Julian: 0:00

How long have you spent trying to reach your goal? What are you spending your day on right now? How are you any different to your last year's self? We're in January. It's a great time for reflection. So there's a lot of stuff to think about. We really want you to check out this link. This dock is amazing. We've had wonderful feedback from it. And we hope you enjoy it. Hello and welcome to the Pie Blights Podcast, where we talk about Python, career, and mindset. We're your host. I'm Julian Sequera.

Bob: 0:28

And I am Bob Beldeboss. If you're looking to improve your Python, your career, and learn the mindset for success, this is the podcast for you. Let's get started. Hello and welcome back, everybody, to the Pie Blights Podcast. This is Bob Beldeboss. I'm here with uh Julian.

Julian: 0:44

Sequera.

Bob: 0:45

Sequera. In Spanish. He loves himself. Spanish. Spanish listener are going to laugh now.

Julian: 0:56

This is true. This is very it works on all levels. I like it.

Bob: 1:00

He's not a narcissist.

Julian: 1:01

Yeah. Welcome back, everyone. It's it's good to be back on this week's episode. Um, Bob, thanks for joining me. We have a special one. It's going to be a quick fire episode today. We want to make this uh quite actionable, informative, and uh and punchy. So less of the usual conversation today. We can bring that back next week. And um today we'll dive straight into it. So today, uh Bob and I, everyone, we're going to be talking about something that we've learned over the past six years of coaching. That's why we want to get this done now for January 2026. So we that's roughly six years since we first started our coaching program, uh, PDM. And we've learned a lot of stuff over those years. But there's a handful of things, seven tips that we've put together that essentially we come across in almost everyone that we've coached. So these are the most common things and issues, tips and suggestions that we will give to everyone because these are the gaps that they always have. No matter who we talk to, these are the gaps people fall into and the traps they fall into. Um, there's actually eight. Number one should be subscribe to this podcast. So if you are listening and watching this, make sure you like, subscribe, do all that stuff, and then dive into these other seven. All right. Um and full disclosure, this is a downloadable document. So we're not going to go into every one of these in extreme detail. We've put together a really nice, high-quality 20-page document that is going to blow your socks off. So use the link in the description and go and download it and have a play. So there you go. All right. Um, so we'll kick it off. I think I've got number one, right, Bob? Yep.

Bob: 2:44

You go.

Julian: 2:45

All right. So the the first fix that we have for people is to stop consuming and start building. And I know you've heard us waffle on about this before, but that's why this is number one. The greatest learning that you will achieve on your Python journey, or no matter what you're trying to do and learn and grow with, is to start building. So stop watching the videos, stop consuming mindlessly, and just start building. The second you put your fingers to keyboard and you start typing and you start getting stuck, you start solving problems, that's the time when all of the information and the stuff that you're learning sinks in. So I'm gonna leave it at that because there's a lot more in here, but you can read the document. Bob, do you want to go to number two?

Bob: 3:26

Yep. Escape the graveyard of abandoned repos. Uh, hard truth is that, you know, um a lot of people um say that they don't have much on their GitHub or they have a lot of unfinished projects or scripts, right? So it's kind of a productivity thing, going back to the one thing by Gary Keller, um, that you can focus on many things and have them half done, or you can focus on one project or or a few, two or three, and do them really well, right? Uh, because you will find more satisfaction in that. But also these projects um will look much better on your GitHub, right? So this year I would really focus on if you're you know uh spread thinly for for time, um or you want to have deep knowledge, then rather stick with one or two projects and polish them and do them really well on your GitHub.

Julian: 4:22

Yep. Absolutely. One good looking app is better than ten scrappy incomplete apps. All right, number three, on that note, stop coding in a vacuum. So one of the biggest issues when you code and when we've seen people come to us is that they've only coded in a silo. They they're the only people looking at their code. So they don't have anyone to look at it and tell them, hey, that could be improved, or you could make this more efficient, or you could uh use this library instead of that one because that makes more sense, or when you do it this way, you it's not building it for scale, and so on and so forth. So you will have gaps in your code and you don't know what you don't know. We always say that with our clients, and it's okay. You don't have to feel bad about it. The catch is it happens when you code by yourself because there's no senior around you to tell you otherwise or to show you otherwise. So what we promote here is stop coding in a vacuum. Go and find someone that you can code with, go and find someone who can do a code review for you. Now, obviously, if you want to do that, you probably want to find someone who's more senior, someone who has the credentials, i.e. us, right? That's what we do with our coaching. Um, and that's again why a lot of people come to us because they say we don't have a senior, experienced developer looking at my code, and therefore I don't know what's wrong with it, and I don't know how to improve it, I don't know how to scale it. So again, stop coding in a vacuum. Find someone senior who can go through it, do a human review. If you can, even do an AI review, but again, use caution with that because you can't always trust what AI spits out, but it's a good start, right? Uh, if you can't find someone. So there's one tip there, but more in the dock. On to you, Bob.

Bob: 6:07

Yep. Number four, stop writing scripts, start building systems. This is all about the tooling, right? Um, because you know the code is important, but as important is the whole tooling around it. So the three things here, right? Your setup. Um, we use UV, never looked back. Um, you get a standardized, reproducible uh setup, and it's very fast, right? So um yeah, think of your repo as how do I install this a year from now? How does another developer install this, make it ergonomic, right? And UV is going to help with that. Uh Git, non-negotiable, right? Like having strong Git skills, um, of course, opening PRs for review, but sometimes you need to go further, right? Maybe you need to do a rebase or use stashing. So being good at git is it really pays off because it's kind of how we trade code. And then uh testing, like last week uh on the episode in the podcast here, we had uh Elmer, and he basically said something like Um, your code can be crap, but if you have good testing, that's actually more important than having great code without test, right? So learning Py test and writing good tests um is very important, right? And um you should do that from the start, right? Because your project, especially if you go back to point two, where you're going to really evolve one project, uh you want to have those tests, right? To make sure that you don't break anything. And it's also a documentation or specification to somebody looking at the code, like how does this actually work? And can I prove in my project that it works like that? And the test will do that.

Julian: 7:40

Just a quick break. Let me ask you a question. How much of your last pull request did you actually write? And how much did AI write? If Copilot or ChatGPT disappeared tomorrow, would you still know how your code works and could you explain it in a code review? This is the problem we hear about the most from developers like you who reach out to us for a chat. At Pybytes, our PieBytes developer mindset program helps you become the developer who uses AI effectively, not the one who is completely propped up by it. Through a one-to-one coaching, real-world projects, and proper code reviews with an expert coach, not AI, you'll actually understand the Python code that you ship. If you're tired of feeling like a prompt engineer instead of a real developer, check out and apply for PDM using the link in the description. Now back to the episode. Yeah, it's that whole surrounding ecosystem of everything, right? It's beyond just Python. Uh and okay, that's a great segue. So geez, we really did this in the right order, didn't we? This doc. It's a it is amazing. You're gonna have to download it too.

Bob: 8:51

We put some thought in this, right?

Julian: 8:54

It's beautiful.

Bob: 8:55

It's another finger in the arrow.

Julian: 8:58

Yeah, just just guessing. No, no. This is intentional. So uh on that note, number five, uh, stop building toy apps. So look, it's great to start with. We all know when you start with Python, you're gonna start with something like, I don't know, a thermometer or a calculator, something to take in two numbers and multiply them, whatever, right? That's fine. But you're taking it to the next level, right? You're a serious developer, you want to be even more professional than you already are. You want to take it to the next level. So you need to have apps that showcase that skill. Essentially, what you need to do is start building products, right? No longer are you doing just little projects, you're building actual products that you have architected, that you have engineered to solve a specific problem. And that's why we always say scratch your own itch. But what you really need to do here is make sure that you're building a full solution. This goes back to Bob's tip number two, which is follow things through and finish them to the end, right? So make sure that you're building stuff that is actually solving a problem. Because when you do that, you can talk about it. You can talk about the why, you can talk about all of the detail is to why this app exists, how you built it, what design choices you made. And that's the person that employers are going to hire. They want to hire the person who can build solutions, build products, not just code, you know, a little scrappy thermometer.

Bob: 10:19

Yeah. I love that. Like the product mindset, right? Because uh that's how you're going to portray uh and sell your idea, right? Which is important. Plus, if you get real users, then everything changes, right? They will find bugs, they will come up with feature requests, and then you have like real real development. Yeah. All right. Uh number six, uh, debug your mindset. Oh, the mindset that should have been yours, but anyway, I'll take it. Um, so of course, that's the imposter uh problem, right? So imposter syndrome, still big, doesn't change, and that's of course because this is a very fast-moving industry. And with all the previous tips, we basically ask you to to get out there and and be exposed, right? Which um is not easy. So three sub tips here uh the 20-minute rule. So um, if you work on complex code, um if you cannot figure it out within 20 minutes, ask for help. Um, of course, you can use AI, but uh, we challenge you to also ask a fellow human for help, right? To really reach out and make that connection, um, especially if it's a more senior engineer. Um, don't compare yourself to um others, because that's a recipe of of uh unhappiness, right? If we uh compare ourselves to these um amazing open source contributors, we always fall short, right? Compare yourself to your yesterday self, right? So we keep a wins file and we can just read back our wins. And if you look at the wins from 2020, we we're like, wow, you know, like this is progress, right? So use use yourself as a reference, um, and embrace the I don't know, right? There's nothing wrong with not knowing. Um, there's this imposter syndrome uh picture we have on the blog somewhere, like what you think others know and and what others think you know, and it's it's you know, yeah, it's kind of mind-blowing. So um it's it's okay to not know, it's normal. Everybody has a big gap in their knowledge, and it's fine. Just embrace it, right? See it as a challenge where you can always grow, and that makes it also exciting, like coming in every day and and and see these gaps and and work on them.

Julian: 12:21

Yeah, absolutely. And then that's where opportunity comes from, you know, bridging those gaps. So there's a whole uh podcast episode we could talk about there.

Bob: 12:30

Well Derek Saver said, like, if if it was easy, we were all like billionaires with six six pack apps. Like like there's something in the struggle, right? Like that makes this this fun, right?

Julian: 12:41

Yeah. Absolutely. And you gotta find the thing, you know. What was it? Uh I think it was Alex Hormozy was saying you've got to find the thing worth struggling for. What's worth suffering for? You know, whatever life is suffering, what's worth suffering for. So I I like that. Um okay, and so the the last tip, number seven, before we we finish this up, is stop playing on hard mode, right? And and this is essentially stop going alone. You know, uh so many people are so afraid of asking for help. So many people are afraid of looking stupid. They're afraid of uh having someone look at their stuff and criticizing them, they're afraid of public exposure, whatever it is, right? No one likes to have to reach out to ask for help. It's a skill to be able to do it, right? And I think you and I, Bob, it took us a while, but we got there, right? We we uh have no shame in asking for help because there is no shame. In fact, asking someone for help is giving a gift to the other person. Hey, you get the gift of being able to share your knowledge, right? So on that note, this is a big one for us. This is exactly why we started coaching. This is exactly why we started PDM and PDI and now the PDC program. So that's beginner, so that's advanced beginner, there's uh cohorts, you name it. That's why we've built this entire business around this, is because uh you don't have to go it alone. You don't you're not an efficient developer because you struggled for 10 years by yourself just to flex your muscles and and show that you you did it the hard way, right? Um there's no such thing. So stop doing that and seek support. Get help wherever you need it. You know, ask people. And so the natural call I have for you here, or action I'd like you to take, is look at our coaching. This is where we want you to have a look at where can coaching can support you in your Python journey? This is where we come in and we fit in into your Python journey, not the other way around. You don't fit into ours, we fit into yours and we support you the way that you need it. So there's a bunch of actions on this doc for every one of the tips that Bob and I gave you. Uh, one through seven, there are actions that you need to take, that you should take. And the one I'm talking about now is all about the time audit. It's how long have you spent trying to reach your goal? How, what are you spending your day on right now? How are you any different to your last year's self? We're in January, it's a great time for reflection. Have you made any progress from last January? If not, why? Where is your time going? It's a full year, 365 days. Where did it go? So there's a lot of stuff to think about. We really want you to check out this link. Again, it's in the description below. This doc is amazing. We've had wonderful feedback from it. A bunch of people have already booked calls to have a chat about their next steps based on after they read this doc, which is wonderful. It really made us feel feel validated. Um, and we hope you enjoy it. It it this is a culmination of six years of our blood, sweat, and tears figuring things out, learning what the biggest trends are and gaps, and going from there.

Bob: 15:51

So that's that's it from hundreds and hundreds of people, right? And coaching also hundred plus people deep insights, yeah.

Julian: 16:00

All right, so with a minute left on the clock, Bob, um, what are you reading?

Bob: 16:05

I started Fundamentals of Software Architecture by Neil Ford because you know, as we also mentioned, um coding syntax uh becomes easier with AI, but uh architecture and design um are still hard and um they're becoming increasingly important now with AI. So uh I'm reading that and uh good read so far. And again, I think um yeah, moving more into architecture is going to be uh very important.

Julian: 16:37

Yeah, exactly. Actually, that's that's what most of our coaching is going towards now, right? People coming to us going, look, it it can write code for me, AI, but I have no idea how to architect a full app, right? And so I don't understand. So that's what we do.

Bob: 16:52

And and it goes way beyond the syntax. So books like that are great now to read. Yeah.

Julian: 16:58

Yeah, no, I love it. That's cool. Um I went to a secondhand bookstore last week or the other day. I don't remember what day it was. I managed to find one up here on the coast, and um I got uh Before the Coffee is Cold. I've mentioned that book before on the podcast. Um and I got I think book four in the series. I didn't know it existed, so I'm gonna I pick that up. I haven't started reading it, I want to finish what I'm on, but I thought I'd mention a new book at least.

Bob: 17:24

What did you do before your coffee got cold?

Julian: 17:28

Nothing.

Bob: 17:32

Well that's that's to be discussed in the next episode.

Julian: 17:35

Yeah, no, today my coffee got cold because I left it on the counter helping one of the kids and then forgot to go back to it for six hours. I was very sad.

Bob: 17:43

Yeah, I'm trying to make a bit of a cliffhanger again.

unknown: 17:47

Yeah.

Julian: 17:51

Yeah, yeah, that's it. Yeah, we are going to record every one to two weeks. It's uh awesome. There'll be a lot more episodes from us. We're very happy to be doing this again. But um, with that, that is the end of the episode. So everyone, please make sure you check out the document, like and subscribe, check us out on LinkedIn, go to the website, do all the stuff that you normally do, and um, thank you for being here. Bob, thanks for the chat. Thanks for tuning in.

Bob: 18:12

And next week we're back with with a guest. So uh stay tuned.

Julian: 18:16

Thanks for listening. Thanks everyone. Bye. Hey everyone, thanks for tuning in to the Pie Bites podcast. I really hope you enjoyed it. A quick message from me and Bob before you go to get the most out of your experience with Pie Bytes, including learning more Python, engaging with other developers, learning about our guests, discussing these podcast episodes, and much, much more. Please join our community at pybytes.circle.so. The link is on the screen if you're watching this on YouTube, and it's in the show notes for everyone else. When you join, make sure you introduce yourself, engage with myself and Bob, and the many other developers in the community. It's one of the greatest things you can do to expand your knowledge and reach and network as a Python developer. We'll see you in the next episode, and we will see you in the community.