Bug Reports Are Gold

Me: Hey, I’m experiencing an issue with your software. Here’s a detailed bug report. SAAS Engineer: What you’re describing isn’t possible. Narrator: But it was possible. This is a frustrating, unproductive snippet of a conversation I’ve had a few times in my career. What can we learn? Treat bug reports like gold. ...

January 15, 2022 · 2 min · Jake Worth

Why Getting Good Solves Most Career Problems

What should you focus on at the beginning of your programming career? My unflashy answer is: being really good at programming. ...

October 13, 2021 · 2 min · Jake Worth

How to Organize JavaScript Imports

The import statements at the top of a JavaScript component file can be a confusing, duplicative, churning mess. Is there a way to organize them that makes sense and scales? In this post, I’d like to share the way I handle this detail. ...

August 30, 2021 · 2 min · Jake Worth

Write Better Code by Knowing When Not To Refactor

When I review code, I sometimes request that refactoring changes be removed. Even when I think the changes are are objective improvements, and even when they support my personal preferences. My reasoning? Refactors are not free. ...

August 26, 2021 · 3 min · Jake Worth

The Tutorial Anti-Pattern

Here’s a scenario: you’re applying for your first tech job. You’ve found a bunch of hands-on tutorials and you’re speeding through them. When you finish, you upload the code to Github and add a new line to the ‘Projects’ section of your resume. Maybe you even deploy the code as a production website. My advice: stop. ...

August 24, 2021 · 3 min · Jake Worth

Consultancy Cycles

Working at a quality software development consultancy like Hashrocket early in your programming career could be a game-changing move. ...

August 4, 2021 · 3 min · Jake Worth

What is the Sub Claim of a JSON Web Token?

Today I’d like to explain the sub, or subject, registered claim of a JSON Web Token. ...

April 2, 2021 · 1 min · Jake Worth

Augmenting an Object With the Proxy Pattern

Let’s look at the proxy pattern in Ruby. ...

February 26, 2021 · 3 min · Jake Worth

Do the Hard Things First

A concept that I admire is ‘Doing the Hard Thing First’ via Ben Orenstein. Ben described on the Art of Product Podcast Episode 50. Here’s my summary: Choose the hard part of the problem, the part you’re unsure about, the part that success depends on, and solve that first! ...

January 25, 2021 · 1 min · Jake Worth

Exercism Raindrops in Python

I’ve been learning a bit of Python this Fall to facilitate conversations with a mentee. In this post, I’m going to share the first Python function I’ve ever written, a solution to the Exercism challenge ‘Raindrops’. ...

December 6, 2020 · 3 min · Jake Worth