Oct 15, 2018

Written by Alex Piechowski

What is Fed vs Unfed Sourdough Starter?

Recipes call for either fed sourdough starter or unfed sourdough starter, but what’s the difference? After a lot of Googling, I came across this reddit post with some answers. Since this took me so long to find, I decided to make an easily googlable post about fed vs unfed sourdough starter. Fed Sourdough Starter Fed sourdough starter is starter in which you have fed approximately 12 hours ago. You can identify that this is potent by doing a “float test”.

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Jun 18, 2017

Written by Alex Piechowski

My Father, My Mentor, My Teacher

Today, I want to get back into the swing of blogging with a brief overview of my relationship with my father over the past 21 years of my life. More particularly, I want to give an overview of my relationship with my father in relation to the teaching and mentoring he provided me as he guided me through my learnings as a developer and more importantly his firm but guiding hand throughout the entirety of my career.

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Apr 5, 2017

Written by Alex Piechowski

A Good Developer Knows When It's Time to Take a Break

A good developer takes a break before they get burned out. When a developer gets burned out, it takes them longer to recover than taking periodic breaks. Taking a break is very important to a developer. It’s one of the reasons that I took a break from blogging for a few days. I was starting to get burned out writing blog articles every day, so I’m cutting back to around one a week.

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Mar 31, 2017

Written by Alex Piechowski

What's the difference between a Good Developer and a Good Googler?

Every developer has thought Am I really a developer or just a good googler? which is a fair question. It’s something I’ve asked myself a multitude of times. Recently, this question has been bugging me more than usual, as I have been learning the ins and outs of Ruby and RoR. Recently, I sat down with a graph composition book and wrote down all the differences of “Good Googler” and “Good Developer”.

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Mar 30, 2017

Written by Alex Piechowski

Communicate Effectively

A very important part of development is gaining the ability to communicate effectively. Part of this can be taught, but the other part comes from experience. Sometimes Communication will differ from team to team. I have learned that in order to onboard properly, you need to quickly learn and adapt to teams. In the NYU, my hardest challenge was a combination of being remote and unclear team roles. For many questions, there can be a lot of “name would know better”.

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Mar 29, 2017

Written by Alex Piechowski

Peer Programming

Peer programming is (or at least should be) a staple in the average development team. There are many benefits to peer programming. A few of the reasons I find peer programming to be important are: Higher Focus Happiness Confidence Save time Safer Code Better Code Knowledge sharing Better understanding of task at hand Camaraderie Until a month or 2 ago, I hadn’t directly peer programmed. I had indirectly peer programmed helping other devs at their computer, but nothing intentionally peer programmed.

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Mar 28, 2017

Written by Alex Piechowski

Getting Over my Development Slump

Every developer hits a slump here and there. The slump can be caused by all different things. The slump can be caused by all different things, including (but most definitely not limited to): Overly challenging work Working too much Health (Mental and Physical) Recent distractions For me, I’m not exactly sure where my slump came from. Part of the slump was from beginning working out, which was a new thing for me to add to my daily schedule.

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Mar 27, 2017

Written by Alex Piechowski

Day 11: Blog Agenda

In order to move into blogging about the true DITL of Dev, I have an agenda of topic transition into pure dev talk. The rough agenda is as follows: Days 1-10 have so far been mostly workout talk, with a slight amount of dev talk Days 11-20 I will be transitioning into full dev talk. To do this, I will be removing the following topics: Morning Weigh in Meal log Days 21-30 will be mostly dev talk with some work out talk here and there Work out Soreness before: Minimal, legs/pecs

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Mar 26, 2017

Written by Alex Piechowski

Day 10: Shout out to Ruby on Rails Link Slack!

I just wanted to give a big shout out to Ruby on Rails Link Slack. A lot of the people there have been very beneficial to both my health plans and my coding! Morning This morning I wasn’t too sore. I woke up around 9 or 10. I have started to come up with some flavors that are actually quite amazing. As I perfect them, I’ll post them! Weight In (Note: All weigh ins occur in the morning before I have a change to eat/drink or do anything)

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Mar 25, 2017

Written by Alex Piechowski

Day 9: Workout Productively

Today I ended up reading on a treadmill. I never thought I’d do that. Scroll down to hear about my experience. Morning Last night, I didn’t get to bed until 0115. This morning, I had my alarm set for 0520, but I kept snoozing it until 0700. I texted my dad that today’s workout was off (he could only work out early in the morning) and I went right back to sleep.

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