Where’s the line between being efficient, being lazy, and taking shortcuts which are inadvisable? A programmer looks for ways to make their own life easier. In the best case this means we write code to automate manual tasks and save ourselves time; we look for standard libraries instead of reinventing the wheel with each project; …
Those of us working in agile environments hear words like ‘sprints’, ‘scrum’ and ‘coach’ at work but probably don’t give a lot of thought to their original meaning – and today I want to ruminate about sprints. A sprint, originally, is a race over a short distance. All that matters is getting over the finish …
When I was a young whippersnapper in the days before MMOs, I roleplayed on MUSHes, text-based multiplayer systems. They came with their own programming language and none of the fancy IDE support that beginning developers today take for granted. Here’s a small sample: [pemit(#20, %2)][ifelse(gte(setr(9, mul(6, u(#513/data-autotf_per[ifelse(gte(%2, 30), cent, old)]_[first(%0, |)]))), 1), [round(%q9, 0)] hours, …
Today would have been my brother-in-law’s birthday. Over dinner a couple of days ago, my wife told me about an automated message she had received. “It’s almost Lothar’s birthday! Do you want help planning a party?” She had tears in her eyes. Think about all the people who had a hand in creating this feature. …
Assigning job candidates a programming task to complete at home, despite having some problems, isn’t going away anytime soon. So how about some advice? Usually you’ll have a set deadline. Good companies will indicate roughly how much time they think the task will take and not expect you to spend more than a few hours …
Assigning potential employees a software task to complete before their interview has become normal. Is this a bad practice? It assumes that the candidate has or can quickly get all the equipment and programs necessary. It assumes that the candidate, who is often already working full-time and may be going through multiple job application processes, …
There’s a brilliant piece by Chelsea Troy explaining why even very experienced programmers can have gaps in their knowledge about topics other programmers deem super basic. Let’s go back to our cheese slicer: if you’d never seen one, you’d use a knife to cut your cheese. Which of these conversations leaves the knife-wielder feeling like …
Well, it’s not simply length of time programming. Someone who’s spent five years re-programming basically the same thing again and again hasn’t learned anything new. I saw this working at an agency, where different clients request very similar solutions and it’s a plug and play type of thing. So what do I look for in …