51–60 of 134 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
About ⅓ of the homepage is already directly about ChatGPT, please let's not have every other submission's comment section dominated by it too...
It's a good answer, who cares where it's from?
My personal opinion is reading about coding does nothing. Its like reading about math without doing the exercises. You need to work on good codebases, and have your code reviewed by people who are good.
> reading about coding does nothing > Its like reading about math without doing the exercises But you do learn math from reading and then you practice it to improve your understanding with exercises. It's not an either or. It's both. You should be reading about software development as well as actively improving your code in practice. I don't think you'd get even half as far if you only did one of the two things. This…
I have all of these on my shelf. Fantastic reads. * Extreme Programming Explained by Kent Beck * Clean Code and The Clean Coder by Robert C. Martin * Soft Skills by John Sonmez (1st edition) * Pragmatic Programmer by Andrew Hunt and David Thomas * Working Effectively with Legacy Code by Michael Feathers * The Mythical Man-Month by Frederick Brooks (Selfish plug) Additionally, I wrote my own book concerning the entire…
My personal recommendation would be Deep Work by Cal Newport as it is my most recent read, having completed it just the day before yesterday.
I applied what I learned and discovered that I was able to meet deadlines much easier than before. I’m also in the process of applying deep focus techniques to my work weeks to ensure I have a tangible build or product every Friday. Could be a document, a repo, a feature, etc. So far so good. This past week I delivered a Design Spec document in record time.
Thanks again and take care.
Even if you don't read the book, I think this talk he gave on it is a good watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NvRnkz6jVM
My suggestion is that besides reading books, you could try to build a startup. It could just be consulting on your own (or with ChatGPT or Fiverr/freelancing sites as your team). Then you will gain direct experience in a lot of those things. Also here are a few ideas for managing scope, deliverables, expectations, time management. Structure things financially so that they are tied to relatively short iterations that…
Soliciting for business and sustaining good relationships, in particular, will enrich one’s experience overall.
I’ve learned many lessons - everything from improving my craft to knowing when to drop a problematic client or project.
OP, I've been thinking about starting a column on those kinds of lines - generalized engineering advice. I have 20+ years of experience in the industry and have held both principal engineer and engineering director positions at S&P 500s. Does that hold your interest? For everyone else, I think I've created an interesting backlog of topics, but I'd love any advice about additional topics that would interest folks, how…
My main topic of interest is how much has changed over time and perhaps what the next 20+ years hold. Such discussions can be eye opening when considering what direction to take, for example, when adopting frameworks and methodologies.
Looking forward to your content.
I’m currently reading Peopleware which is simultaneously very insightful and very obvious. It’s also a bit of a marker in time of how software development worked. I’d say a lot has improved with remote work, at least for some companies. I found The Mom Test pretty helpful for honing a product mindset. I’ve fallen into the trap of writing code simply because I find it less daunting than talking to users. The Mom Test…
Recommend this book, but honestly you don't need to read it: Deep Work: Cal Newport What you need to know from this book is that to write good software (both quality and quantity) you need to go deep. You need to fully absorb and understand the problem in your mind, BEFORE you begin writing code. And then, you need quiet undistracted time to map the thoughts in your mind, to code on paper. This process of turning a m…
Overall, it is also my recommendation, in that when you develop a good habit of churning out quality work, it enhances your contributions to the team.