Ben Sinclair

Nov 24, 2024 | dev.to | Ben Sinclair

Sometimes, especially when you're at the beginning of your career, it can seem that you're following the instructions and getting nowhere - while everyone else seems to find it terribly easy. It can be pretty disheartening, and I want to describe a couple of ways I experience exactly the same thing even after, well, decades. So here I am, trying to detail the stumbles and bumbles I make trying to get things to work. This is my first post on the subject, but I hope to make more.

Nov 24, 2024 | dev.to | Ben Sinclair

Sometimes, especially when you're at the beginning of your career, it can seem that you're following the instructions and getting nowhere - while everyone else seems to find it terribly easy. So if you're ever feeling like your last technical test was abord the Kobayashi Maru, I get it. Sometimes it's something you haven't been taught yet. Sometimes you've been shown it, but it hasn't clicked. Sometimes you do everything right, and you grok the problem, but the documentation is missing a vital step.

Oct 16, 2024 | dev.to | Ben Sinclair

Shadowing commandsI'm going to show you how to shadow a "real" application so you can bolt things on after the fact. I'm going to use shell functions to do it. Functions in the command line are like more powerful aliases. bUt YoU dOnT lIke aLiAsEsYeah. I posted about that. I know. Everything I said there stands. We're not adding a subcommand here this time, or forcing default flags. We're going to be overriding one specific scenario, which is when the user types ssh on its own.

Aug 24, 2024 | dev.to | Ben Sinclair

If you weren't always a developer as a profession, what did you used to do? Why did you change? Looking back, do you have regrets, or do you wish you'd changed earlier in your career? I've always worked with computers, though I went through IT support / network admin / hardware engineer roles before settling on software development.

Jul 10, 2024 | dev.to | Ben Sinclair

These days the majority of my (programming) work is (in order of SLOC): PHP, Javascript (including Node), CSS, HTML, and shell scripts. I do sometimes dip into other languages, but the instances are tiny compared to these main ones. And this is my story. HardwareI'm writing this on my main me-facing machine. It's running Windows 11, but that's almost entirely for Important Gaming Reasons.