Widget Tricks Newsletter #8
Where was I for 3 months? How to Be Successful by Sam Altman? Programming's Greatest Mistakes. Top 10 software books which changed my life as a Software Engineer and much more.
Where was I for 3 months?
The last newsletter I sent was in July, three months ago. Since then, I haven't had much time to write a new newsletter because I've been occupied with three things all at once.
1. Fulltime Consulting/Freelancing
In reality, I have been doing consulting on and off during my weekends for the past eight years. However, this time, due to the recent tech layoffs and recession, I decided to go all-in.
In terms of work, it's almost the same, as I help create architecture from scratch, build teams, conduct code reviews, or improve existing systems with performance or legacy codebase issues.
My current niche is still Android native and Flutter Mobile Development. Hence, I was occupied with looking for clients.
Why and how I started consulting/freelancing, it's a whole other topic. If you'd like to know more, please let me know in a comment or DM me on any social media platform.
2. Effective Flutter Dev Classes Kickoff
The classes for Batch 1 and Batch 2 started in mid-August and lasted for 8 weeks, concluding in September. I was both nervous and excited at the same time, and it turned out to be a great experience.
I learned a lot from these classes, as an instructor, and from students. While I thought I understood certain concepts well, when explaining them, I realized there were some gaps in my ability to explain them effectively.
Also, In the world of 10-second TikTok videos, I thought I wouldn't be able to teach for 2 hours. However, when I started, time seemed to fly by. This is my definition of quality time, where you worked for hours and felt that you started just minutes ago.
The good news is that I'll be starting Batch 3 in December. If you're interested, you can apply now. I've updated the curriculum and redesigned the website with testimonials.
3. Blessed With a Baby Boy
I don't share much personal news on public platforms because I believe these kinds of conversations are meant for our one-on-one, in-person interactions. But here we are.
This is one of those phases in life where you feel exhausted all day, but at the end of the day, you feel a lot happier.
That's enough of the personal stuff. Let's move on to jobs.
💼 Flutter Jobs to Apply
I don't have any job openings to share at the moment, but please check out Majid Hajian's tweet.
If you are a company in need of a mobile developer, please email me at query@effectivflutterdev.com, and I can refer some talented developers to you.
✍️ Articles to Read
How to Be Successful by Sam Altman
Getting good at communication—particularly written communication—is an investment worth making. My best advice for communicating clearly is to first make sure your thinking is clear and then use plain, concise language.
Definitive Flutter Guide To CustomPaint by Deven Joshi
This is an old article, but I stumbled upon it while teaching customer painting in my classes. This blog comprehensively covers everything you need to know about Custom Painter.
Bookmark it and revisit it whenever you are working on custom painting.
Ask vs Guess Culture by Jean Hsu
At a high level, western corporate work operates almost entirely in ask culture. But people working at these companies often operate in or were raised in guess culture, which as you might expect, is ripe for feeling misunderstood and frustrated.
📦 Code From Pub Packages
AppFlowy Editor
A highly customizable rich-text editor for Flutter
Spot
Fluent, chainable Widget finders and better assertions for Flutter widget tests ⛓️ Chainable widget selectors 💙 Prints helpful error messages.
📺 Videos to Watch
The Economics of Programming Languages by Evan Czaplicki
Recently, I was reading E-Myth Revisited, where I came across the concept of The Entrepreneur, The Manager, and The Technician. As software engineers, we often think in terms of logic, and we tend to have a technician's mindset about 90% of the time.
This talk delves into the business and economic aspects of developing a programming language, which also applies to building software in general.
Programming's Greatest Mistakes • Mark Rendle
Most of the time, when we make mistakes in our code, a message gets displayed wrong or an invoice doesn’t get sent. But sometimes when people make mistakes in code, things literally explode, or bankrupt companies, or make web development a living hell for millions of programmers for years to come.
Real Talk with Recruiting Leaders
Everyone in the software industry knows that hiring in tech is broken, and finding the right candidate is still challenging. This talk focuses on the other side of the table: the recruiter. It explores the incentives, what stands out in candidates, and how the recruiter's mindset works.
📚 Quotes From Books
I don’t have any quotes to share from a book this month, but I answered an interesting question on Twitter “Do you read programming books? If yes, why?”. You can read the answer in the tweet, but here I want to share the common question I came across is….
What Are the Top 10 Timeless Software Books That Changed the Life as a Software Engineer?
Here are mine, in order of how a developer starts their journey, from basic to scaling problems:
Code: The Hidden Language of Computers (Pure Basic: Starting with Binary)
Working Effectively with Legacy Code (Dealing with an ugly codebase)
Refactoring Improve the design of the existing codebase (Making changes safely without breaking the code)
Test-Driven Development (TDD) (Once you've learned all the above, you always start writing tests first)
Head First Design Principles (Terminology and concepts for maintainable and extendable design)
Algorithms to Live By (Algorithms are fundamental ideas before we write any code)
Git Pro (Software cannot run without a Version Control System (VCS). We use it every minute of our working day)
Your Code as a Crime Scene (Finding problems in the code using code history)
Data-Intensive Applications (Databases are everywhere)
Software Engineering at Google (Addressing the biggest scaling problems)
Honorable Mentions:
Clean Code (Writing code that is easy to understand by other developers)
The Soft Skills (Coding alone is not enough to be a great software engineer)
Peopleware (Managing software teams).
Also, I am planning to write a short book summarizing all the important points from these above books. If you are interested in getting one or want to be part of an early reader, please email me at burhanrashid5253@gmail.com.
😂 Fun and Memes
A Flutter Web portfolio
JavaScript in the Glorious Spirit It Was Originally Designed
That’s It, Folks
If you enjoyed this newsletter, then would you be able to do me a quick favor and share this with your friends and colleagues? I'd really appreciate it and I think it could be valuable to them.