A great product tends to sell itself. It's the obvious choice for the problem it solves, and it solve that problem very well. Such a product appears to have a natural pull. So how can you go about creating a product like that? An approach that has caught my attention is what I like to … Continue reading Demand-side Thinking: Creating Pull For Your Products
Category: Articles
How to Make A Prototype App
Prototyping is probably the most effective way to discover great new product ideas, and technical solutions to challenging problems. Building a simple demo lets you explore your ideas outside your own mind. It allows you to find new possibilities and creative directions. Unfortunately these days I see engineers are often bogged down churning out feature … Continue reading How to Make A Prototype App
Modern Distributed Data Architecture with Event Streams, Stream Processing and Derived Data
Some of the most interesting projects I worked on at LinkedIn involved building large scale real-time pricing and machine learning products. They required crafting fault-tolerant distributed data architectures to support model training, forecasting and dynamic control systems. None of this work involved a traditional relational database. Instead event streams, derived data and stream processing became … Continue reading Modern Distributed Data Architecture with Event Streams, Stream Processing and Derived Data
How to Build a Web App: A Beginner’s Guide
This guide will walk you through, step-by-step, on how to build a web app. If you have been teaching yourself programming, you will have picked up different skills without learning how to put them together in an end-to-end project to build real-world production software. I know this is a common frustration faced by many people … Continue reading How to Build a Web App: A Beginner’s Guide
How to choose a programming language to learn
When starting out building web apps, you find there are a number of choices for the programming language you can use. For a beginner, the different options can be overwhelming. Over the years, programming languages ebb and flow in popularity. You might feel the pressure to pick something that is quick to learn and build … Continue reading How to choose a programming language to learn
How to Learn Programming: A Roadmap for Becoming a Software Engineer
I come across questions on how to get started in programming often. People are hungry to learn, but don’t know where to start or which path to take. This is made even more difficult these days due to a lot of different areas that exist, such as web development, mobile software development, game development etc. … Continue reading How to Learn Programming: A Roadmap for Becoming a Software Engineer
Are you feeling stuck in a plateau? Here’s what it means and what to do about it
If you are feeling stuck in your learning journey, you are not alone. As frustrating as it may be, hitting a plateau is an unavoidable part of the learning process. We imagine and hope for growth to be a straight line, upwards to the right. But that’s never how it plays out in reality. Instead, … Continue reading Are you feeling stuck in a plateau? Here’s what it means and what to do about it
Identity First: How To Build a Self-Sustaining Path To Better Learning and Growth
In his book, Atomic Habits, author James Clear shows us how to build good habits and cut out bad ones. One particular concept in the book has dramatically improved my own ability to learn and grow. It is the idea that you can improve your success in life, not just by focusing on your goals, … Continue reading Identity First: How To Build a Self-Sustaining Path To Better Learning and Growth
Mastering your Inner Game: the art of relaxed concentration
Back in the 70’s Timothy Gallwey made a breakthrough discovery while coaching his tennis players. During practice, he noticed some of his students giving themselves verbal instructions for improvements. They would tell themselves things like “get up for the ball”, “bend your knees”, “swing harder" etc. There was nothing unusual about this self talk, except it seemed to hurt rather than help progress.