General – Ben Lewis

12Jan 2017 by lewisbenf_l4g8es No Comments

The Power of Point Five – Learn More About Your Numbers

Blog, General

I've been doing daily coding challenges on a couple of websites. It's been great to keep my skills fresh and find where I can improve my programming skills. Now the problem that I was working on yesterday was a simple one. I looked at it and thought to my self, "this is a little bit of simple math, I'll bang this out nice and quickly!". I write my code, give it a check, run the test case and at that point I think I'm golden. Then I run the submission tests, Pass, Pass, Pass, Fail..... wait, what just happened? I check my code and run the test case again, Pass. I run a custom test case, Pass. I run the submission tests, Pass, Pass, Pass, Fail. Ok, my first thought is…

05Jan 2017 by lewisbenf_l4g8es No Comments

Why Tony the Tiger thinks you’re great, and doesn’t give a shit who’s the best

Blog, General

Tony the Tiger, mantiger, myth, legend. It's all about being a tiger, an animal. But it's not about being the best... [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6VHr1u5n_k[/embed] Here's the standard scenario. Kid isn't sure he can do something, Tony has faith in them and gets them to eat Frosted Flakes. This brings out the tiger in the kid and everyone is impressed, queue ending and "They're Grrreeeeat!". Now what's going on here? There's been an intentional decision to focus on positive change and it's almost a perfect development of a story. They set the stage for an obstacle that needs to be overcome, the Frosted Flakes work as a agent of change, the subject undergoes a transformation and fulfills their goal, and this is reinforced with positive affirmation. What I want to highlight here is that…

30Dec 2016 by lewisbenf_l4g8es No Comments

Movies for Programmers

Blog, General

When I started the Web Development Immersive program at General Assembly on of the first things that was mentioned was the Growth Mindset, and with that Searching for Bobby Fischer. I watched the movie almost immediately and there were so many hidden lessons I was totally blown away. Throughout the program a couple of other movies were mentioned, The Imitation Game was an excellent one, and I've been thinking about what movies would be relevant to programmers. Here's my current list, I'll update it as I find more movies to add: Searching for Bobby Fischer Great examples of Growth Mindset The Imitation Game Encryption, computers, logic, oh my! We Live in Public A bit of a dot com documentary, some very interesting lessons on user interaction. Good Will Hunting No company…

14Dec 2016 by lewisbenf_l4g8es No Comments

A Beginners Guide to Blogging

General

I've blogged on and off for years, but it's mostly been off. For others that end up in the same position that I've been in here is some advice that I've received to help you start: Write - find any platform where you can quickly and easily capture your thoughts. This may be a notebook, twitter, a document, all that's important is that you start writing. Share - don't keep your thoughts to yourself! Put your content in a place that is unrestricted and can be found. This doesn't mean that you need to tell the world every time you make a post or an edit, just make your work available. Don't be Afraid! - do you want to improve? Cool! That means that you'll have faults, make mistakes and…