Ahmad Muhammad

Adding a contact form to a Django site

Thu, 11 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000

So, you’ve got a site set up with Django and you’ve got everything running. One small problem: There’s no way for users to contact you. Having this functionality is essential because sometimes users may have some questions about your site and/or any services you’re offering.

Django doesn’t come with built-in contact forms, however creating your own contact form is relatively easy. Let’s see how.

I’m not going to go too in-depth into creating a new Django project, since this article assumes you’ve already got a site up and running. However, I will quickly run through the steps again for the beginners.

To comment or to not comment?

Mon, 18 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

If you’re a newbie in the world of programming, you may have heard of comments. Most tutorials aimed towards beginners mention comments, but it can be confusing to figure out exactly where to use them.

What are comments? Link to heading

Comments are little snippets of information that the programmer can add to their code. Comments are used to make the code easier for humans to understand and are essential when working in teams where there are multiple people working on the same piece of code. Every programming language has a syntax for adding comments, and any text that goes inside of the comment is ignored by the compiler, allowing you to write whatever you want without breaking your code.

Revisiting Django and Flask

Sat, 05 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +0000

A little over two and a half years ago, I decided to dabble in the world of Python web-apps by following the book “Django By Example”. Having done Python courses before, I knew my basic way around the language but I had never put together a proper application in any way, shape or form.

Starting Django from the book was a leap for me. I had heard of Django before, I knew it was a framework that let you make web-apps, but I had no idea how any of it worked. My lack of experience with proper Python apps didn’t help my position either. For a large chunk of the project, I was just following the book and not quite understanding what was happening.

Could the Boeing 777X be the death of the Airbus A380?

Mon, 01 Jan 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Background Link to heading

Boeing and Airbus have been competing each other in the commercial aviation space since the 1980s. In fact, they are the only commercial aircraft manufacturers out there today.

The two companies may produce similar aircraft, but their philosophies couldn’t be any more different.

Airbus still believes in pushing the limits of how big an aircraft can be. The Airbus A380 “superjumbo” is proof of that. It is the largest passenger aircraft out there.

My journey to Linux

Sat, 22 Jul 2017 00:00:00 +0000

For years, I have been a regular Windows us — who am I kidding? Let’s rephrase this as ‘I am a Windows user since birth.’

The first OS I ever used was Windows XP (which, on a side note, is precisely 11 months older than me,) followed by Windows 7, Windows 8 and Windows 10. Needless to say, I have zero experience when it comes to macOS or Linux.

And to be honest, I never had even heard of Linux until 2014, when I was so fed up of Windows 8 that I Googled “free operating system”. The first line in the results was, you guessed it: Linux. I quickly Googled “Linux” and came to the website of TLF (The Linux Foundation). I was so naive back then that I thought that installing Linux was as simple as downloading a .exe and ticking a box that said wipe Windows 8. I never knew about distributions, or drive partitions, file systems, none of that. I never even knew what an ISO file is or how to open it.

About Me

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

I’m a Senior Software Engineer and DevOps Engineer with 3x AWS Certifications (Certified Developer, Certified SysOps Administrator, & Certified DevOps Engineer). I’ve worked, and continue to work across a wide variety of domains, and amongst others, they include:

Maintaining and improving cloud infrastructure; modernizing applications using containerization, CI/CD, and other DevOps best-practices; ensuring high-availability and scalability; ensuring security requirements are met; and improving cost-savings on the cloud.
Maintaining and writing new code within different application stacks; back-end development in Python using frameworks as well as implementing advanced custom functionality; front-end development in React, Vue, and other JavaScript frameworks, as well as HTML/CSS; and maintaining PostgreSQL databases.
Architecting and making engineering decisions on new product requirements; refining technical implementations; suggesting more efficient and/or user-friendly alternatives to solving the product requirement; and overseeing development of these new features.
Project management; coordinating with various departments and stakeholders on product requirements and contributing to PRDs; carrying out operations tasks; and developing custom tools and scripts to help with operations and administrative tasks.
Analytics, reporting, and data insights using BI tools like Tableau and monitoring tools like Datadog; setting up system-wide health monitoring and analytics tools; extracting data and generating insights using SQL queries; automating certain types of data extraction and reporting using Python and AWS Lambda.

I’m a problem-solver at heart; I enjoy using various technologies to piece together the most optimal solution for any problem. I’m thorough and have a fine eye for details, but at the same time I look at the bigger picture and keep the overall scope in mind too.

My Resume

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000