Stefi Rosca

March 31, 2024 • 1 min read• #newsletter

Dear friends, One of my goals this year is to be kinder. At first, I thought it could just be: “Be kind”. Then I thought I was already trying to be kind day in and out. The actual challenge would be to go one step further. I see so many people that are mean…

March 28, 2024 • 3 min read• #tech

Working as a software engineer is not only about knowing how to code. That is a big part of it, but besides this, many other aspects make the role. Plenty of the skills and processes that are important in the role as well as for your growth are not taught in a…

March 24, 2024 • 2 min read• #newsletter

Dear friends, Welcome to edition 10! A great milestone 🥳  Sitting down and writing this every week hasn’t been easy. It’s now that I understand that when you get started you might have a lot of ideas, excitement, and energy. Keeping at it and showing up is…

March 16, 2024 • 8 min read• #tech

Disclaimer: I completed a 6-month full stack development bootcamp in February 2020. I share at the end of the article my experience with attending a bootcamp and why I chose this over going to university. TL;DR: The answer to the question I raised isn't as…

March 15, 2024 • 3 min read• #newsletter

Dear friends, This week, while sorting through some old notes, I stumbled upon a quote from Grey’s Anatomy that I want to share with you all: On average, our hearts beat 70 times per minute. In the same 60-second period, we blink between 10 and 15 times…

March 08, 2024 • 2 min read• #newsletter

Dear friends, Another week has passed, and I’m starting to slowly notice the signs of Spring with trees starting to blossom, which I do enjoy. I’ve been diving into "Building a Second Brain" by Tiago Forte , and what an insightful book on note-taking this is…

March 01, 2024 • 1 min read• #newsletter

Dear friends, This week I got to see my favorite singer, Ryan who sings under the name of Sleeping at Last, perform live and it has been such a filling experience. I randomly discovered Ryan through Grey’s Anatomy. When shazaming the song played it took me to…

February 22, 2024 • 2 min read• #newsletter

Dear friends, This week has flown by. Last Thursday I felt something odd with my stomach and went to bed earlier but didn’t rest at all. On Friday I pushed through until midday and then went to bed early. Took me about 2 days to get back to feeling better…

February 20, 2024 • 1 min read• #tech

Last year I attended my first in-person tech conference, JSHereos in Cluj, Romania. It was an experience that exceeded all my expectations. I left with valuable insights and knowledge to improve my skills, while at the same time connected with other…

February 15, 2024 • 2 min read• #newsletter

Dear friends, Welcome to the 5th edition of my newsletter! 5 weeks in, I can’t believe it! Now it’s time to figure out how to make it an actual newsletter where people can subscribe via email. Since my twenties, I've always dreamed of becoming a YouTuber. This…

February 11, 2024 • 10 min read• #books

Goodreads: Engineering Management for the Rest of Us ⛰ What It's About A book that provides leadership tools and ideas on how to lead as an engineering manager Talks about thoughtful leadership . Sarah Drasner shares lessons she learned while moving into a…

February 08, 2024 • 2 min read• #newsletter

Dear friends, I’ve realized that Friday isn't the best day for sending out a newsletter. If I don’t have time to finish it in the morning I end up spending my evening on it and this doesn’t align with my weekly plan given Friday evenings are reserved to spend…

February 06, 2024 • 3 min read• #books

Goodreads: Inner Game of Tennis ⛰ What It's About Insightful: Mental techniques and strategies for improving focus, concentration, and overall mental toughness especially when playing elite sport. Simple: Short and to the point book discussing Sports…

February 02, 2024 • 2 min read• #newsletter

Dear friends, This hasn’t been an easy week but it’s ending well which is the important part. Sometimes luck is on your side, don’t take that for granted. A few weeks ago I read the book Inner Game of Tennis . This was quite a random choice as I only played…

January 26, 2024 • 2 min read• #newsletter

Dear friends, This week, I had the opportunity to participate in a company offsite in Lisbon, Portugal. As an introvert, meeting everyone initially felt a bit overwhelming, especially since we operate as a remote company. However, I found myself genuinely…

January 19, 2024 • 2 min read• #newsletter

Dear friends, The past weekend I was listening to a Ali Abdaal’s Deep Dive podcast episode Someday Is Today: Achieve Your Goals And Live Without Regret - Matthew Dicks and in this conversation, Matthew mentioned that from his experience coaching people…

January 14, 2024 • 2 min read• #social-media

At the end of 2023, I struggled to complete the reading challenge I signed up for on Goodreads. It's not that I dislike reading; it was more about not making enough time for it. Realizing I spent a significant amount of time on my phone, especially on social…

December 02, 2023 • 3 min read• #money

This year, I dedicated a significant amount of time to understanding personal finances as I wanted to know how to make the most of my savings and navigate different financial instruments. Along this path, I started reading Tony Robbins’s Unshakeable: Your…

October 22, 2023 • 3 min read• #coding

Moving from keyboard to mouse to perform some action can sometimes be annoying. VS Code has some really nice keyboard shortcuts to help keep me in flow when working with code. In this article, we'll explore 10 must-know VS Code shortcuts that I use on a day to…

January 05, 2022 • 1 min read• #coding

Codewars katas, coding exercises, felt really intimidating. Even though I started with small easier challenges in the last weeks of my bootcamp at first I struggled. I didn't really understand what the kyu's were and wasn't sure where to start. Luckily I…

December 21, 2021 • 5 min read• #personal

Disclaimer: you never stop learning to code. TL;DR: Sharing my experience of submitting a talk proposal, getting accepted, preparing the talk and flying to Paris to deliver it. It wasn't a walk in the park. If you prefer to just watch the talk I gave about…

December 05, 2021 • 7 min read• #personal

TL;DR: The path to becoming a developer isn't a walk in the park at least it wasn't for me but as you will see, not all obstacles are unshakeable. Did you ever want to do something that people like you aren't supposed to do? I knew early on that I wanted to…

November 30, 2021 • 1 min read• #coding

One of the things I had to do when getting my first job was configuring Git. Unless you setup your name and email address Git will take it from the environment. This is important because every Git commit uses this information and if it's not setup correctly it…

October 07, 2021 • 6 min read• #coding

When I wanted to learn how to code I thought the only available options were either to go to university or attend a bootcamp. Given I wasn't sure if this was what I wanted to do long-term, I wasn't ready to invest. Luckily I found out about some great free…

September 21, 2021 • 1 min read• #coding

1. Styling your console.log Is this necessary? Probably not, but if you want to leave an easter egg message on your portfolio website's console why not a styled one? You never know who is looking. Check out mine at stefi.codes To do this you would us the…

September 16, 2021 • 2 min read• #coding

In my early days of coding I used to get quickly frustrated when my code didn't run. It felt like I was doing everything right but the web app still didn't work. Mostly it was a silly mistake, some sort of typo, a missed comma, bracket or semicolon. This made…

January 26, 2021 • 1 min read• #coding

Until now I was only using setInterval not being aware of setTimeout. To be transparent I didn't need to use it until working on the Speed Writing Game Here's where setTimeout made a difference. I could have gotten way using setInterval for what I needed but…

January 10, 2021 • 2 min read• #coding

The SkiBuddies app is a web app one which one can search for skiers and snowboarders with a few filters. When doing this search I wanted the data to be shown in the URL which meant I needed to find a way to update the URL search parameters dynamically. The URL…

January 07, 2021 • 1 min read• #coding

Understand CSS display

December 25, 2020 • 1 min read• #coding

Looking back it's funny how I used to look at CSS art on codepen and think that I would never be able to do something similar. Around this time codepen sents a newsletter including a holdiday #CodePenChallenge . Those were impressive but not something I would…

December 24, 2020 • 1 min read• #coding

I always wondered how CSS selectors get priority. I knew it was classes above element selectors but was never very sure about the rest until recently when I did a CSS Fundamentals course by Kevin Powell on Scrimba . It might sound strange but I was not…

December 12, 2020 • 1 min read• #coding

I’ve learned this thanks to the fact that I’ve shared learning about outline: 0 . I was quite annoyed by the blue ring around my buttons whenever they were clicked but didn’t spend much time looking into it. I’m not a designer so I let it go easily. While…

December 09, 2020 • 1 min read• #coding

Recently Florin Pop shared a course he worked on and just launched on Udemy, 50 Projects In 50 Days - HTML, CSS & JavaScript . Given the great promotion, 10 euros for the course, I decided to purchase it in support of his work. The idea of the course is to…