The Schematic

How training for an Ironman changed me

Ryan Spears — Tue, 18 Mar 2025 23:39:44 GMT

The Start

I have been going through the phases of being athletic and not being athletic throughout my life. I was getting sick at least once a month and was gaining considerable weight. My weight slowly reached 234 as a 6'1 person. The more pounds that I put on, the more sick and lethargic I became. At the time, I was applying to colleges to get my Masters degree, which I ended up going to CMU. I vowed that whenever I moved for my Master's, I would start to get back in shape.

Eventually, I moved to Pittsburgh to attend Carnegie Mellon University and study software engineering. I was scrolling through X/Twitter when I came across this post. The post was about someone (that I didn't know) who ran a marathon to raise money for the Toronto food bank.

Inspired, I took this as a sign to spontaneously train to run a marathon in a Star Wars costume to raise money for the Pittsburgh Food Bank. Plus, it meets my need to get into shape. So, I started training. If you are reading this, feel free to donate to the food bank, ever. Everyone provides a meal to a person in need! You can donate here, if you wish.

Training

I started running. I was over my own head. I could not even run a single mile without stopping. I quickly grew a respect for runners as I realized how long a marathon actually was. As an inexperienced endurance athlete, I decided to start ramping up my miles each week. In week 1 of training, I did around 5 miles, and then in Week 2, I did 7 miles, and so on. At the end of the week, I would do a 'long run', which, as the name implies, is your longest run of the week. Each week, I added a mile or 2 to the long run's distance.

Eventually, one Saturday, I was headed out to run 20 miles. This was only after two and a half months of training. Looking back, I certainly was not ready. I ended up completing the distance, but then, the following day, I woke up with plantar fasciitis. If you don't know what that is, I just injured my foot. This injury is prevalent, and it just means I overtrained myself.

Since I couldn't really run until my foot was healed, I had some downtime to reflect on training. Certainly, I realized that training to run a marathon (26.2 miles) is hard. There is a reason that only 0.01% of people actually complete a marathon.

Ironman transition

The difficulty of running made me think of how hard it was for my brother to complete an Ironman race. An Ironman is a full-distance triathlon, which means in one race, you complete a 2.4-mile swim, a 112-mile bike, and then a marathon (26.2). Yeah, it's crazy. Naturally, after this realization, I signed up for Ironman Thun, which is scheduled for August 25th. Luckily for me, I already had the swimming covered since I was a great high school swimmer. I am good at swimming, but swimming is known to be the least significant part of a race.

Getting injured and then immediately signing up for an Ironman might seem counterintuitive, but I promise that it is not. I got injured so fast because running has a high impact on the legs. I was still pretty heavy and out of shape. Pair that with too many running miles, and you will get injured. Biking, however, has a much lower impact on your body and is safer(if you are inside). The same is true for swimming. Because I needed less pressure on my foot, these were great alternatives for training since I still had a marathon to run. So, I started training all three of the disciplines.

School, Research, Ironman

I am currently speed-running my program at CMU and completed it in two semesters while simultaneously conducting research in the robotics department, and now I need to train for an Ironman? Yes.

The management of all three of these has been a great teacher for me, and I still have much to improve on. These three things became my entire life for the past couple of months.

Eat, Sleep, Study, Train, Repeat.

Having a race scheduled is a different type of motivation. Without the race, you can easily push off training. That 13-mile workout tomorrow can wait, right? Not if you need to run a marathon after a 100-plus-mile bike in a couple of months. That race will be here before you know it. Not completing the Ironman is simply not an option in my mind. I have told many friends and family, and the pressure is on.

This same philosophy applies to school and my career. As the hours of assignment and training stacked up. I could sacrifice none of them, so the only option was to become efficient in my process.

The only way out is through 🧘

The progression of improvement in endurance training is very apparent (which is why it is addicting). When I started, I couldn't run a mile, and then, before I knew it, I was running 2 miles a run. That is already a 100% improvement in distance, which is crazy to think about. Then I went from 2 miles to 3 miles. Now, this is a 50% improvement, but before, I couldn't even run a mile, and now I just added that distance to the end of my workout!

It is not easy doing these workouts. I have made it seem like I have been robotic with my execution, but this is not the case. Sometimes, I would sit in my bed for an hour just to prolong the inevitable, which was the workout. Sometimes, the urge to skip a workout would win. As I started getting deeper into my training, skipping became harder. Skipping a workout would haunt me all day. I would feel disappointed in myself.

Suppose I slept in an extra hour and hit the snooze button. I would think later, "That hour of sleep could have been my workout." Or something like, "I could be done right now and tackling assignments". The thing was that I still had to do the workout. It is much better to not even think about the discomfort the workout will bring and just get right to it.

This experience has led me to associate this same mechanism of procrastination with every aspect of my life. The mechanism of this avoidance of disconformant applies everywhere. That assignment that I don't want to do still needs to be done. I am better off doing it now than an hour before the deadline. Nothing I am saying is profound; yes, you shouldn't procrastinate; we all know that. However, I noticed that training for an extremely difficult physical endeavor rewires your brain. There have been studies to back up the neuroplasticity around training, but even conceptually, it makes sense.

For example, which is harder? Biking for 3 hours at a moderate pace or doing a report that will take 1 hour to complete(undistracted). Most people would agree that biking for 3 hours is much more difficult, at least for me it is. I mean, biking at a moderate pace is painful. Your muscles are constantly aching, and your heart is constantly telling you to breathe in more oxygen for 3 hours! I am using 3 hours as a standpoint since this is a regular 50-60-mile bike workout.

As I continued training, I unconsciously became better at execution. Dealing with discomfort simply became a skill that can also be trained. I started doing assignments the second they were released. I started working out early in the morning. The number of miles I did each week began to climb as well. Now, I am doing half-ironman bikes for regular workouts.

I highly recommend signing up for a race.

Please, please, please sign up for a race. It will change your life. It will test you. It will be hard. The fruits of your effort will not just be some random silly race that you completed. Everything is tempting you. Your phone, the snacks in the cabinet, the gaming console, etc. You need to develop the mental tools to thrive in the attention economy that we now live in; training has certainly helped me.

There has been some discourse in the software developer community that you shouldn't work out since it is a "waste of time." Not only is exercising not a waste of time as a desk job professional, but it is borderline mandatory. It is well known now that sitting for prolonged periods of time is worse than smoking! Working out will keep you sharper, healthier, and more efficient.

If this inspired you to sign up for a race, please reach out to me!

What is package-lock.json?

Ryan Spears — Sun, 09 Jun 2024 09:55:45 GMT

What is it?

The package-lock.json is a file that is automatically generated when npm modifies the `node_module` tree or the `package.json` file. It is used to capture the exact tree that was generated by npm.

When you run `npm install` or `npm install ,` this will cause the tree to change, thus generating the package-lock.json file.

Should I commit it to Source?

Yes, it replicates the exact state of the dependencies for a given installation, which helps reduce the ‘it works on my machine’ problem. It does this by capturing the tree of all the dependencies from the project. It may be easy to ignore an autogenerated file like a binary file, but for this instance, you want to commit it.

What if I do not have the lock file?

If you do not have the package-lock.json file, then you can simply run `npm install` at the root of your project. This will regenerate the file for you.

npm install ;

Subscribe now

You should definitely complete Nand2Tetris

Ryan Spears — Thu, 06 Jun 2024 00:36:41 GMT

Magic

How do computers work? What happens when you tap on a link redirecting you to another website? How does my computer know which button I press on my keyboard, and how does it map to an actual key? What actually happens when I move a file to a different location on my computer?

We interact with computers and servers all the time. Since the inception of computing, we have abstracted and built upon many iterations of software and hardware to get us where we are now. Even ‘coding’ is an abstraction. When you write a hello-world app in Rust, Java, or whatever, how does that even work? It seems like magic at first.

CS

What I am highlighting is answered by Computer Science(CS). CS teaches us how everything works under the hood. If you look at job postings for software engineers (SWE), you will see many require a Bachelor's in Computer Science. Now, Computer Science and Software Engineering are not the same. Software Engineering is a subset of computer science; thus, SWEs should know computer science.

So why learn CS?

I’ll make a little analogy. Being a SWE is like being a chef. Yes, you can follow the same recipes or be trained to get a cooking “instinct,” but it won’t hurt to know some basic chemistry and food science if you want to be great.

The same is true for an SWE. There are frameworks, abstractions, and tools to build apps and get things done. These alone could be sufficient in your career, but you miss out if you don’t learn some basic CS. Many problems arise in development that are easier to grasp with an understanding of CS. CS is another tool in the toolbox for SWEs, and you will probably find it useful at some point.

Nand2Tertis

This is where Nand2Tertis comes in; it is free and a hidden gem in the tech community. It is a course that walks you through how to build a computer from scratch, hence the name. You start with a NAND electrical logic gate and slowly build up to making Tetris.

Now, if this sounds like borderline wizardry, then that’s exactly why you should complete it. I did this almost 5 years ago, and it has permanently impacted my career as an SWE. The mental model you shape out of it will stick with you forever, and you will be a better developer because of it.

Go build that ALU ;)!

Frameworks don't really matter for your personal projects

Ryan Spears — Mon, 27 May 2024 20:29:13 GMT

A stalemate for perfection

Tech is the ultimate incubator for the perfectionist mindset. If you do not watch out for it, it will slowly consume you. There are so many different types of tools and technologies that you can use for the same project. It is easy to find yourself in a situation where you are spending too much time deciding what is best to use.

I have always struggled with this: wanting to use/do the best things to get from point A to point B as fast as possible. What I found after doing countless random side projects and being in the field for over three years is that it doesn’t matter.

Part of the endless iterations of Javascript frameworks or new ways to do the same thing is essentially an equal and opposite reaction mechanism. Someone decided that they wanted to make one part of a system easier because that is their preference, and that design consequently made a different part harder or more confusing. The takeaway is that the person was OK with the part they made harder, even if they didn’t realize it.

The more and more I build side projects, the more I realize that it doesn’t matter which framework you use. Maybe the only important factor is if there is constant and long-term support for it. The only thing that matters is if you like it and that it works for you.

Pick one, and don’t look back!

Software engineering is not going anywhere anytime soon.

Ryan Spears — Sun, 19 May 2024 00:01:50 GMT

The claims.

Recently, I have seen more claims that AI will take all the ‘coding’ jobs. Almost every new AI model release or innovation in the field brings out the critics saying that programmers will no longer be needed in the near future. People seem to gravitate toward what Nvidia’s CEO, Jensen, outlined in a speech, saying that the newer generation of students should not learn to code.

Image from Nvidia

Although I see his point, many people are taking the outlining aspects of his argument to the extreme, suggesting that there will be zero software engineers. When Jensen says that kids should stop learning to code, it may seem a little rattling. Why wouldn’t it raddle you? He leads one of the world's biggest and most prominent tech companies.

Other companies, like Cognition AI, have gone viral over their demo of Devon, an AI software engineer. Devon can supposedly do coding tasks independently with just a prompt. This demo was the only thing Tech Twitter talked about for almost a week. Ironically, Cognition was still hiring software engineers when they claimed to have a product that was a software engineer. How does that make sense? Well, it’s because it didn’t work well; it was faked.

More people are coding with AI. Is there some data that will highlight its usefulness? Yes, and many findings progressively show that AI-generated code is risky.

Does it actually help?

Software engineers in the industry see how AI is not so scary. The first time you used ChatGPT, it was super impressive. The engineer's mind gets flooded with all the implications of what will come of such a technology.

Oh my gosh, it can write a binary search in Rust from a single prompt?!

Naturally, the next thing to do is to put it to the test. You will quickly find it is mostly unhelpful for actual real-world use cases. Sometimes, it even gets simple things wrong. I find I often type more in the prompt than I would just code the implementation myself.

One of the main issues is AI doesn’t fully understand your project. It tends to mash together standards and setups that you are not using. It usually tries to generate code that is compliant with an older version of your framework or package.

Times I use it.

There are only a distinct handful of scenarios in which AI remotely is useful in my actual workflow.

I know exactly what to type, and it just does it for me. (definitely helpful)
I want some code that I know is in a million different places on the internet and is easier to generate than to look up. For example, I may need to get yesterday’s date in a language I’m unfamiliar with. I know that the code I want is super easy, and the AI will most likely get it on the first try 99% of the time.
I need a certain type of command to run. There are just some commands that you don’t use often, but you need them anyway. Recently, I asked for the command to do an interactive rebase in Git.
Model generation. For instance, I have a SQL table script and paste it into my code. It scaffolds the table into a class that I can use in my code.

Other than these scenarios, I catch myself wasting time trying to get it to work with AI when I could have done it myself. It is super rare when I get to write a prompt like “Do a,b, and c so that I can do x,y, and z.“and it just works. Yet people think AI will write entire complex systems that will need 0 human intervention.

Software Engineering is not coding.

Coding is a means to an end. It is a misconception that developers spend all day coding, and that is simply not the case. Increasing the rate at which code is produced (assuming it is of the same quality) will only increase the throughput of shipped features, not limit the need for developers. Every single “programmer killer” only increased the number of tech-savvy people needed to maintain those new systems. This dynamic is known as Jevon’s paradox.

C was supposed to make programming easier and faster, reducing the need for software engineers. We all know how that turned out.

Don’t worry about AI for now.

You should be more worried about Section 174 than AI. Next time you encounter an “AI is going to take your job” article, just ask yourself the following questions.

Is this person a software engineer?
Do they write complex software that has its grasp on multiple systems?
Have they written software in the last couple of years?

If none of the questions above are answered yes, then you should be cautious of absorbing that information.

When and if AI replaces software engineers, that isn’t AI, that’s AGI. At that point, we are all out of jobs.

Keep coding!

You should probably start using Zoxide

Ryan Spears — Sun, 05 May 2024 17:21:35 GMT

What is Zoxide

Zoxide is a better ‘cd’ with additional features to help you shortcut some repetitive, tedious tasks.

For those that don’t know, ‘cd’ is a terminal command to navigate through your machine’s file system

How does cd work

The command ‘cd’ stands for change directory, which is pretty self-explanatory. Let’s say that you have the current file structure, and the current root folder name, in this case, is called `tutorial`. Now, if we want to navigate to the ‘folder1’ directory, we use the following command.

Then, our terminal will be pointed to `folder1` under `tutorial.` If we wish to go up a folder back to `tutorial,` we run the following command.

The `..` will reference the parent directory. There may be instances where you have to navigate to a folder that is 5 layers deep, and once you get there, you will notice that navigating back to the root folder is not as straightforward. You will have to make a mental note of how many folders deep you are and run something like this.

The command above will point your machine 4 folders up. You can start to see the problem. A similar annoyance arises when you initially want to navigate to your project from a new terminal window. Most of my projects are in a folder called ‘code,’ so every time I want to navigate to a project, I run something like the one below.

Where Zoxide comes in

Doing all these navigation jumps becomes a little repetitive after a while. Wouldn’t it be nice if I could just go straight to the project? Well, that’s what Zoxide is for. Zoxide uses ‘z’ instead of ‘cd’. So instead of typing `cd ./code/supercoolproject` every time, you only have to do it once with ‘z’!

Zoxide will remember where you went! It never gets old, and I use it every time. If the end folder has a similar name to another path you z’d to, it will prompt you to pick!

Will it make me 10x?

No. Some of you may be saying, “This doesn’t save that much time, “and I will say, yeah, you are right. For me, it is not about the time saved but the convenience it brings. I rather type less than I need to do the same thing.

Happy hacking!

How are new developers going to survive in such a tight market?

Ryan Spears — Tue, 30 Apr 2024 15:01:53 GMT

We’ve all seen it

Layoffs. They have been happening everywhere, and they are not stopping. Google recently laid off its entire Python workforce for “cheaper labor.” Companies face more restrictive tax laws, adding more resistance to hiring software engineers. Hiring developers is becoming more of a gamble as they are expensive and inherently risky employees to have.

There are five dynamics to these layoffs.

Dynamic 1 - Hiring Spree

COVID happened, and suddenly, everyone was working from home. Demand for online work increased, and Big Tech went on a hiring rampage. It was an employee’s market; job openings increased, and people were flexing multiple job offers at once from top tech companies.

Dynamic 2 - Hype

Now, we have all the ‘tech’ job hype, with day-in-the-life videos flooding social media platforms highlighting how amazing it is to work in tech. These are far from the average developer life, maybe at big tech sometimes. Since a giant hiring spree took place, becoming a developer was suddenly cool and luxurious.

Dynamic 3 - The opposite of gate-keeping

As more people boarded the hype train, it made it that much more worth it to convince people to buy into boot camps and courses that gave false promises to land that dream FAANG job. Tech influencers spawned, and many made getting a career in the industry seem easy.

Dynamic 4 - Supply and Demand

It used to be that software developers were so sought after that Big Tech intentionally hoarded them from their competition. But now we have a surplus of talent. Talent at huge and notable companies is laid off and back in the job market with boot camp grads and college computer science grads. Now, experienced developers from the most in-demand employers compete in the market, along with new grads with no experience. It is now a talent market in favor of the employer.

Dynamic 5 - Section 174

Not many know about the change to Section 174, but I recommend reading about it in a post written by . Long story short, in terms of taxes, it is more expensive to retain software engineers.

The new devs

I am truly worried about the new developer generation trying to enter the market. Companies are looking for guarantees; why hire a developer with 0 years of experience when there are seniors with five years who will hit the ground running? As a society, we should be training and mentoring new developers, but for most companies, developer output comes first, not training people.

Start writing today. Use the button below to create your Substack and connect your publication with The Schematic.

Start a Substack

How I finished my undergrad in 2.5 years with a 3.82 and how you can too

Ryan Spears — Sun, 28 Apr 2024 15:20:28 GMT

Why speedrun college?

College used to be the golden ticket to a stable life, but now it is a different story. The average amount of debt for students is around $40,000 after a 4-year degree. On top of the growing student debt crisis, more and more people having a bachelor’s degree is becoming the norm, making it difficult to stand out. Some would argue that having a bachelor’s is a ‘second high school’ and that it is a requirement to get a job versus a resume booster. Completing college fast can yield many benefits, such as

Enter the industry faster.
Leave with less debt.
Begin a Master’s sooner.

I dropped out

Yes, two and a half years total, that is, while enrolled in college. I began my college career at the University of South Florida in 2018 in their computer science program, where I spent the next year and a half not caring about school. I did not try at all. I would never study. I left with an impressive 2.52 GPA (yeah, a scholar, I know). Next came the semester before COVID, where I withdrew from all my classes and dropped out of college

Now comes the speed

Two years later, I returned to college and transferred to Florida International University for their online program in computer science. At this time, I was working full-time as a software engineer. I wanted to go through college as fast as possible since I was working and wanted my free time back.

Below was my enrollment schedule.

Summer (5 classes), Fall (6 classes), Winter (1 class), Spring (5 classes), Summer (5 classes).

I was working nearly 80 to 90 hours with college and work. Now, this may have been overkill, and it was, but I did this slowly. You can do this much faster.

After this, my college GPA was a solid 3.82

The CLEP Exams

The CLEP exams are truly a hidden gem for earning college credit.

These are self-funded tests for around $150 that can test you out of entire courses. Here is the FIU credit Table for the CLEP Exams. From this graph, you can test out almost all of your Gen-Eds. Not only can this be faster, but it is also cheaper. For example, FUI was on a pay-per-credit basis, so paying 150$ over a $1200 class is a no-brainer. I ended up doing 2 of these for my undergrad.

The AP Exams.

You should definitely take as many APs as you can in high school as you can. Even if you don’t have AP classes, you can still take AP exams of your own accord. Like the CLEP exams, the AP exams can give you college credit. The Credit Table for the AP classes is listed here as well. I transferred 2 AP classes from high school.

Speedran

Being this intense over finishing college is not for everyone, but it doesn’t have to be. Even just testing out of a couple of classes can save you a lot of money and time! Best of luck if you go down this road.

Switching to nvim as an early career developer in 2024

Ryan Spears — Sat, 27 Apr 2024 21:37:16 GMT

What led to this?

I have been working for 3 years in the .Net world living mostly in Visual Studio, and on any of my personal projects I would code in VS Code simply becuase the projects were not in .Net. As I got better at using VS Code with their command and extensions, I began to more and more view Visual Studio as big, clunky, and slow. Visual Studio is good for C#/.Net but that's pretty much it. .Net sort of forces you to use Visual Studio since it has so many built in features that are targeted for .Net development. I eventually went and tried coding .Net
apps in VS code and had a unpleasent experience so for .Net's sake I am stuck with VS until I get a little better at nvim. Nonetheless, I stumbled onto @ThePrimeagen's youtube channel and watched serveral of his takes on nvim and decided to give it a shot. Another one of my motivations for switching was to be more close to the computer when it comes to knowing what is going on under-the-hood and alot of the editor's rob you of this experience.

The Setup

What I didn't want my neovim to be was doing less coding and more customizing my editor to never actually use it in the first place. I went with LazyVim as lazy seems like the most stable nvim package manager. I went with the template version that they provide and I recreated it partially to understand how it works, but ultimately went with the template.

Progression

I was terrible when I first started using nvim. I was slow, looking at my keyboard often, I just sucked. I went room-temp-turkey, meaning during work I fully used Visual Studio and when I was working on my own stuff I would use nvim exclusively. As time when on I began picking up more tricks along the way such as dit, which means 'delete inner tag', sooooo goood. Another personal favorite of mine is the the search and replace, even though it is exactly same functionally, it is so much easier and faster to just type :%s/old/new and then boom it is done. There is something about just always being on the keyboard that is super satisfying.

Observations

Today have using nvim for a couple of months I had the though 'huh I really never use my mouse anymore'. This is usually how change goes, it is usually slow and is really noticed when you look back. I have become a better typist as a side-effect and grew closer to the terminal. Something else that happened on accident is that I am able to just remember a lot of the keybind easy since that actually mean something. The most common example of this is that gg goes to the beginning of the file, g mean 'genisis'. Or how 'd' followed by a plethora of vim motions to delete what you want. For example, those to commands that I just referenced (d & gg) can be used together. dgg will delete everything from where your cursor is to the beginning of the file! Never gets old everytime I use it.

Yeah, I recommend it

It really isn't about the speed, it is about the ease-of-use. I may be faster will it, but that's not really the point. There are just some instances in editing some text that you can just do SOO much easier in nvim than you can in something like VS or VS Code. Not to mention that nvim is just actually faster as a piece of software. So yeah, give it a try.

My Portfolio