How are you? What are you working on?

If you can find the time to build hobby projects, it's highly recommended! This way you can trial-n-error, refactor, restructure your project to your hearts content, learn what works and what doesn't.

This way, you'll be one step ahead when assigned to architect / build sustainable projects on the work floor. And you'll have those projects to show off & talk about when applying for jobs. It also great to gain trust about your expertise with your employer. And just maybe they'll let you skip that tricky coding test ;).

So what are you working on? What is your preferred way of learning web / app development or software architecture?

I learn better by doing, I need to delve into topics to gain the experience of applying those. While building, I attempt to tackle all the questions that I have around the topic. I prefer a strategic approach to programming rather than a tactical approach. "Think twice, code once", but that's topic for another post.

On the work floor, I ask a lot of questions to get quick feedback, even if it makes me look less intelligent. These questions sometimes are self-evident for the team members who have been on the project for some time, but not for the newcomers. I confess that I sometimes blurt things out to see what sticks, to get that instant feedback or to at least make everyone think twice, if they hadn't already.

I'm currently working on the 'EmailCampaigns' module for my kiss-code.com brand website. One of the things that it will do, is to automatically deliver you the content you are interested in, e.g.: kiss-code.com/products

While there are great tools out there to do this, I'm stubborn and attempt to build everything myself. It takes a lot of time without guarantees to success. But it's a way for me to completely immerse myself into new fields like e-commerce or marketing.

When I see existing tools, I think:

• "How do they makes this work?"
• "Could / should I make a small, customized version of this?"
• "What metrics do I need to collect & how?".

I don't just do that for fun, I often do need a customized version of it for my current projects. So, I try to build my project as re-usable as possible. Existing of end-to-end modules, packages / libraries, ...

What about you?

If you are interested in my work, you can find it:

• on my website: kiss-code.com/products
• on my Patreon
• on YouTube

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