We engineers have an affliction. It’s called “wanting to use the latest tech because it sounds cool, even though it’s technically more difficult.” Got that from the doctor’s office, it’s 100% legit. The diagnosis was written on my prescription for an over-the-counter monolith handbook. From 2004. Seriously though, we do this all the time. Every time something cool happens, we flock to it like moths to a campfire. And more often than not, we get burned.
I thought I was immune to this. I thought I knew better. So I thought that when I became interested in microservices, I was…
CODEX
Hey Siri, what’s next?
Medium is dominated by white people from North America. As an Asian guy from Malaysia, it’s super obvious. Because North America and Malaysia are worlds apart. The politics. The culture. The way we say things, even in the same language. And last but not least, the tech.
I was born in the year 2000. So it’s not like I grew up in the Dark Ages, before the internet was a thing. And yet I didn’t start going online actively until 2012. That’s strange. Because plenty of things happened on the internet after the dot com bubble. Web 2.0. Facebook. Google…
No miracles required.
“How are you doing this?” The casual question hung in the silence. Wasn’t the first time I heard it. All I talk about is what I’m doing. And I do a lot. But that’s not what prompts the curiosity. Dropping out of college to work on tech and be a nerd makes sense to people. But moving into songwriting and music from that? That’s trippy.
Obviously, there aren’t many transferable skills between tech and music. And it’s not like I have any musical education. So the jump is uncanny. But I find the path rather simple. Obvious, even. That’s why…
There comes a time in every teenager’s life when they contemplate ending it all. Actually, wait, is that just me? Unfortunately, I’m only half kidding here. And by half kidding, I mean not kidding at all. July 2nd, 2020. I’ll never forget the day. The day I almost left my life behind. But this story has a happy ending, I promise. I mean, look at me now. I’m still here. Besides, I learned something important about people in this process.
After I survived that day in July, I studied suicide for a little while. One of the cases which stuck…
We’re not always looking at the most important problems.
I was just 16. The code was sketchy, but it worked. That’s all that mattered. I was overjoyed. As I ran through all the features on my old Alienware laptop, I dreamed of fame. Fortune. Computer science stardom. My 2D rip off of No Man’s Sky was sure to propel me into the stratosphere. By now, you can probably guess that it didn’t. But what did happen was even better.
Engineers are some of my favorite people. Our capacity for focus is refreshing. When an engineer is talking to you, he’s talking to you, and doing nothing else. Not typing…
Loyalty. I first remember hearing the word when I was ten. One day, I was watching a violent medieval movie with my dad. The guy didn’t get the memo on censoring gore for kids. But maybe it was all for the better, because I saw a conversation in that movie that I still think about all the time. A conversation between two knights about loyalty. Sure, it was fictional, but the concept captivated me nonetheless.
I believe we’re naturally drawn to the things that are good for us. We all have that compass deep down. It’s just a matter of…
“Question (almost) everything.”
The world of trading is like a circus. Only difference is people know when they’re at the circus. I’m not sure what to make of this job. Been doing it professionally for a while. And I’ve seen some strange things. But nothing quite as profound as the most valuable piece of trading advice I ever heard.
Listen, I get it. Many of you want to get into trading. Maybe you live for the thrill of danger. Maybe the uncertainty is your cup of tea. Maybe you just really want to make money. …
What you don’t want to hear, but should.
Sometimes, you have to shoot yourself in the foot. Maybe you run a company making trading bots. Maybe you’d benefit directly from people signing up to use your trading bots. But maybe you know something that most people don’t. Something that would hurt your business if they did. But maybe you have to come clean, anyway. And maybe that’s why I’m here. Because honestly, most people shouldn’t be touching trading bots.
I know. Strange, coming from me. I literally run a company building and selling these things. Technically, I should be getting you onto this as quickly as possible. And…
We engineers suffer from a curious affliction. On one hand, we like reading about other engineers’ opinions. We enjoy crawling tech blogs. Checking out other people’s code. But at the same time, we’re stubborn. We don’t change our mind, even when confronted with a logical reason to. This is exactly what I stumbled upon when I was building my first tech company.
Young engineers sometimes think they know more than they do. And that makes them want to do everything their way. Which is a problem when you’re working on a team. We can’t do everything each person’s way. We…
Envy with caution.
“You didn’t read Lord of the Rings in high school?”
“I had sex in high school.”
The iconic line from Friends. No doubt many of you know it. It’s floating around the internet as a meme. I first found it when I watched through the series as a teenager. After all, I was too young to catch it on the air. This line had an unexpected effect on me. I chuckled, but it also stung. Because it brought me back to my time in high school.
From the age of 15 and a half onwards, I did nothing but work…
Mika Yeap
Writing code that burns cash (trading bots). <mika@myika.co>
