Down the Memory Lane of Programming Languages
I saw this prompt through my Twitter feed, and decided to join in on the fun: 1994: QBASIC (elem school)1998: Pascal (high school)1999: Delphi2000: Scheme (college)2004: C++ (first job)2008: PHP (web...
View ArticleNaming Things Good
A colleague reminded me of this corny computer science joke a couple months back: There are 2 hard problems in computer science: cache invalidation, naming things, and off-by-1 errors. Though there are...
View ArticleEngineer-centrism
It can be pretty easy for software engineers to get a big head these days. The unique combination of: Communication, enabled by technology, becoming even more important during a global pandemic; The...
View ArticleNaïvely Confident
All code is tech debt. So goes the saying goes. I mean, sure, it’s a glib way of making a point to avoid not-invented-here and adding code for its own sake, but upon close inspection makes no sense as...
View ArticleWhere Engineers End Up
Often, I end up relating my own experiences in industry to other software engineers and managers to help them in their careers. At times, it’s someone on the same team at work, one of my direct or...
View ArticleTextbook Answers
One of the first interview questions I learned to give, as a new grad engineer a couple months out of college, was asking candidates how to detect a cycle in a linked list. I was taught that the “right...
View ArticleRules of the Game
Playing to Win: Becoming the Champion is a book published back in 2006 on the mentality of competing and winning at the highest levels, framed around a trifecta of dorky games: Street Fighter, Chess,...
View ArticleFeatures ↔︎ Tech Debt Tradeoffs
This is a bit of old news at this point, but I can’t help but be amused by this retelling of a small part of the ongoing Twitter drama: Geohot wants to “refactor” everything. Elno explains to him that...
View ArticleThe Framework Engineer
I’ve written about promotions before, particularly in contrasting the differences between prescriptive and descriptive promotions and generally favoring the latter. In quick summary, the former rewards...
View ArticleWhen to Code Creatively
This article caught my attention: Being “rockstars”: when software was a talents/creatives industry 🎭 The post meanders quite a bit, but the central theme is that the author laments the loss of...
View ArticleThe Arrogance of Adolescence
I recently attended a conference for engineering leaders based in San Francisco. It was a 2-day affair, and along with the usual talks and networking, the organizers smartly set up their venue for...
View ArticleWhen to Value Non-Technical Work
This presentation resonates: Being Glue It’s a pretty long read, but the high-level gist is that software engineers are, more often than not, evaluated primarily on hard technical chops. You know: the...
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