I am perennially poor at maintaining habits, but they say start out small, so I’m attempting a weekly recap of what I learn each week (aimed, in general, at the world of computing, software development, and technology). This is week 1.

On a practical level

1. Checking if a variable is a hash in Ruby. Context: getting data that ought to be a hash and contain a value, but might not be. I find it interesting that in many languages, this simply wouldn’t be a relevant issue.

var.is_a?(Hash)

2. WooRank.com for getting a run-down on the quality of your site, from a development and SEO standpoint. It’s not perfect, and I take issue with a few points of how they rank, but it’s a great way to see your site from the outside in one go.

3. The basics of tmux, from this great tutorial. Tmux is a graphical program for terminal that makes it a lot easier to control and organize your work.

Conceptually

1. Data can be glorious or frustrating. When you need to work with large quantities of data — say, a set larger than something you can personally examine, but smaller than “big data” — there is a balance to be had between taking the data in conglomerate and analyzing it on an individual basis.

Determining when to take a deep dive and when to skim the surface is an art, one at which I’m still an early learner.

Doing a deep dive on data is daunting but often rewarding; if you can see an piece of data in its context, you can understand all the associations involved much better. On the other hand, it doesn’t necessarily give you the overall picture composed of the greater scheme of the data, and also requires significant mental effort and time.

It’s a skill. It must be developed like any other.

2. Force yourself to take breaks. This is not a new concept, but it’s one that many hard workers find difficult to accept and hold to.

Really truly, it will make a difference to the quality of your work.