However, things got a bit out of hand with my contributions to open source. In 2020, I spent 300+ hours on it in my free time. While I learned a lot, got to meet awesome people, and really got things moving in several open source projects, I struggled. Working full-time and doing things like this on the side is challenging to say the least. While burnout is common in open source, I still felt good because I’m passionate about it and “it doesn’t feel like work”. I mean, look at this chart

However, I do need to admit that I’m most productive and happy when I get proper rest as well. Now, I hardly ever sacrifice my sleep, because those 8 hours help a LOT to clear up and refresh my mind. But I also started to notice that I should spend more time off-screen and off-work to clear my head properly. That basically means no computer, no phone, no notifications. Like going for a walk (not listening to podcasts at the same time ), going to the gym, kite surfing, etc.

My game plan moving forward

I think it’s obvious by now that I do want to stay active contributing to open source projects. However, it shouldn’t occupy such a large part of my personal life anymore. That’s why I’m now hard-limiting the time I spend on open source to 2 hours per week (details below).

In those hours, I will be doing the following:

• Replying to questions/comments in issues I reported or Pull Requests I created;
• Interacting with open source maintainers/contributors through other channels;
• Working on new/updated code through Pull Requests (with a transparent planning in this GSheet).

This means that my pace of open source contributions will slow down significantly, but become more consistent and reliable over time.

2 hours: the details

So, those 2 hours result in 8 hours per month to open source. I currently can’t commit to more, as I’m working on a new business plan and need to add “offline days” (more on that below) to my schedule to remain happy and productive.

If you want me to spend more time on open source software, please consider donating through GitHub Sponsors. Every $50 in monthly donations will allow me to spend 1 extra hour per month on open source. If there’s a specific open source project you want me to work on, we can certainly discuss that. Feel free to drop me a message so we can talk about the options.

Final words

I’m confident that with these measures, I can get more of a hold on my open source contributions and be more reliable towards others. My public planning document should also be a major help in terms of transparency.

Apart from my open source planning, I’m also introducing the following measures to my personal Quarterly Objectives:

• Every week, spend at least one day “offline”, no screens involved.
• Every quarter, spend at least 3 days in a row “resetting my head”. I noticed that this really helps me to zoom out and look at the bigger picture of my personal and business goals.

… this will ensure that I remain focused on my top priorities, both in private life and in business.

Once again, in case you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to reach out!

The post My struggle with making time for open source contributions appeared first on Dennis Ameling.

Why an online course?

I started developing software when I was 13. It started with webshops and websites (built from the ground up, without any frameworks), which gave me a good basic knowledge of backend web languages like PHP and databases like MySQL. Over time, things got more serious when I built online portals, Hybrid mobile apps and a full-blown Partner Management Tool at the startup I was working for.

The more time I spent programming, the more I became aware that most time doesn’t go into building new features, but many things around it. Think about application maintenance, automated tests, debugging, code review, etc. – learning a shiny new programming language or framework sounds exciting, but adds technical debt as well. In the end, you’ll be maintaining multiple stacks and maybe even multiple infrastructures.

Guess what? Many of those things they won’t teach you in (online) courses for programming languages, or even Computer Science (CS) degrees! That’s why I decided to create an online course for exactly these skills. The good thing: they’re not bound to any specific programming language, so no matter what programming language you already know, these skills always come in handy!

Goal of the course

My primary goal when creating the course was to provide especially beginning developers with the skills mentioned above. After having followed the course, you’ll be able to:

1. Write more bug-free code
2. Debug your code faster and more efficiently
3. Operate better in a team of developers

I’m a firm believer in learning by doing, meaning that in the course, after finishing each lecture, you’ll get to work yourself. That way, you can immediately apply the things you just learned in practice. So no simple multiple-choice questions, but a deep-dive that motivates you to understand the topic well enough to apply it in your daily work.

Let’s get started!

If you want to learn more about the course or get started yourself, make sure to head over to the Udemy page. Let’s supercharge your development workflow!

The post Now live: my first-ever online course for developers! appeared first on Dennis Ameling.

If you’re a Windows on ARM user, you probably want to know if your app is running on ARM natively. There are multiple ways of checking this.

Option 1: through file properties

The fastest and simplest option if you ask me – it only works on ARM64 devices though. Right-click on an executable (in this case it’s Creative Cloud.exe), then open the “Compatibility” tab.

Look closely at the “Windows 10 on ARM” section. If the button in this section is grayed out, it means that the executable is a native ARM64 one. That’s great; you’ll have the best performance and battery life with such apps!

Option 2: using ROM Properties

There’s a great project on GitHub called ROM Properties. There’s a lot you can do with it, but the feature I use is the additional tab in Windows Explorer’s properties screen. Let’s have a look:

It clearly shows you the CPU this application was compiled for. The benefit of this tool compared to the first one is that you can use it on any Windows 10 architecture, so that’s x86, x64 and ARM64. That means that on a x64 machine you can see that an app was compiled for ARM64, and this also works the other way around.

A native ARM64 version of ROM Properties wasn’t available at the time of writing this article, so I came up with a custom build for ARM64 which you can download from GitHub.

Some final words

I’m excited to see Windows 10 on ARM gaining more momentum while people discover the benefits like improved battery life, always-on functionality and built-in mobile connectivity. The ARM architecture is here to stay, which recently got confirmed by Apple – they’re switching their entire desktop and laptop lineup from Intel-based processors to their own ARM-based “Apple Silicon”.

In order to push the ARM64 ecosystem a little further, I’m helping several open source projects like NodeJS, DDEV, GitHub Desktop and Git for Windows to launch native ARM64 versions of their apps. It’s the power of open source software – everyone can contribute towards a better future

The post How to recognize if an app is ARM64 on Windows appeared first on Dennis Ameling.