Jae "J4" Salokettu

What code editor do you use?

Sublime Text for everything except .NET for which I use JetBrains Rider. Sublime products have consistently been my most reliable tooling for the past decade or so.

I can heavily recommend purchasing a license from them if you can.

Are you a furry?

Yes.

What’s your gender?

Woman.

What are your pronouns.

“She/Her” in most situations.

“They/them” and “it/its” are also acceptable.

Are you taken?

I’m not interested.

Where did you learn to write code and CI/CD?

Online, by trying things on my own, reading the documentation, and contributing to projects.

What is the most frustrating thing in your job?

I cannot pinpoint an exact one answer to this question; generally two things are the most frustrating to me:

• Systems not behaving as expected.
• Users themselves.

The first one is fairly easy to think about: programming is all about giving a computer a list of instructions, and expecting it to execute them. However, nothing is that easy in reality, computers, be it the software or hardware way, will misbehave and end up failing at executing otherwise very logical steps. I like logical steps, and I went into computing as I could get predictable outputs for what I would program the machine to do. Sadly, not everything can be sunshine and rainbows.

The second point is about some behaviours users might have when interacting with the software, and its maintainers. That said, I am not talking about users that might misuse the program, and cause to break it in unexpected ways. The frustration comes from some users never being satisfied, and providing generally non-constructive criticism. The same can be said about any job or hobby; imagine pouring your passion and energy into something, only to be constantly told that you are lazy, that you do not care, and that what you made is never enough; either ignoring or misrepresenting the planning behind an engineering decision, or even project priorities.

After seeing this for weeks, months, or even years at this point, you’ll just ask yourself “What’s even the point?”, and it can go downhill fairly fast from this point on; and once you start falling, it’s hard to get back up.

And for those that are starting in the field reading this, remember this: because some people are asses about your work doesn’t means that you failed or are incompetent. You’re here, you’re creating, you’re learning, that’s what’s important. Some criticism might be harsh, but fair; some other, the inverse. It’s up to you to set personal boundaries.

What AI do you use for code?

None. I am resolutely anti-AI. Not only it steals from others, disregarding any and all licensing, but also makes you into a lazy and stupid slob.

Why do you talk so much about Open-Source software?

Without Open-Source software, I couldn’t have learned all I have over the past years. Most of the essential components on any modern device is also likely to be Open-Source, or based on an Open-Source program or library.

The whole point of having networked computers is to share knowledge. Preventing others from learning from what you made doesn’t makes sense to me.

I just started, can you review my first project?

I will happily take a look at it, but I will not go into in-depth reviewing. Your first project is there as a springboard for you to learn more, not something that shall decide your whole life.

All I can do is provide some tips and ask some questions that will make you progress more, but don’t stress it out. And congratulations on your first project, it’s a huge step that many want to skip, but that is essential in the end.

I’m looking for a job, can you help with with a CV or searching for something?

Sadly, I cannot, the job market is as muddy for me as it is for you. Soatok has a quite good article about this^{[soatok.blog]↗} though which I can recommend checking out.

My only advice would be to further your skills by contributing to projects that you enjoy using. That way, you can get feedback about real code in a proper collaborative environment. Also if you are in school, study well and get that diploma. While real-world experience is important, having a paper saying you have those skills will help you.

I dropped out of school to go working, and while it turned out well for me, this still closed some doors for me. So do not repeat my mistake and finish your studies. It can be frustrating, but it’s worth it.

Also, getting comfortable will not happen instantly. Before getting a job that I truly liked, I worked in plenty of places, grocery store, photography store, computer repair shop, etc. It’s only in the past few years that I’ve had something I truly love, and it took years to arrive there. You still gotta eat, but you also have to remember that once there is an opportunity, either through luck or skill, you must seize it, especially if you are young. At worse, you’ll have something that pays you until you find something else, at best, something you’re truly in line with.

Why does this website use JavaScript?

Why cannot this website be loaded on older machines?

This website is not made with the retro web in mind. You will need a modern machine to access it. It’s my choice, I decided that I do not care about this very specific use case.

Likewise, modern standards exist, I will use them. Some make things clearer for me, with for instance nested CSS. If your browser doesn’t supports it, consider updating it or swapping to a proper browser.

This is my corner of the web, I am the only one entitled to my preferences here. If you do not like that, then make your own corner.

I take issue with peeps using outdated software, then complaining about things looking broken. If you daily drive Palemoon, whatever issues you are experiencing are definitely not on my side.

What kind of music do you listen to?

Simply put: anything I come by. See the links to ListenBrainz and LastFM for more information. ListenBrainz has a more extensive database and logs more stuff, so I’d recommend checking that one out first.

Feel free to follow me there, or throw me an e-mail and I’ll check out what you listen to. Likewise, if you’re an artist, please tell me and I’ll add you to the MusicBrainz^{[musicbrainz.org]↗} database if you’re not in there already.

I love working with audio files in the sense of finding, ripping, sorting, tagging and sharing them. It’s something that relaxes me.

Since you like RSS, what are the news sources you are following?

This is an insanely spicy topic, so I will preface by saying: please do due diligence and vet sources before adopting them. Because something is listed here doesn’t means it’s an absolute source of truth.

I personally vet my news sources fairly thoroughly, basing myself partially on consensus data^{[en.wikipedia.org]↗} from Wikipedia, though not only. The following passed my tests of being factual and reliable.

For tech news:

• LWN^[lwn.net]↗
• GamingOnLinux^{[gamingonlinux.com]↗}
• Fedora Magazine^{[fedoramagazine.org]↗}

For general news:

• Next^{[next.ink]↗} (in French)
• YLE^[yle.fi]↗ (in Finnish)
• BellingCat^{[bellingcat.com]↗}
• Mediapart^{[mediapart.fr]↗} (in French)
• Reuters^{[reuters.com]↗}

It is also good to keep in mind the following when reading news online, in the paper or watching them on TV:

• Always read past the headline, it can be written in a misleading way, while the article body will say something completely different.
• If possible, double-check the story using other trusted sources.
• “Do your own research” doesn’t means disregarding official sources and trusting shoddy “alternative” media, it means using your critical thinking skills.
• “Unbiased” medias are not a thing. If someone is making you pay for something claiming to be that, you’ve been scammed. Bias exists in everything, the most you can do is recognize it’s there.

I will generally not trust news coming from third parties on self-published websites, for instance Twitter or any kind of social media; unless an official source is either linked or providing the news.

There has been already too many chain posts being shared around based on pure misinformation, which I talked about before^[b.j4.lc]↗, and frustrates me a lot.

Likewise, my best advice is to avoid clickbait alarmist news. While there is a lot going wrong with our world right now, lots of people get trapped into that cycle of bad news induced depression under the guise of being “informed”. You will do more good to this world by working towards it, not wailing in sadness on your couch. Be optimistic, change things around you, even if in a small way.