If your change works, and if it’s small enough to take at one gulp, Then you might consider de-emphasizing the argument for adoption, and focusing your powers on gaining an experiment. (If you change doesn’t work, or it’s too big to take at one gulp, then you might want to go back to the drawing […]
Change Pro-Tip: Experiments, Cheating, and Responsibility Read More »
In Kotlin, functions whose last argument is a lambda, i call them end-lambda’s, make natural expressions of tree-shaped data builders. Say you’re building Performances, where a Performance includes (possibly) the list of songs being performed. making shit up here, it might look like: performance { song { } song { } } First thing you
Using Kotlin for Data Builders Read More »
You can’t be a great geek w/o being a great human. I get how the tradition says you can. I get how much you wish it were so. You can’t be a great geek w/o being a great human. Being a great human is fabulously hard. It’s the hardest thing humans have ever conceived of.
Great Geeks Are Great Humans Read More »
Change Pro-Tip: I give the same advice to myself as a coach that I do to my teams: "Try Different, Not Harder". A while back we covered Alice’s vision of how to change things. In countering it, I offered the adjustment "from final to iterative". The idea of iterative change is straightforward: It means that
Try Different, Not Harder Read More »
The road to hell is lined with convenient parking spaces. I said recently that we need fewer addresses and more routes. These slugs are attempts to get at what I think keeps going wrong for us — in the trade, possibly in entire culture. There are numerous systems for software development out there competing in
A Question Of Humbling Proportion Read More »
Change Pro-Tip: When I can give people an experience, I get dramatically better results than when I give them reasoning. I’mo tell you one of my stories. Twenty years ago, with a considerable amount of "Shut up, I’m the pro from Dover", I got permission to do TDD in a corner of the app I
Create Experiences Not Arguments Read More »
Change Pro-Tip: I try to prioritize getting human judgments — opinions, reactions, feelings — because the quest for numbers holds too many easy traps. When I go to the doctor, she asks me how things are going. Here’s an answer I never ever give: "2.354". Could I? Sure. I could take all the numbers from
Seek Judgments Not Numbers Read More »
Coaching Pro-Tip: Thicken yourself. Do that by pursuing the backstory of any idea whatsoever that has nothing to do with your trade. That’s it. No thread.
Refactoring Pro-Tip: When I choose a side-by-side approach, I start by finding (or making) the "pivot mount". the place where the final switchover can take place safely. (So, I re-read that last muse, the one driving this, and I blanched. I didn’t say that very well. The price we pay for extempore musing, I spoze.
Finding the Pivot Mount Read More »
Refactoring Pro-Tip: As soon as I move beyond small-scope refactorings, I ask whether my change would be easiest side-by-side or in situ. Before we even start this conversation, remember remember remember: easiest nearest owwie first, and keep repeating it. This conversation happens after we’ve found everything we can do in a scope of one or
Refactoring: Side-by-Side v. In Situ Read More »
