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sakerbos

78 karma · joined February 25, 2022

My name’s Shaun and I’m a Frontend/Product Engineer based in Brisbane, Australia (previously Cape Town, South Africa ).

I pivoted from rocks to code

Early on in my career as a Geologist, I was buried under an avalanche of manual processes, something was at fault, it was a bore and it wasn't very Gneiss

I knew there had to be a better way. So I taught myself how to code. All of a sudden I had superpowers, automating processes left, right and center, with some staff not even knowing what to do with their time anymore, I was the schist

It wasn’t enough; I wanted more superpowers. So I spent the next 6 months studying coding after hours, much to my wife and dog’s dismay - not only because I had less availability but because they were forced to look at all the things I had built, “See how I just made that text turn red!”

But eventually I did it! I got my first job as a real live web developer, making websites on the internet! Although even that wouldn’t quench my insatiable thirst for automation…

Shortly thereafter, during a chance encounter with my wife’s employer’s neighbour, I discovered the many gross inefficiencies lurking in the medical industry. This encounter led to me spearheading the development of a mobile app for one of South Africa’s largest hospital networks, Mediclinic, which they used to replace paper at hundreds of sporting events across the country, streamlining operations and saving the planet, #winning

My journey has been fuelled by a passion for automation and shaped by three guiding principles: simplicity, practicality and fun, that I have brought to every endeavour. Fast forward 8 years and many projects later, in the words of Pinocchio, I shout from the rooftops, “I’m a real boy!”

Thanks for reading. I hope you enjoyed my Geology puns

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sakerbos··on Ask HN: Have you ever had a changed-your-life moment?
You will never be bored again
sakerbos··on Saudi Arabia reveals 170-km-long mirrored skyscraper to house 9M people
I can't tell if I'm excited or terrified by this idea.
sakerbos··on The new wave of React state management
I've advocated for Redux in many commercial projects because I knew that it worked well at scale. There was occasional pushback due to the large amount of boilerplate code involved (actions, reducers, sagas, models/interfaces if using Typescript) but the team mostly settled on Redux because it was the best supported and most widely used state management framework at the time. IMO the larger pool of devs that understand a framework, the better a project's chances are of success mainly because the industry has a high turnover of developers and it's easier to find replacements to maintain the existing code.

That being said, I'm now a huge fan of react-query.

sakerbos··on Australian customs searched more than 40k devices in 5 years
Would a factory reset remove these root kits or backdoors?
sakerbos··on Mammals can breathe through their intestines (2021)
My thoughts exactly
sakerbos··on Show HN: Browser extension that spoofs your location data to match your VPN
Nice one! It's a pity about the tab initialisation problem, I almost always open links in new tabs but great work nonetheless.
sakerbos··on How to Do a Handstand
Epic guide, definitely going to give it a go, thank you! (Easy on the gifs next time please, it makes it incredibly difficult to read )
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