Change Pro-Tip: We can’t (purposefully) change what we don’t sense, what we don’t talk about, or what we assume can’t be changed. I remind myself of this one a lot, because it’s easy to forget in the middle of the circus that passes for professional software development. Changing things means going from A to B […]
What We Can’t Change Read More »
Changing Pro-Tip: When I remember to line up the"betters", so my "better" is their "better" is his or her "better", my changes go a lot better. A refresher, my definition of coaching is "Creating or exploiting openings through which individuals, including sometimes myself, can step closer to who they wish they were." This is all
Change Pro-Tip: Lining Up The Betters Read More »
Change Pro-Tip: All the knobs a little, all the knobs a little, over and over again, is how I’ve make my most successful changes, in code and organizations alike. A while back, I mused first about "Always Small, Always Improve" and I later elaborated "Always Small, Always Better, Always Wrong". Lo these two decades ago,
Change Pro-Tip: All The Knobs A Little, All The Knobs A Little Read More »
Geekery Pro-Tip: I frequently remind myself: Think Less, Sense More. It’s advice I give to me all over the place, from the most technical parts of the sociotechnical fractal to the most social parts of it. It’s an odd thing to say, so we better dig in to it a little. I’ve recently come from
Geekery Pro-Tip: Think Less, Sense More Read More »
TDD Pro-Tip: Before I write the first test in a new context, I usually design until I get to a state of "Nervous Optimism". A couple of days ago, I was party to some drinking geekery with my colleagues at a hookah bar restaurant dance club. It was the end of a long day, and
TDD Pro-Tip: Design Until Nervous Optimism Read More »
Sitting here, listenin’ to my playlist, thinking about temporality and how it relates to the kind of geekery I want to write and talk and teach and geek about. Over the last 10 years or so, the topics deriving from systems theory, from complexity theory, and so on, have wormed their way slowly into our
Culture Starch: We Haven’t Grasped Complexity Yet Read More »
Who’s to blame? I notice how many folks seem to believe geeks are in charge of what software gets written in the world. When software is revealed to be immoral, I notice how reluctant they are to blame folks who are senior executives, boardmembers, or majority shareholders. The majority of working software developers who are
Plenty Of Guilt To Go Around Read More »
TDD Pro-Tip: I stay very aware of my testing context’s data, and specifically of what data is opaque and what data is transparent. Those terms, transparent and opaque, need a little explanation. Sometimes the code I’m testing doesn’t vary based on the entirety of its input. A trivial example, the function that validates the date
TDD Pro-Tip: Stay Aware Of Testing Data Read More »
Refactoring Pro-Tip: When I’m scanning, I’m not just reading fast, I’m feature-detecting, something the unconscious part of me is very good at doing, especially when the code helps. Part of the made, the making, and the maker as a guiding theme for me is the idea of "leaning in" to the strengths of my maker
Refactoring Pro-Tip: Scanning Isn’t Just Fast Reading Read More »
Refactoring Pro-Tip: I optimize my code for scannability, readability, and writeability in that order. I won’t argue my case in detail, there’s a video if you’d rather watch me make it instead of reading it, and I’ll just sketch the case briefly here in the muse. http://geepawhill.org/optimizing-a-program-and-programming/ When I’m coding, I notice that I spend
Refactoring Pro-Tip: I Optimize Scannability, Then Readability, Then Writability Read More »
