Rico Klimpel

Rico's Roundup #2 - April to June 2023

Published:

Good morning and welcome to Rico’s Roundup, the second one. In this case, covering three months, April, May, and June, as I wasn’t able to write a roundup every month.

What’s in store for you here?

Table of Contents

Open Table of Contents

Shared & Crafted

Snippets

Here you can find a short summary of the topics of my content snippets. Please keep in mind that my content snippets are more of a developer diary, with short entries of thoughts that quickly crossed my mind. These are not full-fledged blog posts that extensively explore a topic. I posted shorts texts about these topics on Instagram and my website in the past months.

Regular note-taking in software development, including weekly and monthly recaps, for improved reflection, progress tracking, and preparation for agile team retrospectives.

Creating a content bucket, a designated space to curate and revisit valuable online content, allowing for intentional consumption, easy retrieval, and sharing with others.

Talking about the dilemma of whether to write a detailed readme or make changes to the code when faced with unfamiliar microservices. While some argue for comprehensive readmes, I believe that improving the code itself is often the better option.

How I effortlessly learned to use git and gain proficiency in this essential tool for software development by actively using it in personal projects.

Friday challenges and tips for a satisfying workday, like finding closure and prioritizing tasks when working alone in the office or dealing with distractions while working remotely.

New security policy incoming: Our customer’s AWS ECR Registry will delete Docker images older than 30 days. Thinking and talking about automating image rebuilds and scheduling regular deployments to avoid our images to be removed.

How we utilized GitLab’s yaml “include” feature to reduce code duplication and centralize changes.

The frustration of poorly named variables in a complex deployment script serves as a reminder to developers to carefully consider variable naming for the sake of clarity and collaboration among team members.

Experimenting with AI tools like ChatGPT in the workplace can lead to surprising time-saving solutions, as seen in a recent experience where ChatGPT successfully converted a complex shell script into a Python script. Highlighting the value of exploring the capabilities of available tools.

I’m excited to participate in “The Long Night of JetBrains” event, where I’ll have the chance to connect with like-minded developers, learn from JetBrains experts, and explore their software products and programming language Kotlin.

Overcoming learning challenges in software development – Finding the right approach and gradually building knowledge to tackle complex subjects and ask the right questions.

As a developer, I’ve learned the importance of taking notes while experimenting. Whether it’s testing commands or tweaking configurations, jotting down key details saves time and prevents future troubles.

Website Development

I did work a bit on my website, adding some new features:

I can now add tags to any post and there is the possibility to click on a tag badge and you can see a list of all posts with this tag I tried to add some fancy styled images to the about page I added a contact information section underneath each post I added language flags to have the option to write in german or english. I can just add the language abbreviation to the posts metadata und it will add one or both language flags in the posts list

What else?

Apart from work, I haven’t done much coding in the past few months. But that’s not a bad thing at all. We have summer in Germany again, with great weather and warm temperatures! So, I often left the screen aside and preferred to go outside to enjoy the sun or engage in outdoor activities. Nevertheless, it’s time to start a new side project again.

Discovered

Simplify my local development environment with Tilt

Tilt is a tool that can help with the local execution of projects. It provides a config file called Tiltfile, where multiple services can be defined and started centrally using the tilt up command. Especially in our work environment, where we deal with numerous microservices, frontend and backend components, as well as databases and streaming systems running in the background, we were able to define everything in Tilt and now start the entire application with a single command. Additionally, it offers advanced features like automatic restart of applications when changes in the respective project are detected. https://tilt.dev/

Rectangle Window Manager for Mac

The rectangle window manager, with its support for customizable shortcuts and compatibility with macOS, provides me a seamless window management experience. I use it for a while now and it a key to my productivity with only one big external monitor. https://rectangleapp.com/

TLDR Newsletter for tech and coding news right in my inbox

I started to read the TLDR newsletter because it delivers a concise and curated selection of the most captivating stories in webdevelopment, tech, and ai right to my inbox every day. I’m just trying it out for the first time, but there are many articles and repositories included that I wouldn’t have found otherwise and that I would have missed in my other news and information sources. There are several different newsletters available. For example, there’s one focused on general tech news, but there are also separate newsletters for web development and AI that you can subscribe to individually. https://tldr.tech/

Using include to avoid duplication in Gitlab CI yaml files

We revamped the deployment process for a bunch of projects at work. There were duplicates in the gitlab-ci.yml file since all services were deployed in a similar manner. By using “Include,” we were able to eliminate these duplicates and establish a central location for the pipelines configuration. https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/ci/yaml/includes.html

PairDrop, Airdrop alternative for all devices with a browser

After frequently using Snapdrop a few years ago, now there’s PairDrop. It is built on the foundation of the Snapdrop project and essentially provides the familiar Airdrop feature from the Apple world for all devices with a web browser. I used to rely on it often to quickly exchange files Airdrop-style between non-Apple devices. https://pairdrop.net/ https://github.com/schlagmichdoch/pairdrop

Stackoverflow’s 2023 developer survey

I think the Stack Overflow Developer Survey is always interesting for gaining insights into the opinions of developers. It provides an overview of popular and loved/hated programming languages and frameworks, explores the activities and interests of people in the developer community, and reveals details about the Stack Overflow users. Additionally, this year’s survey introduced a new section on AI, where developers were interviewed about their AI usage and opinions. https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2023/

Outro

Thank you for taking the time to read my roundup. I hope it was informative and enjoyable. Don’t forget to subscribe to the newsletter to receive future updates straight to your inbox. At the moment I use Substack to publish this Roundup as Newsletter. You can find it Substack. Also, if you’d like to stay in touch, you can follow me on Instagram or Twitter. And please feel free to reach out to me on the social platforms or via email with any questions or feedback you may have or just to start a conversation with my about any topic!

Have a nice day!