Articles tagged "software_engineering":

It is better to have the same meeting four times with four people each, than to have one large meeting with sixteen people.

If some idea or decision needs to be socialised amongst many people, it may be tempting to get everyone into one meeting and sort it out in one go.

How to add an experimental feature to your code, without having it in your main version control

You might have a really good idea, but its not practical to get it commited to version control. You can keep the feature around for local use with some shell aliases and git commands.

At least write one test.

The value of writing one test isn't in testing the code's correctness - it's in testing its consumability.

Well designed code is easy to delete

The mark of some well designed code is that the act of replacing it is some what straight forward.

If I were building a start up from scratch, these are the things I would include (or have a plan to include).

The easiest time to include something in your application is at the start. On the other hand, you're likely time-poor and there's no point on burning all your runway on a gold-plated hello world! application.

Good idea: Loading screen tips for developers

Video games commonly show helpful hints and tips on loading screens. Developer tools should contain the same.

Assume the next developer will copy paste what they see you do. (That next developer might be you.)

It's not a criticism of developers to suggest that they'll copy paste what they already see in a codebase. Programming is complex and we'll use whatever hueristic we can to reduce what we need to think about.

The natural state of software is chaos

The perfect codebase is a myth. Abondon the pursuit of it, and instead seek to contain the mess.

The horseshoe model for software development

I propose that the designer and the QA should be one and the same.

User Experience reflects the underlying data structure

I propose a variation of Conway's Law.

A model of extensible changes.

Making changes in an extensible manner avoids having to do significant code rewrites or being disruptive to downstream consumers of your API.

What is the role of QA and how should their tests fit into the development process?

If we're doing shift-left testing, and developers are writing their own tests - then where does that leave QA?

How to effectively hire contractors

Contractors are best utilised to plough through a well defined scope of work.