Hey everyone. Is it worth seeking "skill endorsements/recommendations" on LinkedIn? Say I've taken a course and I ask the examiner to verify I have skills in that subject. Are these ever considered valuable, and if so in what contexts?

I'm trying to write an about me/introduction at the top of my resume for software engineering/development jobs, but I can't quite put into words what I'm passionate about. I prefer backend programming to frontend, and think I'm more of a problem solver/ someone who likes writing algorithms than someone who builds web apps.

Any ideas for how to put into words what I'm passionate about?

I'm passionate about working with data?

@BlackPanther So far you only told us that you prefer to do backend and prefer to work with algorithm but... None of that is what is your passion, maybe that's the problem that you don't know yourself? For example I am bonkers about breaking the unbreakable, and that drove me to resolve a lot of problems that my clients deemed as "we just have to live with it".

In practice one of those projects was entirely circumventing google anti-scraping mechanisms, and then taking that solution from small proof of concept and nurturing and guiding it to become something that processed milions of google serps every single hour. And I was driven by all the challenges along the way, and that it was my baby. As a result I could talk about it for hours. What drives your passion?

I see, maybe you are right that I don't know.

@BlackPanther Then lets try to find something out! Think about a project that you did, or started doing and ask yourself "where was that moment that I just HAD to work on it, couldn't stop thinking about it".

When asked about a passion during an interview sincerity is always the key. Seeing someone talk with passion about whatever-tech is an amazing thing to see in an applicant (at least for me), even if this tech of problem may not be part of their day to day responsibilities.

@TymoteuszPaul I'm just starting out, so I've just done two projects. The first was a REST API with authentication and authorization, which was fun. But it was when I started working on a project to develop an OCT viewer like these two 1 2 for a .E2E binary file but in C#, I just HAD to work on it, and couldn't stop thinking about it.

That's why I think I'm more of a backend/algorithms programmer than a user interface programmer.

I also really really like working with Entity Framework Core, more than I do working with ASP.NET Core. Querying data from a program, and adding data to a database are things I really enjoy.

@TymoteuszPaul I can imagine it is.

@BlackPanther Tell me a bit more abou tit, why did you enjoy it so much? Or the OCT viewer, what was so interesting about it?

@TymoteuszPaul I've been using PostgreSQL for sometime and always wondered how to connect an app to a database in order to persist data. I enjoy using Entity Framework Core because the way it allows you to create a conceptual model of a database in your C# application is genius. You can work with C# objects that map to database data.

@TymoteuszPaul I just really love the fact that you can program against objects instead of directly programming against a relational database. I used Java and I had to write SQL in my Java program which was then executed against the database.

@TymoteuszPaul Entity Framework core maps C# objects to database data so you never have to write SQL in your C# program, just perform operations against those C# objects that are mapped to database objects then the data provider executes your operation in the database those objects map to. Entity Framework Core also means that your controller is not full of SQL statements which can be jarring and verbose next to program code.

@TymoteuszPaul Also the fact that Entity Framework Core uses LINQ to query entities in your C# application is a game changer. LINQ is amazing for querying data sources, and again the alternative to using LINQ would be to write SQL queries in your C# code. LINQ is very expressive and makes querying datasources fun and easy.

@TymoteuszPaul Also using Entity Framework core means that you can change your data source from for example PostgreSQL to SQLServer or MySQL without needing to modify anything else in your code because since Entity Framework Core circumvents the need to write SQL statements in your C# application, you do not have to worry about SQL syntax that varies among different relational databases such as PostgreSQL, SQL Server, MySQL etc.

@BlackPanther Sounds like you have found something to write about :D. And yep ORM's are a fantastic thing (at least nowadays, in their early days they were more of a nightmare), though I would urge you to actually try doing the migration between say Postgres and MySQL, or even sqlite, as it may or may not be as rosey as it sounds (hint: some databases have capabilties that others do not, and yet you can switch betwene them. Something's gotta give, go and find out!)

@TymoteuszPaul Thanks, the overview section of my resume is limited in space so I just have to condense what I wrote into one line :D. Yeah ORM's are great, I don't think I would enjoy a programming language that doesn't have an ORM.

@TymoteuszPaul Good point about the migration, maybe I spoke too soon. SQLite does not support deleting or changing columns in a database, SQLite only supports adding columns so if you want to migrate from PostgreSQL to SQLite and the migration code includes PostgreSQL operations that are not supported by SQLite e.g. deleting or changing a column, the migration to a SQLite database will fail. Is this correct?

And is:

An example of what you mean when you say:

> though I would urge you to actually try doing the migration between say Postgres and MySQL, or even sqlite, as it may or may not be as rosey as it sounds (hint: some databases have capabilties that others do not, and yet you can switch betwene them. Something's gotta give, go and find out!)

@TymoteuszPaul As for what's got to give when doing a migration between PostgreSQL and SQLite I'm not sure yet, but I assume you have to just remove whatever operations in the migration code that are not supported by SQLite?

@BlackPanther You'll have to try and find out, while I know the answer the joy is in figuring out what happens behind the hood. Some of the more fascinating examples are foreign keys when going from mysql to postgresl (though that may not be a thing anymore)

@BlackPanther And yep, on the cv/letter include merely a hook, something that you will be asked about duing the interview and then you can keep talking until someone interrupts you, that's how passion is shown best.

@TymoteuszPaul Right, I'll find out other scenarios when migrating from one database to another using Entity Framework Core is not straightforward.

@TymoteuszPaul I've not heard of this "hook" before. Thanks, that's very interesting.

@TymoteuszPaul could a hook for what I described about why I enjoy Entity Framework Core be something like "passionate about Object Relational Mappers"?

@BlackPanther I've no idea about Entity Framework Core itself, just quite a few other ORMs. But for sure they have to cope somehow with the differences and limitations, and knowing those is a great way to shine, as anyone can repeat the "oh you can with 1 click migrate from postgres to sqlite" but knowin how that is possible, despite the massive feature gaps is what will make you shine.

@BlackPanther Too short, I would at least write 2-3 sentences about it, offer a bit of narrative.

you want them to be interested enough to for sure ask about it, that's the objective

@TymoteuszPaul I see, thanks. Yes knowing how ORMs cope with the differences between databases and the limitations of one database compared to another shows a good understanding.

@TymoteuszPaul I see. I'll aim for 2-3 sentences

@TymoteuszPaul Yeah, I need to grab their attention

@TymoteuszPaul What was so interesting about the OCT viewer is that I had to understand binary, bit operations such as bit shifting, working with streams, signed and unsigned integers and floats, and I had to understand the structure of the binary file described here. I used this knowledge to write a C# program to interpret and then parse this .E2E file, and store it in a C# data structure.

@TymoteuszPaul Then I enjoyed using an Anonymization library I wrote to anonymize the .E2E file that was read into the program. I also enjoyed working on encoding the file read into the program and decoding the anonymized byte stream and writing the resulting characters to a file on disk. I enjoyed using serialization and deserialization too.

@TymoteuszPaul I also enjoyed taking image bytes in the data read from the .E2E binary file, processing this image data using a bitmap in order to produce pictures of the medical image data stored in the binary file. I then enjoyed writing a library which used a C# framework to create a DICOM file from the medical images, and patient meta data I extracted from the .E2E file.

@TymoteuszPaul After writing this OCT viewer command line app, finally I enjoyed writing a windows service to automatically perform bulk parsing, anonymization, image extraction and processing, and DICOM conversion of n .E2E files. I also used LINQ extensively in this project and liked how using C# programming constructs like structs, classes, data structures, streams etc. was all that you needed to succeed in that project.

@TymoteuszPaul It was just a project which needed problem solving skills rather than how experienced you were with using this framework or that framework. Maybe I enjoy building command line apps?

@TymoteuszPaul Since I seem to like building command line apps maybe I should apply for jobs where I will be building desktop apps on Linux, MacOS or Windows, because desktop apps are essentially command line apps with a GUI front end?

@TymoteuszPaul did I manage to explain what I found so interesting about the OCT viewer project?

@BlackPanther you really don't need to ping me with literlaly every single message, i'll get to you when got a moment, one ping is enough.

@TymoteuszPaul Oops, apologies :). My bad, bad habit. I wasn't doing it because I was being impatient, it's just a bad habit that I need to get rid off.