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 →

How to get the attention of a busy person

Dear new developer, This post talks about how to ask for mentoring, but the principles apply to getting in touch with any busy person. Busy people are by definition busy, and get a large number of emails and requests every day. (Here's a VC talking about the difference between ignoring and not replying, and how … Continue reading How to get the attention of a busy person →

How To Excel At Your Job As A New Developer

Dear new developer, I think that there are only really four tasks you need to do to do a good job as a new developer. Say what you are going to do, then do it. This is all about communicating what you are working on. You can do this explicitly (via face to face communication … Continue reading How To Excel At Your Job As A New Developer →

The Surprising Number Of Programmers Who Can’t Program

Dear new developer, This came up in a Hacker News comment thread recently: I've been working since the 90s and I never attempted to do FizzBuzz. Is it really relevant? Maybe to screen junior developers out of college? And the response So, as someone who spends maybe 20% of their time hiring, it's still a … Continue reading The Surprising Number Of Programmers Who Can’t Program →

No company is a monolith

Dear new developer, When I was a new developer, or actually new to the business world, I thought that companies acted rationally. They don't. I remember when an old timer at my first job talked about empire builders. Basically, his perspective was that above a certain level, there's not much interest in actually doing things … Continue reading No company is a monolith →