Evans Library

A developer's writing space.
Not merely on the surface, but a life of exploring and contemplating the essence.

Facing Anxiety Head-On

Last month, I spectacularly bombed an interview at a company I wanted to join due to lack of basic skills. Fortunately, right after the interview I organized all the questions and problems I couldn’t answer or solve on GitHub, so I knew exactly what to study. I spent a month obsessively digging into computer science fundamentals. I pulled out dust-covered textbooks from college that I hadn’t opened since my student days and started reading them thoroughly, scraping together JavaScript fundamentals through relentless Googling. Actually, just looking at the topics of posts I’ve written reveals what I studied over the past month.

Nov 16, 2019

What Information Is Stored in TCP's Header?

In my previous post, Why Did HTTP/3 Choose UDP?, I briefly touched on TCP, but that post focused on what problems TCP had that led HTTP to move away from it. This time, I want to focus more on TCP itself. I originally planned to cover all of TCP in a single post, but the sheer volume of material forced me to split it into several posts. (This grandpa protocol just never ends no matter how deep you dig…)

Nov 10, 2019

What Information Is Stored in TCP's Header?

Simplifying Complex Problems with Math

Recently, many IT companies conduct coding tests when hiring developers. While each company differs in the style of problems they pose, most seem to prefer simple algorithm problems or problems that mix in real-world scenarios, like those on Codility or Programmers. Given the nature of these problems, you need to use CS fundamentals, problem analysis skills, and intuition in various combinations — so short-term practice won’t dramatically improve your abilities.

Oct 30, 2019

[JS Prototypes] Implementing Inheritance with Prototypes

In this post, continuing from the previous one, I want to talk about various inheritance patterns using prototypes. JavaScript doesn’t have explicit concepts like inheritance or encapsulation, which is why developers coming from class-based languages like Java or C++ are often confused by the absence of classes in JavaScript.

Oct 27, 2019

[JS Prototypes] Implementing Inheritance with Prototypes

Beyond Classes: A Complete Guide to JavaScript Prototypes

In this post, I want to talk about prototypes — a concept you can’t ignore when discussing JavaScript. Prototypes are very familiar to those who’ve been using JavaScript since the ES5 days, but for developers who started with ES6, classes are the norm, so prototypes might feel like unfamiliar territory.

Oct 23, 2019

Beyond Classes: A Complete Guide to JavaScript Prototypes

Heaps: Finding Min and Max Values Fast

In this post, I want to explain and implement the heap — one of the most representative data structures. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I’m currently unemployed. Now that my month of healing in Prague is over, it’s time to start going to interviews. As everyone knows, there’s a very high chance of getting questions about basic algorithms or data structures in interviews. But since I’ve been neglecting my fundamentals study for about a year, I need to study again.

Oct 12, 2019

Why Did HTTP/3 Choose UDP?

HTTP/3 is the third major version of HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol). Unlike HTTP/1 and HTTP/2, it communicates using QUIC, a UDP-based protocol. The biggest difference between HTTP/3 and its predecessors is that it runs on UDP instead of TCP. I first learned about HTTP/3 after reading a post someone shared: HTTP/3: the past, the present, and the future. My honest first reaction when I saw the title was:

Oct 08, 2019

My Experience with Burnout, and How I Overcame It

In 2018, I went through a severe bout of burnout. It’s a condition that even the WHO took seriously enough to officially register in ICD-11 in May 2019. The WHO says burnout isn’t classified as a medical disease, but rather as an occupational phenomenon.

Sep 23, 2019

My Experience with Burnout, and How I Overcame It

What Does Synchronous Really Mean?

In this post, I want to talk about what synchronous — a concept used across various models including I/O and networking — actually means, and explore the difference between synchronous and asynchronous approaches. I’ll also briefly touch on blocking and non-blocking, two concepts that are frequently confused with sync and async.

Sep 19, 2019

What Mindset Should I Bring to Building Software?

I recently read Sandro Mancuso’s The Software Craftsman. The book left a strong impression on me, so in this post I want to share what Mancuso is trying to convey and my own thoughts along the way.

Sep 05, 2019

What Mindset Should I Bring to Building Software?

Let's Keep Our Commit History Clean

In this post, I want to discuss the differences between three common Git merge strategies: Merge, Squash and merge, and Rebase and merge. I briefly touched on these in a previous post about Git basics, but this time I’ll go into more detail.

Aug 30, 2019

How Developers Survive Through Learning

In this post, I want to talk about something inseparable from being a developer: studying. Every profession requires ongoing learning, of course, but the IT industry changes faster than most — which means developers have no choice but to keep studying until they retire. Developers are on the front lines of technology, which makes them especially sensitive to change. Some changes are passing fads; others are foundational knowledge that’ll serve you for the next 20 years. But no matter how much we study, the sheer volume of new technology makes it impossible to learn everything. So we have to evaluate whether a technology is a temporary trend, a lasting skill, or something we need right now — and choose accordingly.

Aug 26, 2019

Object-Oriented Programming Is Actually Fun: A Quick Tour of OOP

In this post, I want to talk about Object-Oriented Programming — commonly known as OOP — one of the most widely used design methodologies in software. OOP is a design paradigm based on the concept of modeling the real world in program design. It rose to prominence in the early 1990s and remains one of the most prevalent design approaches used by developers worldwide, so it’s well worth understanding.

Aug 24, 2019

Object-Oriented Programming Is Actually Fun: A Quick Tour of OOP

Do Developers Need to Be Good at Math?

In this post, I want to address one of the questions I get asked most frequently: “Do developers need to be good at math?” This is a topic that divides developers worldwide, so please take this as just one developer’s perspective.

Jul 17, 2019

Is the Randomness Your Computer Creates Actually Random?

In this post, I want to talk about randomness. Randomness refers to a pattern where, when events occur, there’s no discernible regularity between one event and the next — a truly arbitrary sequence. The computers we use also need to generate random patterns from time to time, and they do.

Jul 14, 2019