Week in Review: Week 18, 2021

This week I’ll be using a weekly standup format: what I did this week, what I plan to do next week, and issues I’m encountering.

This Week

This week I added a new payment provider to my project. The work was a mix of coding, testing, design and branding, and lots of documentation.

I spent about ten productive hours working on my side project. I also did a small amount of thinking about mobile architecture for the startup I’m advising.

I loved these posts about try and the Law of Demeter from Avdi Grimm.

• Do, or do not. There is no #try.
• Demeter: It’s not just a good idea. It’s the law.

I also mapped my full-screen screenshot command to PrtSc (which I have on my keyboard) and set my screenshot default location to a Screenshots/ folder on the Desktop. Now I can take screenshots with one button without cluttering my Desktop.

I loved discovering the concept of Chesterton’s Fence this week. To summarize:

A core component of making great decisions is understanding the rationale behind previous decisions. If we don’t understand how we got “here,” we run the risk of making things much worse.

A cherished piece of advice I picked up right before becoming a platoon leader in combat: wait 30 days before making any big changes. Everything people do in a warzone is for a reason. Work hard to understand it.

Next Week

Next week I’ll be continuing to work on payments and auth, while meeting more of my team members. As I get more established and confident, I plan to start addressing tech debt issues.

Issues

None of significance.

Parting Thought

“If, instead of seeking approval, you ask, ‘What’s wrong with it? How can I make it better?’, you are more likely to get a truthful, critical answer.” —Paul Arden

Blog of Jake Worth, software engineer in Maine.