Speaking isn’t as scary as you think, eventually

Dear new developer, I remember one of the first times I spoke in public. I was talking about J2ME (which was a technology for building mobile apps, pre iphone) to the Boulder Java Users Group. I threw up some slides showing the flow of data across the system, and made a joke along the lines … Continue reading Speaking isn’t as scary as you think, eventually →

How to learn things, fast

Dear new developer, I enjoyed this post about how to learn. While the author toots his own horn a bit much for me, he makes some very valid points about how to learn. Most importantly, you want to learn using the best resource. What is best? The best resource is a bit of a lie … Continue reading How to learn things, fast →

Help, I can’t learn/do something because it is boring!

Dear new developer, Sometimes you have to learn or do something boring. I know there are times when I've had to schlep, whether that is data entry, learning a technology that I'm not thrilled about, or tediously manually replicating a bug many many times to try to debug it. A couple of tips on how … Continue reading Help, I can’t learn/do something because it is boring! →

Benefits of blogging

Dear new developer, I've written before about my belief in blogging as a way to sharpen your thoughts and give examples of your expertise. Here's a post along the same lines. From the post: People always try to find someone they can trust. You can go through a series of interviews and hope that they … Continue reading Benefits of blogging →

Learn to look around corners

Dear new developer, Sometimes you want to play out things two and three steps deep. Kinda like chess players, who think about many moves ahead, if you can consider the ramifications of your decisions, you'll be well served. I remember talking to someone about a software position at his company and he referred to the … Continue reading Learn to look around corners →

Schleps

Dear new developer, I remember reading this article a few years ago and being struck by the wisdom contained therein. Code and development is crucial to building many businesses, but as developers we often get wrapped up in the code to the exclusion of other things. I have definitely discounted the value of other aspects … Continue reading Schleps →

Think about how things can go wrong

Dear new developer, Think about the edge cases. This is one of the primary ways you can add value. Think about what happens when things go wrong. It's usually relatively straightforward to consider the happy path. Let's take the example of a relatively simple ordering application. People can login, see their orders, and can change … Continue reading Think about how things can go wrong →

Things learned from a senior developer

Dear new developer, This post by a Bloomberg developer catalogs everything they learned sitting next to a senior developer for a year. Lots of good stuff in there. Favorite excerpts: How to handle an outage: For when things go wrong, and they will, the golden rule is minimizing client impact. My natural tendency when things … Continue reading Things learned from a senior developer →

The Art To And Power Of Saying No

Dear new developer, There's an art to saying no. And there's power in doing so. I worked on a project that was creating a Yahoo clone early in my career. The lead developer got sick. I said "yes, I can help." I jumped in and helped out, a lot. I ended up working 96 hours … Continue reading The Art To And Power Of Saying No →