Monthly Archives: March 2016

Conscious life

Self improvement

After publishing my article “Why I quit programming” I got this message:

Hi my name is Michael I’m 25 and from Scotland.

Your article has really spoken to me this morning. As I’ve battled frustration and anger my whole life. Blaming other people for my own actions and issues inside my head and causing a lot of hurt for family and myself. Trying to as you said, change others and not my own perception.

Right now the main reason why I’m so frustrated and angry once again is I’m in a lot of debt which I am deciding whether to go bankrupt and start again. To get this chain around my neck taken away and relieve all stress, I had taken out a loan to go traveling around Asia with my girlfriend as My ex partner who I have a son to stopped me seeing him for 3 months so I went away for two months to try and find myself.

It was good but I still don’t think I used my time there to the absolute best I still felt the same trapped emotions about money and being away from my son etc. So I had to come home. I’ve been home almost a year now and it’s just the same again if not worse as I got into a lot more debt etc. and repeating the same mistakes.

I have a 4 & a 1/2 year old boy to a previous partner and I can see similarities in him from when I was a child, and what I felt from my angry father, and I really want to break the cycle as he is very intelligent but I can see the anger will let him down in life as it did me.

I’m just now getting some answers and I’ve often thought about meditation but really I am unsure on how to go about starting. Do you have any tips or any help I could maybe download to begin with?

Thank you for you time,

Michael

My answer

Hello Michael,

thank you for your story. It’s very interesting and I think many people come through similar issues. Existential problems, fear, blaming, anger, depression… You at least know that something is wrong and you want to change it. That’s the first important step for a change.

You can learn about meditation and try to meditate. It can push your consciousness forward. There are many types of meditation – mantra meditation, sound meditation, guided meditation, breath meditation,… and also many types of yoga – karma yoga, hatha yoga, bhakti yoga, jnana yoga, raja yoga,… so many ways to change your perception of life. You have to study a lot and then try to pick some tool (meditation, yoga) which you like the most and try it. Each person has a different path and each person likes different tools. Some people can’t even meditate. They just can’t sit and calm their mind, meditation is not for all.

But everyone can learn to live consciously instead of unconsciously. Many people live unconsciously and they are driven by their emotions. It’s a problem when people are driven by fear, anger and hate. To live consciously means to be aware of your emotions and work with them. If you are angry, ask yourself: “Why am I angry? Do I really have to be angry? Where does the anger comes from?“. I got angry quite often and I created a mess around me. The anger in me was not a good feeling and I realized it. I didn’t want to be angry so I started working with anger consciously and asked the questions above. I was able to find the reason why I was angry and then I could work with it. If you have a problem, you can try to solve consequences but if you don’t solve the root of the problem, you will have to solve consequences again and again. Once you solve the root of the problem, the problem will disappear.

So once you get angry, ask yourself why you are angry and try to find the root of the anger. Be sure that it’s really the root. Go as deep as you can. Once you find the root, you can work with it and you can stop being angry. You have to realize that anger is not a profitable emotion neither for you nor for others.

It takes some time to learn to live consciously but if you can do it, your life will change. You will be no more ruled by your emotions.

Conscious life includes more than just working with your emotions. Conscious life means to be aware of every action you do and its consequences. Ask yourself: “Why do I do this and that…“. For example if you eat, you should ask: “What do I actually eat? Where does the food comes from? Is the food healthy? When I eat this food, do I support something that I don’t want to support?“. People do unconscious actions, they don’t realize what they cause by their actions. That’s why we can see the world as it is now. Air pollution, water pollution, global warming, food waste, meat industry, milk & egg industry, excessive use of palm oil and ruining rainforests, poverty, debts, wars, violence, murders… this and even more is the result of unconscious living. To stop this madness we all should live more consciously and realize what are consequences of our actions.

Good luck with your conscious life!

What programming really is

programming

There was a stereotype that a programmer is a weirdo that is sitting all day in the basement with his computer.

It was true a long time ago. Programmers are not like that nowadays. At least not all.

If you are a programmer

There is a lack of good quality programmers. If you are a good programmer, you can choose who you want to work for. For example Google, Facebook or Apple. If you are good enough, you will probably get a job. And if not, you can try to get a job in any other IT company because almost every IT company is continuously looking for programmers.

If you are a skilled programmer and you have online portfolio, you will get new well paid job offer each week. You can choose where you want to work. You can get any programming job you want if you are good enough.

The advantages of programming

There are many benefits for programmers.

Many programmers do not have to go to work. They can work from home or from any place in the world. This is quite a big advantage for many people.

Programming jobs belong to the best paid jobs in the world. As a programmer you can earn per hour more than regular people earn in regular jobs in factories per day. That’s crazy.

Being a programmer sounds like a dream job, but it’s not that bright.

The dark side of programming

Programming can be fun and it can also be a pain in the ass. It depends…

Learn to code is not a problem at all. Everyone can learn to code. As Martin Fowler says:

“Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand”

So programming is an art. Programmers are artists who write nice readable code. The problem is that any fool can write code that a computer can understand and call himself a “programmer”. There is a lot of unexperienced programmers that write ugly code. It takes a few years to learn to write nicer code that is readable also for humans. The main challenge of programming is not to write functional code, but to write code that other programmers can read and understand quickly. The minor challenge is to write functional code, to make a computer do what a programmer wants to do.

programming-reality

It’s not a problem to write code. The main challenge is to maintain code. There are many challenges for programmers.

Programming features

Features like registration, login, uploading files, processing forms and others need to be programmed. There are usually hundreds or even thousands of ways how to program a feature. The more complex feature the more ways exists. Each programmer would program the same feature in a different way. The same functionality, but the different code. It’s like you would tell people to draw a person. 10 persons would draw 10 different persons.

It gets complicated if the feature is complicated. There are many ways how to approach a single algorithm. One application usually contains thousands of lines of code. If you are a programmer and you start working for a company, you will usually work on a project that has thousands lines of code. You will probably be confused how the code works. Especially if the feature is complicated. You will have to study that code for a few days to understand it so you can make changes to it and extend the feature.

Complicated features contain many algorithms that needs to be written properly. If there is just one mistake, the program might not work.

Fixing bugs

With programmed features there comes bugs. If a feature does not work as expected it is called a bug. The more features, the more bugs exist. The more complicated features, the more complicated code and the more tricky bugs.

Tests

Fortunately, a programmer can write tests for his code to test it and see if it works as expected. Unfortunately, approximately 80% of programmers do not write tests. Some of them would like to write tests but they don’t know how to do it or they are busy with programming features so there is no time for writing tests. Many of them think that writing tests is a waste of time. In fact, waste of time is to write code that is not covered by tests. There is a much higher chance to cause a bug in code without tests than in code with tests. There is a much higher chance to find a bug in code with tests more quickly than in code without tests.

If you do a change in code without tests, there is quite a high chance that you will break something and you never know whether you break something unless you see something wrong in you application. There might be hidden bugs that you might not see. For example you don’t immediately see a bug in a form unless you send the form and see that something is wrong. If you don’t have tests in your code, you have to test everything manually. Once you program a feature, you test it if it works as expected and if yes, you mark the feature as done. Sooner or later there will be a need to change that feature and you will have to test it again. If it’s a big feature, it will take a lot of time to test everything. If you don’t test it properly, there is a high chance that you caused a bug and you don’t know about it. It might be a critical bug. For example some data are not processed correctly or not at all. Your users will not be happy.

So the moral of the story is to write tests to avoid unexpected problems. Tests can save your ass. If you cause a bug in your code and you have it covered by tests, you can see the problem immediately and you can fix it.

The problem with tests is that you have to learn how to write them and how to write testable code. It takes some time, but if you learn it, you will become a better programmer. If you are able to write tests for your code, you can save a lot of trouble in the future. Writing tests can take some time from the start, but it will definitely save time later. I know it’s a big temptation to write code without tests, it might seem that you are saving time when you don’t write tests, but it’s a devilish practice. You will pay a high price for not writing tests. If there are no tests in your code, your code will become a big mess that no one wants to touch.

If you have a big project and you hire a new programmer, he does not know all the dark sides of the code. If you don’t have tests and he touches something, he can break a lot of things without knowing it. He will cause a lot of bugs. Features that worked before suddenly do not work now. What happened? He changed just a small thing in the code. That’s the dark side of the code that is not covered by tests. If you don’t know the code, you can break something very easily without knowing it. It happened to me many times. I was desperate. Then I learned to test my code and I was desperate when I got a project without tests. It was a pain in the ass.

So if you want to have happy programming career, write tests and avoid projects without tests.

Why I quit programming

Life, programming

Career of a programmer is interesting. Sitting on a chair at least 8 hours a day watching a computer screen and typing some commands that computer can understand and do what a programmer wants to do. Sometimes. Sometimes computer just says “Error” and do nothing.

How/Why I started coding

I write about it in this article: “How programming changed my life“.

What programming really is

I write about it in this article: “What programming really is“.

Coding career

My coding career was great. I started my career after I quit college in 2012 and I ended my career in 2015. I learnt a lot. I started working in a small web development company and after a year I was able to work on my own as a freelancer. I have a portfolio on hromnik.com. I have built a lot of web pages and applications. But unfortunately a lot of applications do not exist any more. They were not successful. The most successful and useful application I built is CoderMania – an e-learning platform for learning to code interactively. Unfortunately, I stopped developing it because I changed my priorities in my life. I started teaching people to code but I realized that there is something more important than coding and teaching people to code.

Changed priorities

I started meditating in April 2015 and I realized in September that teaching people to code is not something that the world needs right now. I realized that the world needs something else. Something more important. The world is full of suffering. There are wars, fear, hate, violence, poverty and a lot of other terrible things. I realized that people can live without these terrible things. I want people to live in harmony, love, happiness and abundance as I do thanks to meditation.

Meditation as a highway to a happier life

Meditation is not something alien to us. It’s a natural activity for humans to gain and retain the state of unconditional love and happiness. There are wars, fear, hate, violence, poverty and other terrible things because people don’t meditate. Many people live unconsciously instead of consciously. They don’t live their lives at their full potential. Many people live in fear or even hate. Quite a lot of people are able to hurt other people and other living beings. It’s not necessary. People can live in harmony if they start living consciously instead of unconsciously.

Once people get a certain level of consciousness they will not be able to hurt any living being if not necessary. They will live in love and happiness instead of fear and hate. They will understand that helping each other is important. Selfishness will go away. Trust me. I was selfish, fearful and angry. I could get mad about any small things. I started meditating and my life changed dramatically. I realized a lot. I can see things that other people don’t see. It’s interesting to see that people create all their trouble in their minds. I can see that people can live in harmony, love, happiness and abundance. I don’t live in a wonderland. I live in the same world as you. I see what’s happening. I see a lot of terrible things. But I also see that it’s not necessary.

You might say: “Ok, but what can I do about it? I can’t change the whole world“. Albert Einstein said: “The world is not a dangerous place to live because of bad people, but because of people who don’t do anything about it“. You don’t have to change the whole world. You can change at least yourself and your surroundings. Once you manage to change yourself, things will happen in a magical way.

Mahatma Gandhi once said:

“Be the change you wish to see in the world.”

You can change yourself through meditation more quickly than without it. You might say: “Oh thanks, I am content with myself. I’m not the one who should change. Others should change”. That’s what I thought too. But it doesn’t work like that. You cannot change others. You can just change yourself and inspire others to change. Once you can live without fear, anger, hate and judging, others will wonder how you managed it. They will probably want to know how to live happier life. And you will tell them: “I just meditate a few minutes a day. I listen to my inner voice, my heart and do actions according to it. That’s my recipe for happy life“.

And people will probably tell you: “I don’t need to meditate. Meditation is a waste of time“. I know, I had similar thoughts about meditation. But I started to meditate because I was curious what meditation can bring to me. And I was very surprised after a few months, how it purified my consciousness. It’s mind-blowing.

If you want to open a new dimension of life – life full of love, happiness, abundance and harmony, you should practice daily meditation. Yes, daily. It’s not enough to meditate once a week. If you want to feel effects of meditation, you have to meditate every day. If you want muscle, you also have to work out more often than once a week. Meditation is similar to body workout. It needs to be done often and regularly. Start to meditate at least 5 minutes a day and you will feel results after a few months. You will feel much better and you will understand a lot of things about yourself, life and the universe. 5 minutes a day. It’s a minimum for beginners. Everyone can do a 5 minutes meditation. Everyone can change their perception of life in a few months. Everyone can be happier.

Happy people are more important than happy computers

So the main reason why I quit programming is to teach people how they can live without fear, anger, hate, judging and others not so nice thoughts and feelings. People should learn how to live happier life as soon as possible. That’s the most important thing. I have learned a lot and I want to teach others how to live happier life. Once everyone is happy, I can teach coding and maybe even code again.

The second reason why I quit programming is that I want to work with people instead of computers. I want to switch my life from virtual reality to the real one.

Working with computers is nice and comfortable, but I don’t see meaning in it while people live in fear, hate, anger and other miserable feelings. I want to talk to people and show them how they can live happier life.

What will I do?

You may ask: “And what about money?“. This is the most frequent question I get. I know that many people need a lot of money for their living. That’s a trap of The Matrix (this system). I was able to minimize my expenses and I need money for just food, cheap accommodation and travelling (which can also be free – hitchhiking). That’s all. I was able to save enough money to live more than year without a paid job and do what I like – to write articles on my blog, to create videos, to meet great people and this all created and still creates new opportunities for me and others. I haven’t been coding for more than 10 months and I am one of the happiest people in the world. I can work in kids summer camp. I can also work on a farm. I can make and sell food. I can do a lot of things that I love. I don’t need to earn much money. I am happy when I do what I love, when I eat great food, when I am surrounded by great people. I am a new age hippie and I am happy.

Do what you love and be happy too

I don’t like to work 8 hours a day, 160 and more hours per month. This system is not for me and also not for many others who want to disconnect from The Matrix and want to do what they really like no matter how much money they earn. Money is a trap of The Matrix. Humans are the only species who need to pay for living. Many people just can’t stop working and be free. They are slaves of their expenses and money. It’s a terrible life. It’s a modern slavery which produces stress, fear, anxiety, cancer and other diseases. I could talk about the Matrix even more but you probably already know it. You live in it. But you may not know how to get out of it. Just minimize expenses, earn enough money so you can leave your current job and start doing something you like, something more useful and meaningful. Do what you love, be free and be happy. I hope more people will be happy and more people will help each other. We can create true paradise here on Earth. Together.

May the love be with you.

EDIT: Doing something that I love does not mean that I can’t earn a living as many of you may think.