February 4, 2022

Weekly Summary Technique

“What did you do this week?” I’ve written a weekly summary for myself and my teams for years. In this post, I’ll explain how I use this tool.

February 2, 2022

Opt Into Beta

Here’s a technique I’ve used on launches: instead of a big scary waterfall, or, in tandem with a phased release, let customers opt into a new feature.

January 31, 2022

How to Find a Programming Mentor

I have collected a group of mentors over the years. I call on them frequently to talk through tough problems. I think I’m better at my job because of this regular, impartial outside feedback. I’d wish this for everyone! In this post, I’ll try to reverse-engineer the path I took to get here.

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.