Get best of the week

How to draw a cat

This is my talk at PiterPy Meetup # 20, recorded in text and slightly edited. If you want to watch, not read, the video is at the end of the post

Hello, Habr. I will talk about how valuable, in my opinion, is not only to own my usual working tools, but also all sorts of things that lie around.

Post title - how to draw a cat. This is a clickbait trick, draw cats as you like! But the topic really excites me. Now I will explain everything, I will mention T-shaped, Habr himself and three personal stories.



I am STO in a St. Petersburg startup. There are surely those who have used or heard about my products, but today I'm talking about something completely different.



To begin with, about the letter T. It may seem that this is the Russian letter Te, as in the phrase “there is no cat,” but this is not Te, this is T from T-shaped skills. This is a metaphor that was invented back in the eightieth year, it is visual and I really like it.



Here we have Asya junior developer, and, of course, Asya has some kind of skill.

Asya writes microservices. Asina's work looks something like this: Asya writes an endpoint, a request arrives at the endpoint, and Asina's task is for the service to make a request to the database and give a reasonable answer.

Asya is very worried and just in case, every time she checks on Stack Overflow whether she correctly declared an empty list.

Months pass, tasks change, knowledgeable colleagues go on vacation, you have to study, and it’s most curious. And Asin skill has grown. Now she remembers by heart how import werkzeug is spelled and scares her cat with this word.



But months after months go on, tasks become more complicated, and knowledgeable colleagues all go on vacation, and you have to study further, and it’s most curious. Asin the cat is now not afraid of anything at all, especially the console, and carefully helps debase slow requests. And the manager invited her to talk that Asya would receive more money. Asya is no longer June, Asya is a serious middle. Asya fumbles in his field.



We denote this in our diagram. Asi had a skill, and the skill grew. Such a state of skills, as at Asi’s moment, is called Ai in the T-shaped metaphor.



Ai, it’s like T, but with some difference.



In our metaphor, this means that in addition to expert knowledge in his field, there are related areas in which Asya can develop.

I very much hope that at this point in the report you have well associated Asya with yourself, whether you are with yourself in the future, yourself in the present, or, perhaps, with a version of yourself from the past.

I’m talking about such skills that aren’t your greatest strength, but just something that you know how to play with, have an idea. It is not necessary to become what you do not want to become. It can be anything, we always have room to grow further, the world is huge and diverse.



My first story is called “kubectl apply minus f foo dot yaamel”

It starts like this. I read Habr. The algorithm for reading Habr is very simple, about once a month I open the best for a month, and see what gets on the first page. I am very happy if I see a post by Sergey Abdulmanov under a usernameMilfgardor post Zelenyikot(codename Vitaly Egorov).

At that time I read enthusiastically about Kubernetes, there are all kinds of pods, nodes and a monkey of chaos - a monkey of chaos is a script that specifically turns off random pieces of your infrastructure, and the service should survive.

I was very curious. Firstly, I realized that if you turn off any of our servers, the service will fall. Secondly, I was a little worried that the secret knowledge of how to configure and configure our entire infrastructure lies in my head.

In general, Kubernetes seemed to me some kind of cool thing, which would be nice to somehow apply, but not right now. But if you put the work on pause just a little bit, it doesn’t count, it's the same as drinking tea or going to the toilet, you can do it.

At this moment, real, with a capital letter, tasks awaited me, for which, as my anxiety tells me, it is necessary to spend time right now. But this is anxiety and I do not believe her.



I put minikube, this is a thing to run Kubernetes on my laptop, and joyfully went through the tutorial. My eyes were on fire. I had fun. Instead of tasks, I played with a tutorial. I was cool, I was learning new, I became a more valuable specialist, and besides, I lied to two toads at once. Yes, toads. I will introduce you toads now.



The first toad is called Toad of Procrastination. It seems to be fun to study this Kubernetes of yours, but not now. I’ll put in the list of things that would be nice to learn. There are already 53 points marked importantly accumulated. Oh, and it’s hard nowadays for developers, so many things, so many things.

The second toad is called the Toad of Perfectionism. Kubernetes, if you already know, it’s good to know. This must begin with the basics. A thick volume to buy, read, keep a compendium. Underline definitions with a marker. Learn everything underlined by heart. I’m a good specialist, I’m a master of my business, if I study kubernetes, then I can certainly write all the options for StrategyType for the deployment on the board. I’m not gouging, but a master of my craft, I won’t learn in snatches. I’ll go and order a book. And I’ll add to the list of pieces for study. There are already 53 points marked importantly accumulated. Oh, and it’s hard nowadays for developers, so many things, so many things.

So here. Where did we leave off. While I put the minikube and joyfully went through the tutorial, I elegantly lied to these toads. I had fun, I played, toads are not interested in pampering and tomfoolery, it is invisible to them. And the progress is as if you are really learning. I poked Kubernetes yet, the tutorials are boring, I wondered how to put the real django web server into it. So, there’s something about volumes, about stateful and stateless. Interesting. And it seems to work out. Toads are surprised, indignant and defeated.

A few days later I returned to the game with Kubernetes. Developed intuition, transferred one not very significant, but already working service. I was glad. Here it must be said that our infrastructure was already in the clouds, and there were some angels. Our angel was Digital Ocean.



Digital Ocean is a very famous hoster, and it also supports startups. For our company, they allocated thirty thousand virtual digital dollars that can be spent on rental services. This is really great support, about two million rubles, thank you very much.

But there were limitations:
â–șIt is not allowed to mine a crypt
â–șNever can use a server for machine learning
â–șAnd, most importantly, in a year free money burns out

We used our free money to the fullest, raised VPS for every sneeze and anyway for more memory, we still a year can’t spend this money on servers in a reasonable way, we are not so huge yet.



And urgently I had to move to another hoster, but everything is packed in neat helm charts, these are formal instructions for robots to deploy the necessary service, like readme files written by people for people, only strictly formalized and very detailed.

We transferred everything from one hoster to another, only correcting the configs. It helped me a lot that I messed with kubernetes.



My second story is called “Oculus”.

I really love VR, I have two oculus helmets at once, both portable, Quest and Go.

Once I wrote a game where you are in complete darkness with a flashlight running around a flat night field, and in the middle of the field is a high concrete pillar. VR games studios for some reason underestimate the fact that the helmet is much more realistic when it is dark, the grid is not visible on the black pixels.



I had fun and along the way I learned a lot of things about shaders, web standards and realistic concrete structures. This made me a more valuable professional, but was not at all perceived as a corporation over documentation. I was cool, I was learning new, I became a more valuable specialist, and besides, I lied to two toads at once. You are already familiar with toads, so for a while we’ll leave them alone, but for now I’ll add some python.



In my other toy, I made you walk in a VR helmet and see other people in helmets.

You see them really where they are. And you see the doors, floors, walls, and in general everything you want to move from the real world to the virtual one. You can play ladies without seeing each other and without removing their helmets. This is my favorite part.



On the way, I learned a lot about client-server architectures, web sockets and ways to reduce latency in multiplayer games. It was fun. And also it made me a more valuable professional, and was not at all perceived as a corporation over documentation. I was cool, I was learning new things, I became a more valuable specialist and, moreover, lied to two toads at once.The frogs of Procrastination and Perfectionism hiccup every time I mention them, but I really, really want you to remember from this article not the concrete, the countless seals, but the live hack that if you play, then procrastination does not turn on, if you are fooling around, then You can’t set yourself high standards. And you will achieve a lot.

There is absolutely nothing to understand, but here is my laptop, and on the monitor the 3d world, yellow cubes - the heads of real people in vr helmets, these people see only the floor, the doorway and each other. And they try to walk like that. And I look at them in real time in both worlds, shoot a video, and have a great time.





In Austin Cleont’s book, “Steal Like an Artist,” creativity is not at all freedom without limits . Quite the opposite. Overcoming creative stupor is quite simple - you need to limit yourself. I am sure that he did not invent this, but he wanted to refer to a bigger expert.

The post, I recall, is called "How to draw a cat." Here is one way to do it. Draw it in CSS.

For me, drawing CSS is like a puzzle. How to draw something with a very small set of tools? Tools not for drawing.

It will be funny, and you will also learn about a million new properties, and in more boring tasks of the “move div” level you will feel like a fish in water.





Pixel art is a huge world, but I’ll talk about it only because sites have favicons. Try making a good looking favicon 16x16. This is a challenge!

Many years ago, I worked in a 220 volt company and tried, out of interest, to draw a new favicon for an online store. I had a great time painting, and I don’t feel like I wasted my time in spite of the fact that they didn’t take it (and rightly so!). Many years later, they still have the same, not mine, yellow triangle on the favicon, and I am pleased to look at it and recall the harsh 16x16 world.



This is where my personal stories ended, I do tasks out of work, everything is clear with me. I’ll tell you better why I believe that all this can be useful to you personally.



I see four significant points, why an abstract IT specialist may find it useful to suspiciously like entertainment. And this is not counting the war with toads:

â–ș Flexibility as a professional. Everything changes in order to be in demand on the market; it is valuable to be able to do different and related
things â–ș A way to architects if you suddenly want to be an architect
â–ș This is fun. Doing things like work, but not work, is a great vacation.
â–șCan connect your skills with other areas. In the non-IT field, the ability to program is a super-ability.

If you quickly and quickly scroll an article, then you are unlikely to read this sentence, but then you will see a picture



Read more about super-ability. There are 3D graphics. Blender, this is such modeling software, has a python API. You may not know how to draw in 3d, but you can program the hypercube animation for a couple of evenings and have a great time.


The author of the picture programagor

Doing something for the fan, by itself, will reduce the degree of seriousness, and hence perfectionism. If I spend the evening on pampering with functional languages, this is just a game, nothing serious. And the toads of perfectionism and procrastination will be defeated - you don’t have to do the task well, you are just fooling around with something that you didn’t do before.



I made a list of specific things that you can do, if you really want to, but it's not clear where to start.


â–șMicroelectronics and smart home
â–ș3D graphics in Blender
â–șPersonal telegram bot
â–șFunctional programming
â–ș Cellular machines
â–șExamine your friends graph using social
media APIs â–șNeural networks , if you’re not
already â–șToys, see the pygame framework
â–șWeb service that no one will do, besides you
â–șProcedural ASCII art



This is how skill grows in the world that I described, but there are other options. For example, you can be an expert in two completely different areas, and their intersection will make you a unique super-rare specialist. This is great, it means that you have a super-unique competency. But we will not dwell on this in detail, there is a more important question:



How to incorporate all these funny useful things into your life if you do not have time and you are already busy with work, family and study? And how does it work for me when I am very, very busy working in a startup?

Only one thing works for me. Do not put this time in the category of useful, not in the category of personal growth, but in the category of fan, relaxation and fun. Only this way it will turn out. It can help to play with such things with someone together, as part of socialization. In the spirit, “hey, but you don’t want to write a toy together for the evening?” You can think of it as a thing for working on a personal brand, such as “I’ll indulge in a demo, then I’ll tell you at the mitap”. But just I beg you, in no case put the fun in the category “another pet project”, so nothing will work. It’s a fan, it’s fun, it’s like a series of a series, if you watch series, it’s inadmissible to leave dying among pet projects.

So, so that it becomes part of your already busy life, put this time not in the category of useful, not in the category of personal growth, but in the category of fan. Only this way it will work.


That's all, thanks for reading, send the cats to hp, and here is the video of the original report:

More articles:


All Articles