Posts

An idea I find useful as an individual contributor is starting my consulting with this phrase: “I think that…”. The idea is to let your arguments stand on their own, rather than appealing to your experience or other authorities. ...

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. ...

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

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. ...

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. ...

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. ...

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

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

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

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! ...