Clement Mihailescu

I hate coding.
I hate coding.
I hate coding.
My code works!
I love coding!

#softwareengineering #programming #coding

Sometimes, you have to take a step back and realize that there’s more to life than just your accomplishments and that those accomplishments are worthless if you’re not enjoying your life.

Coding should be a mandatory topic taught in school, starting as early as in the first grade.

It should be just as important as Math and English classes.

Everyone graduates from high school fluent in Python.

#programming #education

The recent story of the HBO intern who accidentally sent out an integration test email to end customers serves as a good reminder that blameless postmortems are critical to any software team.

When mistakes happen—especially bad ones (and let's be real, this one wasn't particularly bad; it ended up giving great unintended publicity to HBO)—learn from them, improve your processes, and make your team more resilient to future mistakes.

Don't blame.

#dearintern #intern #softwareengineering

Today, we answer the age-old question: “What’s the difference between a Software Engineer and a Software Developer?“

The difference is…

Nothing. Absolutely nothing. They’re the same thing.

#softwareengineering #softwaredevelopment

Every time. 😅

#softwareengineering #programming #coding

One of the coolest things about coding is that you can quite literally create value out of thin air.

For example, at the risk of making it sound trivial, you can create an API, which is just code that does “stuff,” and you can sell access to that API to customers. All you’re selling is the ability for someone to interact with your API—an invisible product that’s just code.

Stripe comes to mind; at its core, Stripe is just selling access to its payments API. And boy is that API valuable.

Pretty damn cool if you ask me.

#softwareengineering #programming #coding

6 years ago today was my first day at the Fullstack Academy coding bootcamp, officially marking the start of my coding journey.

At the time, I had no idea what would come of this learn-to-code endeavor.

I had no idea that I would land a job as a software engineer at Google 6 months later.

I had no idea that I would grow a YouTube channel about software engineering to hundreds of thousands of subscribers.

And I had no idea that I would build a business that would serve over 100k software engineers.

What I did know was that coding was an important skill that I wanted to learn for my career and entrepreneurial aspirations, and that I would do whatever it took to make the best of this endeavor.

(And I vaguely knew how to print “Hello World” and how to inefficiently manipulate arrays 😅)

Now, 6 years later, after relentlessly putting in work and never once ceasing to believe that I can accomplish anything I set out to, I know that embarking on this coding journey is the best decision I’ve ever made.

If you’re in a similar situation to mine 6 years ago, work hard, don’t doubt yourself, and profit. 🤝

#softwareengineering #programming #coding #entrepreneurship

Friendly reminder that if you’ve been thinking about starting a new endeavor (e.g., learning to code, launching a company, starting a YouTube channel, etc.), the best time to do so is now—not tomorrow.

The software engineer's urge to immediately rerun their code when the compiler throws an error, knowing full well that the outcome will be the same, but hoping for an exception.

(pun unintended 😂)

#softwareengineering #programming #coding

One of the coolest things about software engineering is version control.

Specifically, the fact that at most companies, you can see the entire history of all the changes that were ever made to its codebase(s): what the changes were, who made them, when they were made, what comments were left on them, the state of the codebase at the time, etc..

For example, right now, any software engineer at Google can go stalk all the code I’ve ever written while there, with just a simple search.

Or they can go look at some of the earliest lines of code that were ever written at the company.

Pretty neat and pretty useful.

#softwareengineering #programming

Attention tech recruiters, sourcers, and hiring managers!

Are you struggling to find qualified and motivated software engineering candidates?

Are you tired of sending InMail message after InMail message, cold email after cold email, only to get ignored?

Are you sick of spending a fortune on recruiting agencies?

Well, look no further than AlgoExpert Recruiting—AlgoExpert's brand new recruiting product, where you can get access to hundreds of qualified software engineers every month, for an unbeatable price.

Check it out today at https://lnkd.in/gu-ufdDa

(and if you’re not a tech recruiter, give this post a like so it can reach more tech recruiters!)

#tech #recruiting #softwareengineering

A couple of months ago, I posted some praise about backend engineers, who are often underappreciated since their work is mostly invisible.

Today, we praise another role that's often underappreciated: the UX writer.

What are UX writers, you ask?

They're the people who write all the text on the websites you interact with every day, ensuring that your experience is as seamless and delightful as possible.

If you've never thought about the text on a particular website, that means the UX writers probably did a great job. Conversely, if you *have* felt frustrated at a website's text in the past (lack of clarity, etc.), well...you should understand the importance of good UX writing.

UX writing isn't easy, it's critical to the quality of a product, and it's often invisible work.

Thank you, UX writers! 🙏

P.S. This appreciation is also directed to technical writers, who usually write the documentation for technical features and services.

#softwareengineering #ux #writing

I've seen a few people claim that because ChatGPT is very good at solving algorithm-style coding interviews, coding interviews as we know them will soon be a thing of the past.

Is this true?

🥁🥁🥁

No. Absolutely not.

Coding interviews are popular amongst tech companies, especially big ones, for two reasons:

1) They're scalable.

2) They're good at avoiding false positives (i.e., some good candidates fail them, but very few bad candidates pass them).

But isn't ChatGPT a bad candidate that passes these coding interviews with flying colors?!

Well, yes... But companies are interviewing human beings—not ChatGPT. And human beings can't walk into an interview room with ChatGPT at their side to assist them. As for remote interviews, the problem of cheating is neither a new one nor one without solutions.

Ultimately, just as calculators and Wolfram Alpha did not meaningfully change the way math teachers test students, ChatGPT will not meaningfully change the way tech companies interview software engineers.

#softwareengineering #programming #coding

Alright LinkedIn, let’s be a bit vulnerable today.

**Note that this is tough to accurately convey in writing, so if you’d like to get the certain je ne sais quoi and nuance that will inevitably escape this post, consider watching the video I made on this topic, linked in the comments.**

This year has been a weird year for me. It’s been both the best year of my life and arguably the worst year of my life (at the risk of sounding dramatic).

The best year, because a lot of conventional “success metrics” in my life have reached all-time highs: wealth, business growth with AlgoExpert, followers on YouTube and LinkedIn, etc.. And these are things that I’ve historically sought out, so it’s been very satisfying to reach them.

The worst year, because, especially during the middle months of the year (February to July), I felt very unhappy—noticeably less happy than in previous years—despite having all the reason to be happy and having ostensibly “more“ than I had in previous years.

After some deep and prolonged introspection, I concluded that perhaps my workaholic tendencies, which had previously rewarded me, were getting the best of me, and that perhaps I needed to allow myself to enjoy life a little bit more, to enjoy the fruits of my labor more, and not to be constantly working or guilt-tripping myself for not working (I cannot overstate the toxicity of that last point about guilt-tripping oneself).

——

As far as takeaways, I think it would be disingenuous of me to use this experience to vilify hustle culture, since I do firmly believe that hard work is required to achieve certain things, and I don't regret having worked as much as I have in recent years; I don't think I'd be where I am today had I done things differently, and I'm happy about where I am today.

At the same time, it would also be silly for me to undermine the importance of work-life balance, given that I neglected it so outrageously and that it clearly eventually had a negative impact on my life.

So, I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to extract a lesson from my experience and from their own experiences 🙃

——

P.S. I've been making a big effort to enjoy life more during the last few months, and I'm happy to report that I'm very happy these days 😁

I know, I know. You've all been dying to see another Google coding interview. Well, the wait is finally over—I present to you a Google *frontend* interview that I conducted with the one and only Conner Ardman!

Link to the video is in the comments below 👇 Enjoy!

#softwareengineering #programming #coding #frontend #google

Inaction and procrastination often have an incredibly negative impact on your well-being.

The emotional toll you incur from doing nothing or from putting things off is always much worse than the immediate discomfort you experience from taking action.