A commenter on dev.to recently posed the question, “What should someone without a computer science degree focus on learning?” As someone who was lucky enough to know I wanted to study computer science as an 18-year-old, I thought I’d weigh in on the topic. I had some ideas floating in my head about what I considered most important, but also decided I’d poll my colleagues to get their opinions.
One of the most mundane and frightening tasks for many developers is writing integration tests. It's a time-consuming, fragile, and often difficult and frustrating task to accomplish. What makes it even worse is that it quickly gets out of hand and breaks often, which leads to frustration and dropping the idea completely.
Does this sound familiar? A nervous, yet wildly confident singer prepares to wow competition judges. Meanwhile, a clip of them telling the camera some heart-wrenching story wraps up. The frame ends on some mention of this being their last chance at happiness, and this is their Hail Mary plan to finally follow their destiny. The music starts. The singer wails.
Code refactoring, as defined by Wikipedia, is “the process of restructuring existing computer code — changing the factoring — without changing its external behavior.” As such, refactored code should introduce no behavior changes. Otherwise, you're not refactoring. You're refactoring and doing something else.
A while back, I wrote a blog post about IDEs vs text editors. Ultimately, I was really writing about whether using an IDE made me less of a software developer. My conclusion was that while it definitely didn't make me less of a software developer, there were things experienced software developers did that I wasn't doing that were worth learning. So I've been trying to do what it takes to earn the right to call myself a “software developer.” I've learned a lot in the process: about shortcuts, vim and bash, but, mostly, about myself.
Recently, I was on the STEMxm podcast, where the host asked me a simple question: “You’re a woman in tech, you’re also a business owner and you have small children. Do you have any thoughts on the balance question and managing all of this?” Let’s first address the maternal bias that comes with just asking the question. Scott never gets asked how he “does it all” as a father, but I do all the time as a mother.
About a year ago, I had to code a Rails application to handle bounce notifications from AWS SES. Amazon Simple Email Service is ridiculously easy to configure and use in a Rails application. As the instructions at the GitHub gem page explain, all you need to do is add the aws-ses Rails gem and create a configuration file called config/initializers/amazon_ses.rb that contains your Amazon credentials (soft-coded of course). But, if you need your application to handle bounce, complaint, or delivery notifications, things get a little more complicated.
At a CTO Roundtable in NYC, I sat with several other technical leaders. During our session, we listened to each other’s current challenges and responded with empathy and advice. When I responded to one of the concerns with the advice “influence the CEO to adjust the schedule,” I was caught off guard by everyone’s response. Our former respectful and inquisitive dialog broke down into sneers, laughs and eye rolls.
Even though Conway's Law originated in the software world, it's easy to extrapolate the idea to pretty much anything an organization produces, including content. I would even say that it’s not only the communication structures that permeate the content, but also the organization’s values and culture.
Do you use a GPS navigator on road trips? Or a GPS watch to track your run or bike ride? Then, you’ve been exposed to GIS. GIS stands for Geographic Information System. Even if you haven’t used the two items I mentioned, I’m confident you’ve experienced it, as most everyone has used GIS in one form or another. The most common usage is the maps application on a smartphone.