January 29, 2022

Use a Dev Email

An engineering technique I recommend: when you sign up for any service, even on a side project that’s just getting off the ground, create an email group called dev@<your-domain.com> that forwards to you and any other technologists, and use that email to sign up.

January 27, 2022

How to Answer Questions on Stack Overflow

I enjoy answering questions on Stack Overflow.com. It helps me learn about common challenges and practice reviewing code. In the beginning, it also unlocked basic site features like voting.¹

Maybe you’d like to answer questions too! In this post, I’ll explain how I answer questions on Stack Overflow.

January 25, 2022

Want Better Automated Tests? Hard-Code Your Expectations

Hard-coded test expectations have many benefits that I’ll explore in this post.

January 24, 2022

Presence is Boolean

When possible, I prefer to use the presence of data to represent a boolean, rather than a boolean itself.

January 19, 2022

Be a Better Technical Consultant by Saying "I Think That..."

An idea I find useful as an individual contributor is starting my consulting with this phrase: “I think that…”. The idea is to let your arguments stand on their own, rather than appealing to your experience or other authorities.

January 15, 2022

Bug Reports Are Gold

Me: Hey, I’m experiencing an issue with your software. Here’s a detailed bug report.

SAAS Engineer: What you’re describing isn’t possible.

Narrator: But it was possible.

This is a frustrating, unproductive snippet of a conversation I’ve had a few times in my career. What can we learn? Treat bug reports like gold.

October 13, 2021

Get Good

What should you focus on at the beginning of your programming career? My unflashy answer is: being really good at programming.

August 30, 2021

How to Organize JavaScript Imports

The import statements at the top of a JavaScript component file can be a confusing, duplicative, churning mess. Is there a way to organize them that makes sense and scales? In this post, I’d like to share the way I handle this detail.

August 26, 2021

Write Better Code by Knowing When Not To Refactor

When I review code, I sometimes request that refactoring changes be removed. Even when I think the changes are are objective improvements, and even when they support my personal preferences. My reasoning? Refactors are not free.

August 24, 2021

The Tutorial Anti-Pattern

Here’s a scenario: you’re applying for your first tech job. You’ve found a bunch of hands-on tutorials and you’re speeding through them. When you finish, you upload the code to Github and add a new line to the ‘Projects’ section of your resume. Maybe you even deploy the code as a production website. My advice: stop.