Beyond watching a lot of playoff baseball, I spent a ton of time solving problems on the website CodeFights. It’s a really fun way to improve your programming skills. The reason I find it more enjoyable than the other “solve this programming problem and we’ll check it” websites is how well the people at CodeFights did on the gameification aspect. Everytime I go to the site I tell myself I will just solve one problem. An hour, and a few problems later, I’ll still be working on problems. Each problem solved gives you experience which in turn levels you up. These mechanics put the carrot out in front and I can’t help but keep trying to get it. The site is just really well done. The problems are fun and there are many varieties of problems to choose from.

It was a good week on the reading front too. I finished Principles: Life and Work by Ray Dalio. It was a great read. Anyone who is curious about how others think would find value in the book. After getting through Principles I started reading Clean Architecture: A Craftsman’s Guide to Software Structure and Design by Robert Martin. This is another book in Martin’s Clean Code series focusing on techniques that professional software developers can use to improve the quality of their code. The key idea of Clean Architecture is that no matter what kind of software project we’re working on the architecture best practices apply.

Finished

Book(s): Principles: Life and Work

Currents

Course(s): React Nanodegree

Pluralsight Course(s): Implementing and Securing an API with ASP.NET Core, Securing ASP.NET Core with OAuth2 and OpenID Connect, Getting Started with ASP.NET Core and OAuth

Book(s): Smalltalk Best Practice Patterns, Tao of Seneca: Volume 3, Clean Architecture: A Craftsman’s Guide to Software Structure and Design

On the Next…

I’m slowly making progress on the Mobile Flashcards project for the React Nanodegree. Once I’m done with the project I’ll be done with the program. This week I’m going to start getting deep into the project. Up to this point I’ve just been getting my feet wet with React Native. It’s time to fully dive in. Getting comfortable with building for mobile devices vs. the web has been a nice change of pace and it’s going to be rewarding to dig in further.