It’s been quite a year! I wanted to make a quick recap of what I’ve done this year (outside of work): Service Atlas has been the big project of the year with: Creating new organization in Github and learning all that Learning Go for the backend Learning neo4j Learning to effectively vibe code the frontend Created an MCP server to connect to the API Learning Go concurrency by building a file parser Built Plandicoot, a private project for project resource allocation This blog (46/52 isn’t half bad) Renewed all my AWS Certifications Gained a new Python certification from O’Reilly I’ve been using daily.

I’m not really sure where I’m going with this post, hopefully we’ll end up somewhere coherent by the end. I was thinking about skipping this week and give myself some more time for either more GO programming or next weeks post (more geese incoming!), but then the discipline part of my brain kicked in and said “you’ve made it 15 weeks, you will keep going”. This made me start thinking about how long it takes to make a habit and how discipline keeps you doing the things you may not want to in the short term, but will be beneficial in the long term.

Sometimes a small project is exactly what a developer needs. I think this is especially true after finishing a longer project. Short projects may not have the same impacts as large, multi team projects, but they have their place none the less. Smaller projects allow you to focus on something different, something new. Even if its a dumpster fire that everyone wants to ignore, its not the dumpster fire you’ve been fighting the past six months.

Today’s post is going to be a short one, I just renewed my AWS Solutions Architect - Associate certification and gained the AWS AI Practitioner certification and thought I would share some tips that helped me through both. Read the questions thoroughly: there’s usually 1-2 keywords that will make one answer stand out. Read the answers thoroughly: I’ve found that the pattern is usually 1 off the wall answer, 2 that are similar, and one that seems plausible, but still kind of out there.

“I was nearly sure last night. He’s becoming real.” “But we’re all real!” At least, you are, and I suppose I am." “But he’s becoming more real. Extremely real. Nearly as real as Death, and you don’t get much realler…” I read that line in Mort by Terry Pratchett, a comical coming of age story, and it stuck with me. If we’re good engineers, we’re always on the move so to speak.