Jae "J4" Salokettu

What code editor do you use?

Sublime Text for everything except .NET for which I use JetBrains Rider. Sublime products have consistently been my most reliable tooling for the past decade or so. I can heavily recommend purchasing a license from them if you can.

Are you a furry?

Yes.

Are you taken?

I'm not interested.

Where did you learn to write code and CI/CD?

Online, by trying things on my own, reading the documentation, and contributing to projects.

I cannot pinpoint an exact one answer to this question; generally two things are the most frustrating to me:

• Systems not behaving as expected.
• Users themselves.

The first one is fairly easy to think about: programming is all about giving a computer a list of instructions, and expecting it to execute them. However, nothing is that easy in reality, computers, be it the software or hardware way, will misbehave and end up failing at executing otherwise very logical steps. I like logical steps, and I went into computing as I could get predictable outputs for what I would program the machine to do. Sadly, not everything can be sunshine and rainbows.

The second point is about some behaviours users might have when interacting with the software, and its maintainers. That said, I am not talking about users that might misuse the program, and cause to break it in unexpected ways. The frustration comes from some users never being satisfied, and providing generally non-constructive criticism. The same can be said about any job or hobby; imagine pouring your passion and energy into something, only to be constantly told that you are lazy, that you do not care, and that what you made is never enough; either ignoring or misrepresenting the planning behind an engineering decision, or even project priorities.

After seeing this for weeks, months, or even years at this point, you'll just ask yourself "What's even the point?", and it can go downhill fairly fast from this point on; and once you start falling, it's hard to get back up.

And for those that are starting in the field reading this, remember this: because some people are asses about your work doesn't means that you failed or are incompetent. You're here, you're creating, you're learning, that's what's important. Some criticism might be harsh, but fair; some other, the inverse. It's up to you to set personal boundaries.

What AI do you use for code?

None. LLM-based code generation has issues regarding ethics and licensing. Not only the training datasets were constructed without regards for licensing nor basic consent, but the licensing of model outputs is ambiguous at best.

While testing related tooling, I've also noticed that they are more of a hindrance to my work; not even mentioning that solving a problem on your own has its own rewards.

LLM code generation also goes against my philosophy in computing that all outputs should be predictable. While regular programs might fail at that, LLM generation has too much randomness for it to be useful by my own standards.

Why do you talk so much about Open-Source software?

Without Open-Source software, I couldn't have learned all I have over the past years. Most of the essential components on any modern device is also likely to be Open-Source, or based on an Open-Source program or library.

The whole point of having networked computers is to share knowledge. Preventing others from learning from what you made doesn't makes sense to me.

I just started, can you review my first project?

I will happily take a look at it, but I will not go into in-depth reviewing. Your first project is there as a springboard for you to learn more, not something that shall decide your whole life.

All I can do is provide some tips and ask some questions that will make you progress more, but don't stress it out. And congratulations on your first project, it's a huge step that many want to skip, but that is essential in the end.

I'm looking for a job, can you help with with a CV or searching for something?

Sadly, I cannot, the job market is as muddy for me as it is for you. Soatok has a quite good article about this though^{[soatok.blog]} which I can recommend checking out.

My only advice would be to further your skills by contributing to projects that you enjoy using. That way, you can get feedback about real code in a proper collaborative environment. Also if you are in school, study well and get that diploma. While real-world experience is important, having a paper saying you have those skills will help you.

I dropped out of school to go working, and while it turned out well for me, this still closed some doors for me. So do not repeat my mistake and finish your studies. It can be frustrating, but it's worth it.

Also, getting comfortable will not happen instantly. Before getting a job that I truly liked, I worked in plenty of places, grocery store, photography store, computer repair shop, etc. It's only in the past few years that I've had something I truly love, and it took years to arrive there. You still gotta eat, but you also have to remember that once there is an opportunity, either through luck or skill, you must seize it, especially if you are young. At worse, you'll have something that pays you until you find something else, at best, something you're truly in line with.