On Your Mark

I bet you thought I'm already involving myself with the software development process of the company, with sweaty hands, sleep-deprived eyes, and over-caffeinated blood — but no, I'm not there yet. My first week in my new job was focused only on my training, on getting me familiarized with their workflow process and in their environment. Since I'm new, no one in their right mind would allow me to tinker with their high-quality product. They must first evaluate where my skills stand and whether I'm really ready to be assigned those work-related tasks. But that's not saying I'm just sitting there idling in front of my laptop. The complete silence and shame of doing nothing would surely kill me. So I immersed myself in intensive training in order to catch up to them. On my first day, our team lead programmer tasked me to read a few books. Some of which were about cleaning codes and effective java programming. I was actually hoping that I would only get to r...

Choosing the programming career was one of the huge steps I made—since I came from the academe world. So when the software company called to invite me for an on-site exam, it racked me, I wasn’t able to sleep well for straight days as the idea of me coding in front of them terrified me. What if I wouldn’t be able to answer it? What if it’s something I am completely unaware of? And then that day came and I was right. It was totally something I wasn’t expecting. Please note that I am only trying to get an entry-level kind of java programming job, so when they asked me to write a REST API documentation for the scenario they made, I was like, “Shit, I’m in danger.” Nail-biting was never included in my mannerisms, but in that moment, you could imagine me doing that. I was expecting more of coding problems involved in hackerrank.com, where it mostly tests your logical thinking skills, utilizing the basic java utilities existing, such as rotating the contents of an array or recur...

Anyone can write, but not anyone knows how to develop their ideas into full-written novels. If you clicked this blog, I’m assuming you’ve been bogged down by those story scenes in your head for weeks now and has turned to writing to finally shut your brains up, but of course, you have no idea how and where to start. Don’t worry. I’ll help you in this process, step-by-step. 1. Start jotting things down Sure, you can tell yourself that your ideas are safe since it is in your head and you’re thinking about it constantly. Wrong! Trust me. I’ve been in that situation. At laking panghihinayang ko noong hindi ko iyon ginawa dahil marami-rami pa namang story ideas ang naisip ko noong college e kaso nga lang wala akong mapagsusulatan kaya nakaliligtaan kong i-jot down. Kalimitan kasi tuwing naliligo o nagwo-walking ako nakakaisip, e iyon ang time kung kailan nagde-daydream ako. So learn from my mistakes. My tip? Bumili ka ng maliit na notebook at dalhin mo iyon lagi kung saan k...