Dani Berg

In order to keep this diary blog updated I should add a small note about mail servers. I’m still doing some sys admin work for about 2 hours a day.

After a lot of experimentation I finally have one mail server up and running with Postfix and Dovecot.

Besides the official documentation I usually try to read at least one book about the tools I’m working with. Safari led me to Postfix: The Definitive Guide by Kyle D. Dent. The book gives a good overview on how Postfix works and goes through several different configurations that you may be interested in implementing. The only problem is that the book is outdated (December 2003) – that’s last decade!

Everything seems to be running ok but running and maintaining a mail server is a lot of work. There are just so many details and configurations that can go wrong. Performance, Security, Authentication, Disk space, Spam, Anti-viruses… The list is huge. I’m looking forward to meeting the next sys admin to join our team.

I’m working on a project that offers domains and email accounts to the final client so it’s been a good experience to understand how mail and dns servers work. We have a lot work ahead!

In the past weeks I’ve been doing some temporary sysadmin work for my day job and this new role extended to my night-time job. Yeah, I joined a startup but I’ll talk more about that some other day.

I had to move one of the web services we offer in my regular job to its own server. It was a good change, we moved the entire app from a CentOS/cPanel box hosted on the Planet to an instance running Ubuntu on AWS.

CPanel is a really good product and saves you a lot of time but it is a pain in the butt if you are serving more than shared hosting accounts. If you have ever tried to automate tasks that handle virtual domains, email accounts and DNS entries you know what I’m talking about.

Anyway, I must admit that I’m having a blast wearing a sysadmin hat during part of my day. I’m learning a lot. I have this great excuse to read some books that were on my TO READ list for a long time.

One of these books is Pro DNS and Bind by Ron Aitchison. I have had this book on my desk for months but I finally finished reading it. The book gave me a nice introduction to DNS servers, resolvers, zone files, resource records and diagnostic tools. Highly recommended.

I have just a few posts per month but also have a lot of drafts waiting to be completed. A few of these drafts are almost complete and most are just short notes about subjects I want to write about in the future. I wish I could post more often, but not only is my schedule too tight, also writing clearly is just plain hard for me. It takes me precious time. Not to mention that English is not my mother tongue.

However, I have one more motivation to keep writing. Besides my beloved wife who has the burden of proof reading my posts I have a reader. Yes, that is right. One reader. Hallo Rafa! Thanks for all the support buddy.

Now, back to the topic of this post. I was checking the draft list and noticed that I didn’t add Masters of Doom to the Books category on this blog. I read this book many years ago but ended up reading it again this past December. Great source of inspiration.

In case you’ve been living under a rock, Masters of Doom is about John Carmack, John Romero, Id Software, Commander Keen, Wolfeinstein, Doom…

If you didn’t read it just do yourself a favor and order a copy of it!

Cloudy days are perfect for productive leisure, so in March before moving to the US I spent a lazy-cloudy-Sunday afternoon packing. Moving is always exciting and a good chance to get rid of everything that is not necessary in your life anymore. You can even leave bad vibes behind if you are spiritual. We tend to gather too much junk. Keep it simple.

The cleanup included my bookshelf. My mission was to dispose of as many books as possible. Boy, books are heavy to carry and physics does not apply when it is part of your luggage.

While running through the titles I started to compare dates of purchase against subjects. I have had this habit since I was a teen, every time I buy a book I sign and date it.

Anyway, my small library was another lead to an obvious issue: my quest to become a programmer is a mess.

Here’s one good example. I wanted to code games when I was a teen. After some research I concluded that C++ and DirectX were the right tools for the job. I decided to start with C++ and ordered “C++ How to Program” by Deitel. Back then, a small number of web pages would advise: “You have to learn C”. My mind discarded that advice as fast as I could read it. Why would I learn C? Isn’t C++ not only C but PLUS PLUS! It is the future. Yeah, I know you are laughing at me.

I read and tried all the examples from “C++ How to Program” before reading or writing any line of pure C code and felt ready to dive into some DirectX books and code the best tic-tac-toe ever!

Turns out my ambitious plan needed a detour. You have to go through some Windows programming before you can dive into DirectX (I don’t know how it works now a days). Gosh, 70 lines of C code just to print Hello World in the Win32 API world.

I can’t just copy and paste code so I ordered “Programming Windows” by Petzold to become familiar with Windows programming. BTW, Programming Windows is a great book — and I found a minor mistake in the text! (Erratum #5).

I read the book, tried the examples and the fact is: Win32 API is C Code.

Because of that I finally ordered the classic “The C programming language” book to fill this awful gap in my skill set. Comparing the dates of purchase I realized that I bought the C book 2 years after the C++ one. Sad.

I now remember that after going back and forth I finally achieved my goal. The best tic-tac-toe game ever written did compile and run without crashing. The euphoria lasted for almost 5 seconds!

Before writing my first line of code I was already humble and comfortable with the idea that it takes a lifetime to be a great developer. BUT, it took me a long time to have a better overview of the skills set you need to build in order to be a software developer.

It’s a matter of proper guidance.

It doesn’t matter if it’s a CS degree or guru souls willing to show you the way.

I was randomly checking the titles available from Safari’s web site when I found Apprenticeship Patterns by Dave Hoover and Adewale Oshineye. The book presents several patterns to improve your learning experience as a software developer apprentice.

Evaluating how you you learn is key to excel and achieve mastery in any form of art. Yes, I’m including software in the art category.

A good example to follow are musicians as they have in their curriculum a solid base on the matter. They learn not only how to play but how to study and practice. They have method.

Aprenticeship Patterns is a good book and the subject is fascinating. Probably most of the patterns are already part of your daily schedule, but reading the book is still a good opportunity to reflect on the process to hone in on your skills.