I've caught the efficiency bug.

I recently started a minimum wage job to get my life back in order after a failed 2 year project (post mortem: next time bring more cash for a longer runway)

I've noticed this thing I do at every job, where I see inefficiency and I think "how can I use technology to automate myself out of this job?"

My first ever application was in C++ for college (a BASIC interpreter) and it's been so long I've since forgotten the language.

But after a while every language starts to look like every other language, and you start to wonder if maybe the reason you never seriously went anywhere as a programmer was because you never really were cut out for it.

Code monkey, sure. Programmer? Dunno, maybe I just suffer from imposter syndrome.

So a few years back I worked at a retail chain. Nothing as big as walmart, but they have well over 10k store locations. They had two IBM handscanners per store, old grungy ugly things, and one of these machines would inevitably be broken, lost or in need of upgrade/replacement about once a year, per location. District manager, who I hit it off with, and made a point of building report with, told me they were paying something like $1500 a piece.

After a programming dry spell, I picked up 'coding' with MIT app inventor. Built a 'mostly complete' inventory management app over the course of a month, and waited for the right time.

The day of a big store audit, (and the day before a multi-regional meeting), I made sure I was in-store at the same time as my district manager, so he could 'stumble upon' me working, scanning in and pricing items into the app.

Naturally he asked about it, and I had the numbers, the print outs, and the app itself to show him. He seemed impressed by what amounted to a code monkeys 'non-code' solution for a problem they had.

Long story short, he does what I expected, runs it by the other regionals and middle executives at the meeting, and six months later they had invested in a full blown in house app, cutting IBM out of the mix I presume.

From what I understand they now use the app throughout the entire store chain.

So if you work at IBM, sorry, that contract you lost for handscanners at 10k+ stores? Yeah that was my fault (and MIT app inventor).

They say software is 'eating the world' but it really goes to show, for a lot of 'almost coders' and 'code monkeys' half our problem is dealing with setup and platform boilerplate. I think in the future that a lot of jobs are either going to be created or destroyed thanks to better 'low code' solutions, and it seems to be a big potential future market.

In the mean while I've realized, while working on side projects, that maybe I can do this after all, and taken up Kotlin. I want to do a couple of apps for efficiency and store tracking at my current employer to see if I'm capable and not just an mit app-inventor codemonkey after all.

I'm hoping, by demonstrating what I can do, I can use that as a springboard into an internal programming position at my current gig (which seems to be a company thats moving towards a more tech oriented approach to efficiency and management). Also watching money walk out the door due to inefficiency kinda pisses me off, and the thought of fixing those issues sounds really interesting. At the end of the day I just like learning new technologies, and maybe this is all just an excuse to pick up something new after spending so long on less serious work.

I still have a ways to go, but the prospect of working on B2B, and being able to offer technological solutions to common and recurring business needs excites the hell out of me..as cringy and over-repeated as that may sound.

A week with flutter:
1. I like how simple it is compared to React Native
2. Same issues as react, want platform specific, good luck writing plugins. Though the upside is I can use Swift and Kotlin with it, but still mixed code is bad

Word of advice:
Whenever you plan you invest a considerable amount of time in learning a new language make sure that its well documented and has a good support.

I give up! Been trying to solve this shit for a week and still failed:

Using Android Data Binding, two-way binding and when I compile I receive this error:

Unknown class: java.lang.String

It was working without issues before upgrading Android Studio.

Anyone has a clue how to solve this shit?

By the way I'm using Kotlin, on Java it doesn't produce errors, and I'm not going to convert my project to Java ...

How do you guys deal with PRs where things just don't go in and you're always making the same comments and suggestions?

We have a fairly experienced guy in the team who doesn't seem that familiar with the language (Kotlin), despite having now used it for almost a year. We're constantly making the same comments on code not using the correct syntax (basic things like val vs var) or following the style guide and after a lot of grumbling the changes are made, but the same issues are present in the next PR.

He also keeps doing things their own way, even if as a team we've reached consensus on a particular design pattern to follow, or way to solve a problem. When you mention this, you just get a "Hmm okay" but nothing changes. It's like things just go in one ear and out the other.

Even as the reviewer this is really frustrating and demoralising. PRs have loads of comments which makes you feel like you're being picky, and they take forever to get approved and merged.

I even often find myself effectively feeling bullied into approving once most of the main comments are addressed, because you're talking the brick wall that isn't yielding - and none of us are happy with the quality of the code going in. A couple of us are even starting to think "I'm just going to have to accept this and then fix it myself later", which is just not a healthy approach.

Now I'm blessed with an amazing manager who is well aware of the problem and knows from his own experience that this guy is genuinely problematic to work with. We're working towards a solution but I was wondering if anyone here has had a similar experience and how you worked towards solving it?

I'm a little at my wit's end :/