tl;dr Over the last two years, we've seen a dramatic policy debate playing out on the feeds of LinkedIn: "WFH (Work From Home) vs RTO (Return to Office)". Nearly everyone has an opinion, and many (if not most) of them are held strongly. Some are held based on data, some on person … | Continue reading
tl;dr Ever had one of those situations where you find that some data about your engagement with a company or institution is incorrect, go through the motions to correct it, only to discover it has mysteriously changed back to the original, incorrect, value? The other day I was dr … | Continue reading
tl;dr A colleague of mine, Scott Porad (CTO, VP Engineering) posted on LinkedIn, asking, "What are all the other kinds of debt like tech debt?" He listed out a few, then asked for others to weigh in, and the list grew... kinda long. And interesting. And made me think about the me … | Continue reading
tl;dr Hierarchically-shaped data is characterized around strictly acyclic data that are arranged in a parent-child relationship, starting from a single well-known root data node. The relationship between nodes is explicit, with the roles of parent and child clearly delineated, bu … | Continue reading
tl;dr Relational data is, contrary to popular belief, characterized not by "tables", but by sets and relational variables (also known as "relvars"), and making use of a relational algebra and predicate calculus to make it easier to do set-oriented operations. Refresher Because mo … | Continue reading
tl;dr The shape of data that's associative, or the key-value data store, is a style of single-dimensional, making the key the biggest part of the shape. Refresher In a key-value store, like Redis, data is stored in a collection made up of tuples of keys and values. Keys must alwa … | Continue reading
tl;dr Objects, despite being the most common tool form of mainstream programming languages, are often not as well-understood as a data concept as one might think. In an object data model, entities are defined as unions of state and behavior (and behavior is often of much less con … | Continue reading
tl;dr One of the "OG" data formats, the tabular data structure, aka "the flat file", is still today a handy and reasonable way of exchanging data in an automatable fashion without significant integration work required. Its shape is ideal for a multitude of data molecules that all … | Continue reading
At the end of 2021, my time at Rocket Mortgage came to an (amicable) end; the things they had asked me to do were done (more or less--there was more work to be done, but others could pick it up and run with it), and the next things I thought worth doing at Rocket were not things … | Continue reading
tl;dr Dating all the way back to the earliest of databases, data has had a "shape" to it, a natural schematic form that defines the various "atoms" and "molecules" that the database understands naturally. Relational data, such as that described by SQL and relational databases, is … | Continue reading
tl;dr Engineers (and their managers) have spent much of the last forty years learning (and sometimes re-learning and re-learning and re-learning...) the various repercussions and implications of distributed systems. As an engineering manager, I've discovered that there is a remar … | Continue reading
It's that time of the year again, when I make predictions for the upcoming year. As has become my tradition now for almost two decades, I will first go back over last years' predictions, to see how well I called it (and keep me honest), then wax prophetic on what I think the new … | Continue reading
Over time, people change, and it becomes necessary to part ways because of that change. So, too, with organizations and, in this particular case, social media platforms. When it began, Twitter was a bastion of hope and optimism, the center of the pro-democracy "Arab Spring" and a … | Continue reading
(I came across this quote from Russell, and liked it so much I thought I'd just copy it verbatim over to my blog. Obviously I'm not the author--I'm not nearly this eloquent.) (Via The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell) If the matter is one that can be settled by observation, mak … | Continue reading
No Starch Press sent me an early access/review copy of the book "Data Structures and Algorithms in Javascript", by Federico Kereki. If there's two sentences that summarize the book, it's these two from the Introduction: "The book deals with two basic concepts in computer science: … | Continue reading
No Starch Press sent me an early-access e-copy drop of the book "The Art of ARM Assembly (Volume 1)", by Randell Hyde, an author whose previous books on x86 assembly are on my shelf, and I'm enthusiastically suggesting you go buy a copy when it comes out. For close to two decades … | Continue reading
No Starch Press sent me a copy of the book "Effective C (2nd Ed)", by Robert C Seacord, and overall, it's not bad, though I don't think it lives up to the "Effective" moniker established by Scott Meyers three decades ago. Let me get one thing out of the way first: Despite the tit … | Continue reading
No Starch Press sent me a copy of the book "Strange Code", by Ronald T Kneusel, and honestly, they had me at "esolangs". But more than that, the book opines on reasons why studying programming languages, including their esoteric kin, is a useful and productive endeavor. First off … | Continue reading
No Starch Press sent me a copy of the book "Dead Simple Python", by Jason C McDonald, and I have to say, this is my new go-to book for book recommendations on learning Python. For starters, this is not a pocket-sized book; weighing in at just under 700 pages (including both front … | Continue reading
I found myself asking myself the question, "What's every new feature Java has introduced since the last time I really cared about new Java language features?", and didn't find an easy answer via Google. So, I decided to create that list. Note that most JDK releases are a combinat … | Continue reading
Ever had a manager who was clearly smart, but had no idea how to manage? Or one of those managers who was "laterally promoted" over from a team that was radically different from what your team did? There's a whole host of mistakes that companies often fall prey to with respect to … | Continue reading
No Starch Press sent me a copy of the book "The Nature of Code", by Daniel Shiffman, and I have to say, it's a lovely piece of work, both figuratively and literally. Physical Let's start with the physical (which is rare for a book review, I think): This book is gorgeous. It's cle … | Continue reading
There are four different kinds of R&D teams, each with very different actions and goals, and each with very different outcomes. The success of the team often depends on aligning the activities of the team with the intended goals, and it's actually quite reasonable for a company t … | Continue reading
There are four different kinds of R&D teams, each with very different actions and goals, and each with very different outcomes. The success of the team often depends on aligning the activities of the team with the intended goals, and it's actually quite reasonable for a company t … | Continue reading
There are four different kinds of R&D teams, each with very different actions and goals, and each with very different outcomes. The success of the team often depends on aligning the activities of the team with the intended goals, and it's actually quite reasonable for a company t … | Continue reading
There are four different kinds of R&D teams, each with very different actions and goals, and each with very different outcomes. The success of the team often depends on aligning the activities of the team with the intended goals, and it's actually quite reasonable for a company t … | Continue reading
Many developers get really excited when they join an R&D team, because it signals in their minds that they're among an elite group looking to move the needle for a company. We imagine the business suddenly soaring in revenue and profit because of the whatever-thing we just built. … | Continue reading
For many software developers, career success comes when they are placed on the "R&D" (research and development) team. It seems like a golden ticket kind of role: Spend time exploring new technology (which lots of developers enjoy doing), weighing in, offering insights, and just.. … | Continue reading
My LinkedIn feed recently brought me a question posted about an interview question the original poster faced: "You're the tech lead and your team is getting stretched thin. You decide to add resources (sic; not my choice of words here) but you can afford 1 senior full-stack devel … | Continue reading
One of the more curious things I've found, both in my time as a consultant and as a software management executive, is the striking differences between what the title "architect" means at different companies. Strangely (or perhaps, not so strangely), the nature of the job changes … | Continue reading
If you've spent any time on LinkedIn at all the past few years, you've seen the incessant posts about people "looking for their next challenge". Many of these are followed, sometimes weeks or months later, by additional posts (sometimes by the same people) about being really real … | Continue reading
A colleague pointed out a semi-scientific study about interviewees cheating with ChatGPT hosted by interview.io; the results are not particularly great if you're relying on LeetCode-style problems: "Predictably, the [interviewee group using common LeetCode problems without modifi … | Continue reading
For many years, people have ranted and railed against the dread managerial "Do you have a second to chat?" opening that has no context around it. Just Google "Can we talk" and you get something in excess of 4 billion responses, many/most of which talk about how to respond to thos … | Continue reading
A post on LinkedIn got a little close to my heart, showing a picture of Joe Flacco (an almost-retired NFL player, for those who aren't in to sportsball) and asking, "Are you overlooking experienced candidates because of their age? Take a lesson from Joe Flacco, who at 38 was writ … | Continue reading
It's that time of the year again, when I make predictions for the upcoming year. As has become my tradition now for nigh-on a decade, I will first go back over last years' predictions, to see how well I called it (and keep me honest), then wax prophetic on what I think the new ye … | Continue reading
tl;dr While having some conversations with a client, we got to talking about teams, processes, and how to partition work. I realized, as I was talking, that while RACI is a reasonable way of thinking about such things, it's a little complicated, and I prefer a slightly simpler mo … | Continue reading
With the enforced hiatus I've been on for the past 18 momths, I've had some opportunities to engage in a few projects that otherwise would've gone undone or unexeplored. One of these projects is actually indulging in a favorite pastime of mine: TableTop Role-Playing Games (or TTR … | Continue reading
tl;dr Recently, while sitting in the speaker ready room at VSLive Nashville, I had a lovely conversation with Angela Dugan and Amber Vanderburg about something I've been saying for a few years now: I don't want to hire passionate people, I want to hire professional people. Turns … | Continue reading
It's the age-old question of our industry--do we buy something to take care of a need, or do we build the thing ourselves? No matter which way you go, it seems like somebody comes around later and makes it clear you chose wrong. The deep secret, however, is that no matter which w … | Continue reading
tl;dr With the recent spate of AI-driven engines (like ChatGPT) that have been shown to be able to build applications from a complete spec, a lot of folks are having a bit of an existential crisis (or else gleefully pointing out somebody else's existential crisis). Nowhere is thi … | Continue reading
tl;dr It's a common problem, and one we've seen in the industry several times--a technology (language, framework, platform, whatever) is making a significant, backwards-incompatible change, meaning any code written in "v.N" (the current, stable version) will require some coding c … | Continue reading
tl;dr Tech has brought us many wonderful things, but if we take a step back from the hustle and bustle of recent releases, media excitement, and vendor advertising, we begin to realize that the tech-fueled vessel sailing to utopia that we were ready to embark on just a decade and … | Continue reading
tl;dr Developer Relations consists of a number of different activities that accomplish different things, but nobody's ever really sat down and talked about when to use which activity over another. I thought it was time to bring all of them together into a single, cohesive "whole" … | Continue reading
tl;dr Managers and leaders are often told contradictory things when discussing how to interact with their teams, and those new to the role often mistake collaboration for abdication of authority. Before we dive too deep, let me make one note about glossary here: Leaders are those … | Continue reading
tl;dr Many companies look to hire individuals who are both leader and individual contributor (IC) on the same team. These are often referred to as "Player/Coach" kinds of roles, and people in these roles often find a distinct lack of success over time. The problem is that this ro … | Continue reading
tl;dr Lots of companies are spending exorbitant amounts of time trying to track down and hire "full stack" developers, and finding them difficult to find. This is probably because there is no such thing, and reveals a deep weakness in the hiring manager's thinking. Definition As … | Continue reading
tl;dr: Newcomers to Developer Relations are often curious as to what, exactly, makes up the range of activities that a Developer Advocate (and related individuals) undertake. In this post, I look to provide an ontology and means by which to examine what artifacts satisfy what nee … | Continue reading
tl;dr: The Developer Relations org isn't exactly Engineering, but it's not entirely Marketing, and it often isn't really Sales. So if you're a company looking to find a home for your nascent (or currently-existing) DevRel team, where do you put it? Let's consider some of the trad … | Continue reading