left:0px\" class=\"robots-nocontent\"><cite>Many options of the .LESS CSS parser can be set directly from the Web.config file, but many of them are not clearly described. Here is my attempt to document them : lessSource Sets the name of the file reader class to use (must implement the dotless.Core.Input.IFileReader interface). Default value is dotless.Core.Input.FileReader. minifyOutput Indicates if the [&hellip;]<\/cite><\/div><\/div><\/li><\/ul><\/div>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/newsletter.cindypotvin.com\/embed\" width=\"100%\" height=\"320\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/21"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/21\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4418,"href":"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/21\/revisions\/4418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cindypotvin.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}