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  ARE YOU LIKE ME? OR DO YOU HAVE DISCIPLINE?

If you are anything like me, you've started more things than you have finished. We're innately curious about the things around us and inspired when we come across people who have mastered their trade. We see people create cool and beautiful things and think, "Man, that looks easy, if I put in a little time I can do that in no time." What follows is a few days or weeks of focused and dedicated learning. During this time we make some progress, but not much. In fact, the progress that we do ma...

   Work,Learning,Effort,Detail,Complexity     2011-10-25 10:27:28

  Why do so many technical recruiters suck?

It’s Tuesday, I get a call from an unknown number.  There is a little hesitation, but I finally pick it up.  My number is listed on my business card and I feel like I should get these calls unless I am in a meeting.- Hi, is this Mike?- Yes, speaking….- Hi Mike!  How are you today?- Fine…- I am calling from XYZ Co, and we deal with recruiting and staff augmentation.  I was wondering if you are looking for software developers.We are in San Francisco and itâ...

   Recruitment,HR,Sucks,Tech recruiter     2011-11-13 08:22:02

  Testing is not a Feature

I pointed out to someone at work today that PyDev 2.5.0 now offers really cool TDD support. I’m not a huge TDD proponent or anything, but this stirred up a discussion. This guy, let’s call him John, said that â€œTDD may shorten the time it takes to develop a feature, but sometimes a feature is so urgent we may want to deliver it as quickly as possible and test it later”.Sentences like that make me weep. I tried to explain that without testing, the...

   Testing,Feature,Software testing     2012-04-24 06:30:09

  Selling Yourself: Why? and How!

I know many good developers who are under the impression that they either don’t have to sell themselves, or selling themselves is wrong, but is that really true?First let me clarify by defining what I mean by “selling yourself”. I don’t mean “selling out”, I mean marketing yourself, what you’re doing and what your skills are. Especially to your organization.I don’t need to sell myself, my code speaks for itself.Really? Do you think your pristin...

   Sell,Developer,Skill,Show,Resume,CV     2011-08-10 03:19:34

  PHP sucks (but, some frameworks don't)

I started web development with PHP, and I've decided I've had enough. Why? Keep reading.PHP (the language) sucks. There, I said it. 1029380128301928301823 GlobalsObject system hacked onC extension system sucksDocumentation sucks (read more; no, I'm not drunk)Has a terrible communityAll in all, designed by total idiots. You've probably heard this a ton of times before, but, here it is again. THERE ARE JUST WAY TOO MANY GLOBALS. Why in the world does md5() need to be global? Do you serio...

   PHP,Sucks,Framework,Good,Bad Design     2011-11-20 07:08:16

  How GitHub Works: Hours are Bullshit

Frederick Winslow Taylor wrote the seminal analysis of management and efficiency in 1911 with The Principles of Scientific Management. He took the first scientific approach towards maximizing efficiency in manufacturing jobs. Time is money. Faster is better. More hours are better. Hours are bullshit Hours are great ways to determine productivity in many industries, but not ours. Working in a startup is a much different experience than working in a factory. You can’t throw more time at a...

   Work,Style,Time,Efficiency,Code,Enforcem     2011-08-19 07:42:32

  Guest Post from a CodeBoy: The Five Stages of Debugging

Being confronted with a serious and difficult-to-diagnose bug can be one of the most traumatic and stressful experiences of a professional programmer's career. Those who have been through such an ordeal rate the stress as on a par with that accompanying serious injury, divorce, or the death of a family member. Researchers who have studied the psychology of computer programming have lately constructed a framework to understand the stages through which the programmer's mind progresses as she...

   Debug,Steps,Stages     2012-05-01 06:39:38

  Becoming a Better Developer, Part 1: Making Fans

If you're trying to grow your startup you've come to the right place. Get my 170-page ebook on how to grow a startup and join thousands of self-funded entrepreneurs by subscribing to my newsletter at right. This is the first of what I hope to become an ongoing series about non-technical ways to improve yourself as a developer. Becoming a better developer involves more than learning new technical skills; learning about your company and co-workers will dramatically improve the software y...

   Developer,Tips     2011-06-29 08:38:26

  Are frameworks making developers dumb?

Last week I got to take interviews to hire senior java developers with around 5 years of experience. But after the interview process is over I felt like the frameworks makes developers life easier but at the same time making them dumb.Everyone puts almost all the new frameworks on their resume claiming they have "Strong, working experience on Spring, Hibernate, Web Services etc".Here is how the interviews went on.Me: You have used Spring in your latest project. What are the advant...

   Framework,Importance,Disadvantage,Easy     2011-09-06 08:10:08

  Do you have this kind of comments in your source code?

Writing runnable code is the essential skill of a programmer, writing understandable comment is also a skill a programmer should acquire. There is some famous saying that bad comment is worth than no comment. Usually your code will be maintained by other people, if you provide them some difficult to understand or misguided comments, this will be nightmare to them. While at some other time, programmers may put some funny comments in their codes which may make others laugh. Today we...

   COMMENT,HUMOR     2016-08-01 10:25:14

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