Monthview, because I was too lazy to write “Month Review”; For real; And it sounded cool too. Doesn’t it? Well, this is not just one month view, since I haven’t posted month reviews since last two months (because they were boring). This will include the month reviews for February and March. This is going to be a long read, so brace yourself!

Starting as a Backend Engineer!

I’ve always been interested in backend development, primarily with NodeJS and Python (Django and Flask). Because, Backend engineering is more concerned with complex flows, algorithms, brain teasing design decisions and a level of freedom to code. Working as an iOS developer for a year reminded me of how much I missed working with backend, with the complex flows, automated tests, automated build generation, and all those shenanigans that come with backend engineering.

Not that I hated iOS, I started to despise it as the time went by. The job more or less became a chore as I was expected to create UI for the design that the design team provided. Personally, that left me less room to grow and fewer things to learn as the time went by. And I don’t plan on owning an iOS device anytime soon in the future. Therefore, I couldn’t use my skills to contribute to someone’s code somewhere in the remote web, even if I want to, since you need iOS hardware to do iOS stuff!

Now I begin my backend journey with Golang. I’m thoroughly enjoying the process of treading this unknown territory, as there is so much learning and so much freedom to come up with new ideas and reproduce them in code. I hope to post more about Golang and backend development in general as time passes by.

Better VPS, Better Setup!

I changed my VPS to an AMD EPYC system with NVMe SSD’s. It’s blazing fast and gives me lesser frustrated lookups when running heavy memory intensive work such as backup, restore, database migration, you name it. Currently, mastodon.lhin.space is running on top of it and I couldn’t have been happier to see it being more responsive and snappy.

I have written about this in detail in this post.

A Much needed Bookhaul

If you’ve been following my blog and mastodon handle for a while, you would know that I talk a lot about books. Lately, I haven’t been reading a lot because of a busy schedule. April has been a chill month and I had plenty of time to read those unread books sitting in my shelf. They are,

  • Gut: The Inside Story of our Body’s Most Underrated Organ by Giulia Enders, Jill Enders (Illustrator)
  • Ten Arguments for Deleting your Social Media Accounts Right Now by Jaron Lanier
  • Your Inner Fish: A Journey Into The 3.5 Billion Year History of the Human Body by Neil Shubin

It’s really refreshing to read books after a long burnout break. I hope to read many more books in the coming months and hopefully write about what I felt about reading them.

Manjaro to Pop! OS

I have been using Manjaro for a long time. It hasn’t complained. It has stayed boring and obvious, as it has always been. The problem occurred when I was trying to install some new packages, which constantly failed by asking for a PGP prompt. So I thought it was a good time to take off my Manjaro hat for some time and tread into Pop! OS territory. I don’t like distrohopping a lot. But this time I couldn’t resist. So I did.

Pop! OS, just works! Out of the box. Took me just 5 mins to get up and running with it and everything just works. Now I don’t feel like going back to Manjaro (But, I miss you pacman). I know, distros don’t matter. But I believe it’s fun to sometimes move away from the regular setup and try something new (at least for a while).

Closing Thoughts

It has been an amazing and productive month, to be honest, as I sit here and think about it. That’s why I like this segment. It gives me an opportunity to sit and think about the month and ponder about what better I could do next month. I hope to read more, write more, be more productive as the time goes by. And also learn to be more empathetic since I’m going to write the code that’s going to affect a lot of users. Thanks for reading, Have a nice day :)