Widget Tricks Newsletter #14
Read NOT to remember but to spark ideas. We've forgotten how to program. Increase Productivity by doing NOTHING. 40 lessons from a 40-year-old. Gen Z is the most fearful generation and much more.
📝Post of the month:
✍🏻 Articles to read:
NPM & left-pad: Have We Forgotten How To Program? by David Haney
The biggest problem in programming is copy-pasting code or relying on any third-party packages for the solutions. If the solution to your problem does not exist in these areas, then most developers raise their hands and say NO, we cannot do it.
There is nothing wrong with using both approaches, but you need to understand when to use them and when NOT to. The author of this article is frustrated that programmers are not writing even simple functions of their own, and the NPM left-pad package fiasco is one of the biggest example.
This is Water by David Foster Wallace
This is a non-tech article and more of a philosophical one. Sometimes I read this kind of article to get a sense of the greater world outside of tech and coding.
The most obvious, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about.
Lessons after a half-billion GPT tokens by Ken
If you are building a service or wrapper around the OpenAI GPT model, then this article will save you a lot of money and time.
📺 Videos to Watch:
Productivity is Messing Around and Having Fun by TRISHA GEE & HOLLY CUMMINS
In programming, the most time-consuming task is not coding but thinking. And to think properly, you need a free space, i.e., boredom.
Management usually thinks that being idle is bad because you are not doing something useful. But in programming or any creative job, you need time to think and to think, you need to have free space. That's why walking, showering, and running generates more ideas compared to just staring at the screen.
40 Life Lessons from a 40-Year-Old Developer
My two favorite lessons are
Budget for Education: I've spent around ₹77,015 ($925) on books in the last 6 years, and its ROI was way higher than expected. This is one of the places I invest a lot. For others, it can be on courses, joining classes, or attending conferences. The point is to have some budget for your self-education.
Make networking a lifestyle :
Networking does not mean only going to conferences. Networking can also be with your friends and family. Go to someone's place, create a plan, and meet all of them once in a while. Talk to new people. Don’t limit yourself to networking only in tech.
📦Pub Packages/Plugins:
Freerasp
FreeRASP for Flutter is a mobile in-app protection and security monitoring SDK. It aims to cover the main aspects of RASP (Runtime App Self Protection) and application shielding.
HTTP certificate pinning
HTTPS Certificate pinning for Flutter
Reddit Post: Useful but not so popular flutter packages
🪶Quotes
I am unsure if this applies to most of my audience since this controversial book is directed toward parenting. But I learned a lot as a parent and learned that why the current generation is the way it is.
While teaching students in my class and meeting many younger folks in conferences, I saw one repetitive pattern: they have all the resources in the world to learn, grow, and do things, but somehow they are not doing it. And I think I know why.
Actually, what seems to motivate a large portion of Gen Z, born between 1995 and 2012, is not hope or optimism or belief in themselves—it’s fear. They are arguably the most fearful generation on record.
If you are sad, then meet people or do something
Reminiscing with a friend, cracking a joke with your spouse you wouldn’t dare make with anyone else, helping your cousin box up her apartment—without talking about your problems—often aids recovery far more than sitting around in a room full of sad people.
You cannot be happy all the time
“Nobody feels great,” he said. “Never, never ever. Sit in the bus and look at the people opposite from you. They don’t look happy. Happiness is not the emotion of the day.”
Want to know why the rising generation of kids doesn’t want to have children of their own? It’s because we made parenting look so damn miserable.
Book: Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren't Growing Up by Abigail Shrier
🐤Posts I like:
😂Fun and Memes
Converting your Apple Watch to iPod
👋🏻 That’s it, Folks
If you are a Flutter developer who wants to advance your Flutter skills, then I am currently running live classes called effectiveflutterdev.com. So if you are interested, then apply now.
Also, If you enjoyed this post, then would you be able to do me a quick favor and share my latest blog post with your friends and colleagues? I'd really appreciate it and I think it could be valuable to them.