software engineering 👩‍💻 💯
Remembering that the tech industry is being built by people just figuring things out on the fly isn’t just a way to avoid stress; it’s become one of the most empowering bits of advice I can imagine. Because if all those people out there have changed the world while not knowing what they were doing…so can I.
Makinde Adeagbo • Nobody Knows What They’re Doing
Dec. 19 • Advice for new software devs who've read all those other advice essays
Don’t compare yourself to others, compare yourself to where you were in the past.
Ólafur Waage • Advice to new Programmers
If you can’t easily explain why something is difficult, then it’s incidental complexity, which is probably worth addressing
My favorite manager in my career had a habit of pressing me when I would claim something was difficult to implement. Often his response was something along the lines of “isn’t this just a matter of sending up X when we Y”, or ... See more
My favorite manager in my career had a habit of pressing me when I would claim something was difficult to implement. Often his response was something along the lines of “isn’t this just a matter of sending up X when we Y”, or ... See more
Marcus • Marcus' Blog
Try to solve bugs one layer deeper
Imagine you have a React component in a dashboard, that deals with a User object retrieved from state, of the currently logged in user. You see a bug report in Sentry, where user was null during render. You could add a quick if (!user) return null . Or you could investigate a bit more, and find that your logout fu... See more
Imagine you have a React component in a dashboard, that deals with a User object retrieved from state, of the currently logged in user. You see a bug report in Sentry, where user was null during render. You could add a quick if (!user) return null . Or you could investigate a bit more, and find that your logout fu... See more
Marcus • Marcus' Blog
Anyone who’s spent a few months at a sizable tech company can tell you that a lot of software seems to exist primarily because companies have hired people to write and maintain them. In some ways, the software serves not the business, but the people who have written it, and then those who need to maintain it. This is stupid, but also very, very tru... See more
Can Duruk • Software will eat software in a remote-first world
Software engineers never escape the skill-change vortex, even many years into their careers. Experienced engineers must learn and adopt technologies that didn't even exist when they started out. Developers must constantly retool themselves, even well after their formal education ends.
Nnamdi Iregbulem • Why We Will Never Have Enough Software Developers
I conclude that there are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is far more difficult. It demands the same skill, devotion, insight, and even inspiration as the disco... See more
Make debugging easier
There’s so many little tricks I’ve acquired over the years on making software easier to debug. If you don’t make any effort to make debugging easy, you’re going to spend unacceptable amounts of time debugging each issue, as your software gets more and more complex. You’ll be terrified to make changes because even a couple new ... See more
There’s so many little tricks I’ve acquired over the years on making software easier to debug. If you don’t make any effort to make debugging easy, you’re going to spend unacceptable amounts of time debugging each issue, as your software gets more and more complex. You’ll be terrified to make changes because even a couple new ... See more