New project: PronounceMe

I'm a big believer in the power of API Mesh and automation at scale. In December 2018, I got an idea of the project for potential passive income I started to work on in early January 2019

The Problem

For me, English is a second language. Although I read in English since 14 and speak since 20, there is a long way to go. As for Eastern, the pronunciation is incredibly challenging, especially while living in the Great Britan. There are 1 billion people for who English is not the first language.

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Ubuntu 18.10 on Macbook Pro 2018

Nah, it's not a joke

Unfortunately, I was forced to use MBP at work. It's easy to imagine how exciting it was for someone who been using Linux happily for the last 12 years. I don't mind that many people are using it and think they're happy and somehow productive but I do take it personally when the operating system or hardware manufacturer significantly disrupt my productive habits and enforces behaviour which slows me down without giving anything back in return

Being openminded I was trying to use it for a few days, I even promised that won't yell in the office annoying my colleagues(but broke promise after few minutes)

Eventually, after 4 days I decided to install the fresh Ubuntu 18.10 instead of this inadequate but nice looking OS and get the classic keyboard with all keys. One might be surprised but I heavily use F-keys and not only for the software development. I see zero reasons why would I add additional keystrokes making typing process more like playing the piano to achieve something I don't need.

TR;DR;

Don't waste your time installing Ubuntu on MBP 2018, at least anytime soon

But if you have some time...

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Kotlin Presentation – GDG Reading Meetup @ Spaces, Reading 21 Feb 2019

Just returned from meetup where I had a talk about kotlin language - "Why Kotlin? Why now?"

The talk took place in Spaces, Reading on 21st of February 2019 and was organised by Google Developer Group Reading, namely by Chris Guest and his team.
In this talk, I highlighted reasons for learning one more language, guided through most noticeable features. In the second part, we had a live demo - kwitter REST web server.

I found people there were very friendly, it feels like they know each other for a long time. Really nice atmosphere and good vibes!

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My podcasts subscriptions feb 2018

Every once in a while I publish list of podcast I listen, so you might find something interesting
I do listen podcasts literally every day - in the gym, while walking, on bus, on lunch breaks. I'd say podcasts give me about 80% of all news and help me to discover new things, not only in technology. It's a massive source of information which doesn't take dedicated time anlike books or blog posts

Some time ago I switched playback speed to 1.2x, it was a bit unusual in the beginning but brain has adopted to that quite fast and now I don't really feel any discomfort. On another hand I save 20% of the time for other episodes. I found funny effect - after this speed people seem to speak very slow :D

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JavaScript must go (ASAP)

JavaScript it's a cancer of modern software development industry

💥 DISCLAMER
1. This article is about JavaScript - the language happen to become a runtime for many types of applications.
2. TypeScript, CoffeeScript, *Script have nothing to do with JS, this post is not about it.
3. As many of you I'm also a JavaScript developer. I'm not addressing to anyone personally, the post below is just my opinion about technology
4. If you're happy with any technology and it helps to archive the business goals - I can be only happy for that!

Big claim, isn't it? Well, I'm sure I have a right to say that. I've been using suffering from JavaScript in last 10+ years. Really, I can't remember anything good about this shit language since I started to make money on programming being freelancer. I'm not mean, I just had enough. And please, don't take this article personally, you're not a programming language you use.

I'm a normal developer.

It means I'm not genius and I can't and wouldn't keep whole program code and it's complicated flow and branching in my head. I'd rather delegate this boring work to computer and focus on business logic as much as I can. I'm certain, there are about 2.5 really good developers who can write good code in javascript. But probably they don't as they are busy talking on conferences ¯_(ツ)_/¯

You cannot avoid JS

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Safe and sound code with kotlin

Following my first talk about writing safe code in kotin at London Kotlin Meetup #2 I recently had one in Saint-Petersburg. It was organised by Spb Google Developers Group, namely by Oleg Makarov. Event took place in the most appropriate place - place where kotlin was born - Jetbrains "Universe" Office at Vasilyevskiy island (it's not kotlin island as someone might think :D).

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