Author: MJ Alwajeeh

Passionate programmer and architect. Cloud Enthusiast. Lifelong learner.

How well do you know X?

In today’s world of cloud technology, change is coming at a breakneck pace. It’s both very exciting and quite daunting.

So, when you’re facing a seemingly insurmountable challenge, what do you do? Well, you plan and strategize your approach of course!

Take Azure for example, it already has 90+ services with new ones coming out on a regular basis! Learning most of these services, or even keeping up with them is a daunting challenge indeed.

Well, I recently learned of a good mental framework for assessing how well you know something, and I think it’s a great way to tame the learning approach.

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Azure Learning Paths

With each new day, there seems to be yet another Azure service to explore and master. If you try to keep up with the breadth of all Azure services and their associated features, you are bound to feel overwhelmed.

So, how do you deal with such feelings?

Well, there’s a saying for that:

How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time, of course!

It’s really that simple — you just have to pick one service at a time and learn it!

I was pointed to a fantastic resource recently that does an excellent job of laying out a learning path for a lot of Azure services.

Using a flow-chart of sorts, your journey to learning Azure Batch, as an example, can look this elegant:

Azure Batch - Learning Path

 

So, what are you waiting for? Check out Azure Learning Paths!

Enjoy!
MJ

Open your mind to mindmaps!

Many of my colleagues have noticed over the years that I’m a fan of mindmaps in general, and a huge fan of mindmapping software in particular.

I can’t remember when I first heard of mindmaps, but it was several years ago, and I remember thinking that it’s a neat tool for organizing your thoughts. I was introduced at first to the paper form, and while artistic and fancy looking, I did foresee potential scalability and usability issues with the medium (as a software architect, I can’t not think of these things).

However, it was only 2 to 3 years ago that I saw an ex-colleague of mine using mindmapping software to capture meeting notes from a group session that was particularly all-over-the-place.

I was very enticed by what I saw.

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Long time no see!

Hey there,

Fact: It’s been a while since I’ve blogged.

I stopped blogging altogether after my first couple of introductory posts, and I’m not too happy about it.

At the time I published my first few introductory posts, I was at my old workplace, and had plenty of time and energy after work to dabble with blogging.

However, it was shortly after creating this blog that I ended up getting a fantastic job at a new company and what a difference it has been in terms of time and energy requirements at the new joint!

I was reinvigorated to pour hours into my work and other extra-curricular activities, and was excited to hang out with colleagues after work any chance I got.

This all meant I had little time to write the giant blog posts I originally intended about complex topics like design patterns.

However, I’ve made my peace with that now, and my current plan is to start a habit of posting regularly about the tech topics I’m most interested in these days, and refine my approach over time!

In other words, keep it agile and fail fast, that’s the only way to learn quickly and get better!

So, stay tuned for more posts coming your way very very soon!!

Cheers,
MJ

LessConfusing.com – Technical Overview

Well, second week, second post; so far so good!

I love programming and I love software architecture, and I think design patterns appeal to me because they are at the intersection of both of those disciplines.

Now, I’m under no illusion that this blog is the first to ever discuss design patterns, or that it’s going to cover new and uncharted ground on the topic anytime soon, but, that actually encourages me to build on what’s already out there, and try to share my own perspective on this topic.

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LessConfusing.com – The Origin Story

So, I’m blogging. Yes, that’s right; I finally did it.

For years, I’ve frequented and benefited from numerous software development blogs without ever thinking that I should, or even could, do this too. Well, that’s all changed now. This is my first (non-Hello-World) post, and there’s no turning back now. I certainly have John Sonmez from Simple Programmer to thank!

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