Ben Kuhn’s ‘Think Real Hard’ shares a problem-solving checklist from the scientist Richard Feynman: Write down the problem. Think real hard. Write down the solution. On its face, this advice is ridiculous. If only we just sat and thought about the problem, we’d win a Nobel Prize like Dr. Feynman! ...
A lot of people start programming with shared dotfiles, copied from a team or online. I did. Maybe you’re ready to move on; how would you do that? ...
I used to have a bad habit when working alone: I’d start a feature, begin doubting my approach, throw away my work, and start over from scratch. Sometimes more than once. The result? Wasted energy, abandoned code, confusion about what I had and hadn’t implemented, and repetitive rework. This post is a collection of thoughts on this practice. ...
In Things You Should Never Do, Part I, Joel Spolsky narrates Netscape’s ruinous decision to rewrite their browser from scratch. This introduced the following concept to me: “It’s harder to read code than to write it.” I believe this is true. Today I’d like to explain why. ...
A common, problematic convention I see in Ruby tests are variable names like this: user_a = create(:user, last_log_in: today) user_b = create(:user, last_log_in: last_year) ...
Here’s a technique I’ve used on launches: instead of a big scary waterfall, or, in tandem with a phased release, let customers opt into a new feature. ...
An engineering technique I recommend: when you sign up for any service, even on a side project that’s just getting off the ground, create an email group called dev@<your-domain.com> that forwards to you and any other technologists, and use that email to sign up. ...
Here’s my simple framework for answering questions on Stack Overflow that reach and help people and earn reputation. ...
When possible, I prefer to use the presence of data to represent a boolean, rather than a boolean itself. ...
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. ...