How to run Cinemania 96 on Windows 10

1. Install Virtualbox 
2. Create a windows 7 VM using free IE8 windows 7 virtual machine from microsoft. Create it with at least 1GB of RAM so it's no super slow.
3. Download virtualbox guest addition and extension pack
4. Add the extension pack to VB
5. Start windows 7 VM and install guest additions. Reboot.
6. Connect CD to USB port
7. Add a USB device in the VM
8. Copy files over to the hardisk 
9. Run cinemania.exe

Career Development Plan

In our last post, we established the key skills that make up the value of an engineer working in an organization. However, knowing the generalities is not very actionable. 

In this post, we'll delve into the key sub-skills that make up the top level skills as well as accompanying specific actionable tasks that you can start implementing immediately increase your skillfulness in that area and thereby increase your overall value as an engineer. 

Technical Expertise (clean and efficient code, language mastery, editor mastery, etc)

• Core CS Fundamentals
• Algorithms and Data structures
• System Design
• Learn Programming Paradigms 
• Object Oriented 
• Functional 
• Programming Language
• Learn Ruby
• Text editor
• Learn Sublime Editor (for host machine development tasks)
• Learn Vi / Vim / Emacs (for general editing tasks)
• Shell
• Testing
• Debugging
• Source Control
• Learn GIT

Qualities (leadership ability, general problem solving ability, communication ability, maturity level, etc)

• Communication
• Writing and Speaking
• Analytical / Problem Solving Ability
• Maturity 
• Growth Mindset
• Honors commitments
• Seeks and Integrates Feedback
• Treats others with respect
• Actively Identifies problems
• Self awareness
• Proactive about future / career

Execution (planning ability, ability to get shit done, hitting goals)

• Estimation
• Project Planning / XP
• Time Management
• Getting Unblocked
• Simplest thing that could possibly work

Scope (area of impact, sub-component, component level, sub-system, system, business unit value)

As your skill sets grows (technical, quality, and execution), so will your scope. If it doesn't, then you need to seek out more responsibility yourself. 

Dedicate entire branches of improvement for each area and track your progress overtime. Identify sticking points (tasks that are on B) and master them (move them to C). 

Framework for Assessing value of Software Engineers

How does the industry differentiate between a junior software engineer from a senior software engineer? What are the set of attributes we use to assess the value of an engineer so that they're compensated appropriately? 

These are important questions with answers that seem to vary wildly, but having some method of approaching these questions are crucial for arriving at a mutual agreement between the hiring manager and the engineering employee on the value that the engineer brings to the organization. That shared understanding is really important for initial salary negotiations and for maintaining a amicable business relationship overtime. 

As an engineer, even if the companies you're applying for jobs for or are currently working at have no structure for compensation, it's still in your best interest to know what your metrics are for measuring your value so you can improve more effectively. For example, if "leadership quality" is a valuable attribute in your system, then you can very intentionally seek out ways to acquire that trait. 

But what does this value structure for engineers look like? What are the metrics? 

It's easy to come up with a list of things that you think are most important, but they're not helpful if they don't align with what a company or the industry as a whole deems most important. You can't approach companies asking to be paid a million dollars a year just because you can recite methods in the C++ standard library. Impressive? Maybe. Valuable? Not necessarily. 

One way to approach this question is to simply ask hiring managers at top companies. Luckily, many great engineering teams have shared their views on this publicly. After looking at the engineering ladders / compensation structures for these companies and identifying commonalities, I arrived at this general structure for engineers:

• Technical Expertise (clean and efficient code, language mastery, editor mastery, etc)
• Qualities (leadership ability, communication ability, maturity level, etc)
• Execution (planning ability, ability to get shit done, hitting goals)
• Scope (area of impact, sub-component, component level, sub-system, system, business unit value)

Some companies also mentioned "experience" and "public artifacts" such as Github projects. However, I left those out because those only serve as signals for the traits we're looking for. When you look at someones experience, you're trying to get a sense of where they're at in terms of things like leadership ability or technical expertise. 

The specifics of each and how they're prioritized will vary by company and by industry. You don't have the time to evaluate every attribute that could fall under technical expertise, so as a hiring manager you need to identify which ones you value and come up with strategies to measure how different candidates stack up on that metric.

I highlighted scope in a different color because it's not so much a skill as it is an area of responsibility. Skillfulness in other areas does lead to expansion in the scope of responsibility for an individual within an organization through promotions, but they're still quite distinct from one another since it's not inherently a skill. Nonetheless, it's a key metric because increasing scope does have a significant and direct effect on your value. You can have flying marks in all three areas of technical expertise, qualities, and execution but work on relatively small system compared to other members of the organization with very little business value. 

How this generic structure helps engineers

You can use this list as a framework for thinking about your skill set in the context of your domain / industry. How do you think you rank on technical expertise? On your personal qualities like communication ability? Do you want to become knowledgeable about other critical parts of the system to expand your area of responsibility? If you find a weak area, start working on it. 

Admittedly, this structure isn't very actionable if you can't fill in the specifics. One particular area where finding the set of important skill seems daunting is in the area of technical expertise. A million things can qualify as technical expertise. For example, if you work in embedded systems, having knowledge of Angular.JS isn't as valuable even though it certainly qualifies as a technical expertise. The solution here is to focus on durable skills. 

Durability is a trait that exists for each skill and across skills. First, we'll look at an example of two different skills that differ in durability.

1. Knowledge of classic computer algorithms

2. Knowledge of the API of a brand new AWS web service

#1 is not likely to change. #2 is more likely to change. Whether or not #1 is directly useful to you is a different story. But it is knowledge that is more durable because the most efficient sorting algorithms don't change in a matter of weeks or even years. 

Lets take one skill: editor mastery. 

Durable skill: Mastery over a popular, mature, productive editor that is available across systems. 

Non-durable skill: Mastery over an editor that is buggy and works on a single platform.

Every time you decide to learn something, keep durability in mind. You're making an investment and you want to make sure you're investing in something that will pay dividends for years to come. 

Resources

Sublime Selection

Select a character

SHIFT + LEFT / RIGHT

Select from cursor to end of word

SHIFT + OPTION + RIGHT

Select from cursor to beginning of word

SHIFT + OPTION + LEFT

Select a word

CMD + D

Select a line

CMD + L

Select between parenthesis

CTRL + SHIFT + SPACE

Select everything in file

CMD + A

Sublime Cursor Motion

Here's basic cursor motion commands you should know.

Move by character

UP / DOWN / LEFT / RIGHT

Move by word 

OPTION - LEFT / RIGHT

Move to the end of the line

CMD + RIGHT

Move to the beginning of the line

CMD + LEFT

Move to a matching brace

CTRL + M

Move to the top of the file

CMD + UP

Move to the bottom of the file

CMD + DOWN

Go to a line

CTRL + G (preferred) or CMD + T + :

Go to a symbol

CMD + R

Touching Typing Numbers and Special Keys

When I learned to touch type, I learned how to type letter properly but never properly learned numbers and special characters.

Here's how the keys map to fingers:

left hand
1 - pinky
2 - ring
3 - mid
4 - index
5 - index

right hand
6 - index
7 - index
8 - mid
9 - right ring
0 - pinky

tab - left pinky
caps lock - left pinky
shift - left pinky
fn - left pinky
control - left ring finger
option / alt - left mid
command - left thumb

http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/47293/what-fingers-do-i-need-to-use-for-hitting-control-option-and-command-buttons-on
http://www.typing-lessons.org/preliminaries_4.html

Database Indexes

Premature optimization is the root of all evil.

Database indexes are all about optimization. Using indexes prematurely is unnecessary in most cases. However, knowing what it is and how to use it will save your ass. 

So lets talk indexing.

When you do things to some set of data in a relational database, the db has to retrieve that data. And if that data is retrieved based on some value (get every row where column C equals 5), then the db has to go through every single row in a table containing that data and decide whether or not that row should be used. 

Unless you use indexes. 

If you use indexes, the db does NOT have to go through every single row. Instead, it will find the rows it needs by using a special data structure. That special data structure is the index. 

Most database indexes are B-Trees which allow for logarithmic time operations. In other words, it can change O(N) lookup to O(log n). If you have a lot of data, that can be a huge difference. Instead of looking at every row and checking if a specific column equals a certain value. If there's an index for that column, then the database can do a O(logn) time look up for the value in the B-Tree, then follow the pointer to the row! 

Using an index is not always an optimization.

There are times when using an index can actually hurt you. An index is just used to do a look up for a row, but if a lot of those rows are being returned, then all an index adds is extra overhead for the lookups because when the matching rows are found using the index lookup, they still need to be scanned!