1951
Software engineering research is a train wreck
I'm a big advocate of Empirical Software Engineering. I wrote a talk on it. I wrote a 6000-word post covering one controversy. I spend a lot of time reading...
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 6,087 posts.
1952
How to Learn Stuff Quickly
As software developers, we're always learning new things; it's practically the whole gig! If we can learn to quickly pick up new languages/frameworks/tools, we'll become so much more effective at our job. It's sort of a superpower.
1953
I had to give a wrong answer to get the job (2017)
Back in 2007, I was searching for a software developer job at various companies. At one of these companies, the best strategy to get the job was to give a wrong answer. If this seems weird to you, let me explain what happened.
1954
1955
The unreasonable effectiveness of just showing up everyday
Six years, no deadlines, and one rule: write some code every day. That slow, stubborn routine turned a side project into a sustainable search company.
1956
How to win a hackathon without coming in first place
To win first place at a hackathon, you need to combine multiple components... and that's not always possible. Here's how to make the most of your next hackathon without coming in 'first place'.
1957
If you want to transform IT, start with finance
When talking about IT transformation, we often we often talk about ‘culture’ being the problem in making change, but why stop there?
1958
Study finds 83% of software developers feel burnout
83% of Developers Suffer From Burnout, Haystack Analytics Study Finds
1959
How to Review Code as a Junior Developer
Emma Catlin | Software Engineer
1960
Programmers, teach non-geeks the true cost of interruptions (2014)
Interruptions are one of the biggest sources of inefficiency for programmers. Now, to be fair, they’re probably a big source of inefficiency for everyone, but relatively speaking, they’re worse for programmers. To understand what I mean, let’s take someone whose job is in sales. A lot of the day is probably spent on…
1961
NDA expired, let’s spill the beans on a weird startup
Many moons ago, when I was very young and you were even younger... London was in full bloom of tech-startups. I was running my own consultancy. Dashing from business to business, trying to pick up work as an expert in this new-fangled "Mobile Internet" thing. Some of the companies I worked with were great. Some of…
1962
My proposal for scaling open source: don’t
I've had a number of conversations about what "we" in the "free software community" "need" to do to combat the growth in proprietary, user-hostile and customer-hostile business models like cloud user-generated content hosts, social media platforms, hosted payment platforms, videoconferencing services etc. Questions…
1963
You need Software Developers to believe in your project (2020)
Lacking Shared Conception, Creative Staff’s moral can quickly plummet
1964
1965
Leaving Google
The end of an era.
1966
On working too hard: finding balance, and lessons learned from others
Working hard is a great way to accelerate learning, but it can come at a cost. This post shares my experience and lessons taken from great role models I've found along the way.
1967
Ways to ship software
An open letter from a former Facebook and VMware engineering executive on how startups can best structure their release processes.
1968
Lucky Lotto, chaos engineering but for teams
Building resilience teams with chaos engineering principles.
1969
1970
Move fast, but understand the problem first
Software engineer, etc etc
1971
Software estimation is hard – do it anyway
It’s well established that estimating software projects is hard. This is true, but you should learn how anyway.
1972
Stepping Back from Speaking
a short post
1973
1974
The 'Fuck You' Pattern
In the software industry, there is a term for intentional designs which coerce the user into doing something, be it consciously or subconsciously - a ‘dark pattern’. These patterns are employed by social media networks, e-commerce, video games, and many more places. I’m coining a new term called the ‘Fuck You’ pattern…
1975
The school for sysadmins who can’t timesync good
(With apologies to Derek Zoolander and Justin Steven. And to whoever had to touch the HP-UX NTP setup at Queensland Police after I...
1976
1977
The Prosperous Software Consultant (2018)
Are you curious about breaking into software consulting? In this post, I’ve laid out 7 steps to living a fulfilling life as a consultant…
1978
We Can't Let People Work from Home, for Stupid Reasons
Stupid reasons to not allow remote work. Dumb reasons to reject remote work.
1979
The “API Mandate” memo at Amazon
The personal website of Christopher Laing.
1980
North Carolina tells retired engineer he can't talk about engineering
WILMINGTON, N.C.—Wayne Nutt is an engineer. He graduated with a degree in engineering and worked most of his career in North Carolina without ever needing […]