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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 11th, 2023

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  • Remember that you are also interviewing them. They won’t expect you to know all the answers, but will want someone that they can work with. If you can, answer questions with the STAR method (situation, task, approach, result), but don’t waffle. You can use one piece of experience in a variety of ways: teamwork, research, urgent deadline etc.

    It’s ok to say that you are nervous, they should try to put you at ease.

    You may be asked ‘trick questions’, these are not usually to to you up but to see how you work an unknown problem. There is no right answer. Not knowing stuff is ok. Not being able to think up a plan is less so.

    Remember whatever the outcome, this is really useful experience. See if you can get a site tour, ask about the tech used… You can then add this to your knowledge for later. In my experience, industry is frequently several years ahead of academia so you get a good chance to understand the real world.


  • I’d go with a good quality traditional key lock fitted properly in a good door and frame. Security isn’t a single point task, it depends on many things so think like a bad person and do what you can to make your property a harder target than your neighbours.

    A good lock on a bad door doesn’t work, neither does a bad lock on a good door. Everything needs to work together. If you’re likely to lose your keys or many people need access a smart lock may be an idea, but good probably isn’t cheap. If it’s just you and you can keep your keys safe, then I think tried, tested and simple kit is good.

    Ultimately though, as ever, it’s your risk assessment based on your needs.








  • All the other comments are great advice. As an ex chemist who does quite a bit of code I’ll add:

    Do you want code that works, or code that works?! It’s reasonably easy to knock out ugly code that only works once, and that can be just what you need. It takes a little more effort however to make it robust. Think about how it can fail and trap the failures. If you’re sharing code with others, this is even more important a people do ‘interesting’ things.

    There’s a lot of temporary code that’s had a very long life in production, this has technical debt… Is it documented? Is it stable? Is it secure? Ideally it should be

    Code examples on the first page of Google tend to work ok, but are not generally secure, e.g doing SQL queries instead of using prepared statements. Doesn’t take much extra effort to do it properly and gives you peace of mind. We create sboms for our code now so we can easily check if a component has gained a vulnerability. Doesn’t mean our code is good, but it helps. You don’t really want to be the person who’s code helped let an attacker in.

    Any code you write, especially stuff you share will give you a support and maintenance task long term. Pirate for it!

    Code sometimes just stops working. - at least I’m my experience. Sacrifice something to the gods and all will be fine.

    Finally, you probably know more than you think. You’ve plenty of experience. Most of the time I can do what I need without e.g. classes, but sometimes I’ll intentionally use a technique in a project just to learn it. I can’t learn stuff if I don’t have a use for it.

    I’m still learning, so if I’ve got any part of the above wrong, please help me out.



  • There’s a lot of Scotland, and don’t underestimate driving times. Argyll is good, but can be rather wet any time of the year. Going around now you should be safe from the midgies. Recommend getting onto some of the islands too, and boat rides are always nice. Kerrera is a lovely little island just by Oban. It has a very atmospheric castle, though the teashop isn’t as good as it was so pack a lunch. If you like a dram, make a tour of some distilleries, each has it’s own character. Argyll has lots of archeology & standing stones if that’s your thing. There are loads of lumpy bits of you like walking too. Pretty much anywhere is good, tourist hotspot are ok, but try to get off the beaten track once in a while.

    If you’re driving, and going onto country roads, please please please learn to reverse.

    If you’re lucky you may get to spot some wild haggis, but they’re quite rare now. The farmed ones are cute but have a nasty bite so be careful.

    Also don’t neglect the borders, loads of history.

    It may not sound your thing, but consider geocaching… It takes you to some interesting out of the way places.





  • The PI is always a good place to start, but they’re not cheap anymore. You can still do some useful things at the command line (not sure how fun, but a great education), python is there and very accessible. - get a camera and you could do some great things with open CV. Not sure what packages are out there though. Think you’d just have to follow some web tutorials.

    As an alternative, have you considered an Arduino kit? Lots of great projects, all very well documented. Playing with LEDs, sensors, motors etc may keep their attention longer than a bash prompt.



  • many technical jobs are vocational in nature as it’s impossible to turn it off after work. As long as it’s not affecting your personal life & work life balance (and not affecting your friends and relations) then you are very lucky. Most people don’t enjoy their work so you’re in a good place. Importantly though, don’t feel obligated to do work problems on your own time and don’t let management expect it. Only do it if you want to.

    I like the saying “give a man a job he loves and he’ll never work again”. it’s been true for much of my working life.


  • As a reddit refugee, this is my first post and it’s taken a few hours to get to this point. My work involves getting non technical users to use high end tech and agree that language and terminology can make or break a deployment. Reddit is easy, sign in here and away you go, not quite so with Lemmy. I have learned that if a system isn’t explained as simply as possible, in terms that your grandmother (or boss) can understand, adoption will be harder.

    I’m not saying dumb it down entirely, but nobody cares about servers. Providers may be too abstract. Maybe go as far as calling them ‘Homes’ - or something else real world tangible. Once a user gets that on board they can then understand that different homes can talk to each other to form a village or community.

    I enjoyed the ‘thing explainer’ books… Cut out all the technical jargon, focus on the user experience and save the detail for those who want to know.

    As I say, I’m new here so apologise if I have spoken out of turn out caused offence, I’m watching and learning, and thought my fresh first hand experience may be of use.