testing - do unit testing and system testing.
Ask HN: How can I consistently deliver high-quality work with minimal issues?
21–30 of 42 posts
Re: Ask HN: How can I consistently deliver high-quality work with minimal issues?
#22Have more slack/free time. That’s basically it. Anything else is a patch that will fail once you go over capacity. People habitually run at 90-110% capacity and then wonder why they do bad work.
Yes, interestingly enough, these bad times usually come along with tight deadlines.
Re: Ask HN: How can I consistently deliver high-quality work with minimal issues?
#23Not a solution for all of your problems, but it does help me with debugging stuff faster: I have a directory on the desktop called "scratchpad" in which every day I create a new txt file. During the day I copy-paste every JIRA link I work on there, related class names, APIs, fragments of code I worked on that were particularly tricky, test cases, stacktraces I encountered, useful SQLs, urls to webpages with solutions…
I've been working with js stuff so compiling is not a big deal, sometimes on the frontend there are a lot of steps to test something, though, I def feel the procrastinate call
Interesting idea of keeping the daily log. I thought about but feels like a lot of work. Today I keep a "gotchas" list with some of these stuff, which is someway similar
Re: Ask HN: How can I consistently deliver high-quality work with minimal issues?
#24- ship faster, more incremental changes. - Try to get stuff tested earlier (see point 1) - if things can get be tested, write tests while working on the code - split a feature up in chunks and develop parts - take your time. Pressure of failing sprints (whatever that might actually be caused by) does not help. Smaller changes help with getting others to respect your time too. Everyone is happy when stuff works :), ev…
Good list! Yah, stuff working is always better
Re: Ask HN: How can I consistently deliver high-quality work with minimal issues?
#25Keep ahead of the industry, keep up with blogs and industry influencers for trends, new APIs, patterns, etc; write tests, look at others’ code, practice good coding patterns, always ask a lead/senior to do some pairing when you’re struggling (that’s what I did to help a lot of other developers in my career), ask for feedback/temperature check during 1-on-1s. Lots of options, some of them require swallowing your pride…
About asking feedback, what would be good points to ask exactly? I didnt have good experiences with feedbacks in my career, usually they were too vague.
Re: Ask HN: How can I consistently deliver high-quality work with minimal issues?
#261. If the work is actually hard, your software will have bugs along the way.
2. Big projects do not look finished until the end.
3. If you want to dominate the dojo, only fight children.
4. The creative process is messy and mostly unsuccessful. Assembly lines are neat and predictable…
…the sprint model comes out of consulting where the goal is to do the same thing that’s been done before.
5. QA’s job is to find bugs. They are part of your team. They are not your opponents.
Good luck.
Re: Ask HN: How can I consistently deliver high-quality work with minimal issues?
#27I think part of this is you have to know yourself. I imagine there are some people out there who can really sort of discipline themselves into doing a good job - through checklists or really good review processes. Personally I do everything in my power not to be disciplined. I intentionally make my first draft terrible. I almost make it my goal to write bad code instead of good code(. I’m an SRE not a full time devel…
oh, that's a good pov! thanks. it makes sense to consider making mistakes the rule and work from there
Which is where TDD can really help.
Write tests first and keep revising your code - making plenty of mistakes along the way - until the tests are green.
The quicker the test failure feedback loop, the quicker you'll fix the mistakes :)
Re: Ask HN: How can I consistently deliver high-quality work with minimal issues?
#28This is literally what seniority/experience means. This is why more experienced developers get paid more — because the deliver more consistent, higher quality, less issues work. You work more, on more projects etc. and you eventually grow. Doesn't matter at all which tricks, approaches do you use. The best investment in you quicker growth - is to find bigger, more complex and important project to tackle, and better t…
This makes sense. It's just like, sometimes is really hard to see how to keep improving on the quality besides failing and learning with it.
Re: Ask HN: How can I consistently deliver high-quality work with minimal issues?
#29This comment and many of the replies are ridiculous. Bugs are part of the process and so is QA. Having only a handful over a few years probably means you spent too much time trying to make it perfect. You will see fewer problems the more time you have to work on a feature or test it, but in my opinion if you consistently get to zero then that is inefficient because it delays the feedback from the user. Or it means you have a really well funded organization that can afford a lot of development time on each item but is probably wasting money.
You have the "luxury" of a QA team, unlike many developers. Take advantage of that. Don't feel bad just because you see a bug once a year (which I don't believe is accurate reporting on your part).
Re: Ask HN: How can I consistently deliver high-quality work with minimal issues?
#30Sounds to me like you need to do more testing. You should have automatic integration tests that run with your CI/CD pipeline to make sure you don't break seemingly unrelated bits, and most importantly you need to actually test the application like a real user - like QA will test it - before you merge. Writing code that works is only half the battle. You need to test it and get it ready for production before you merge…
Interesting point, but unfortunately not possible in all code bases. You know the drill, old code base, tight deadlines. But I can see the point, and I'll advocate to that for sure!