Skipping the usual background rant 😛 For me, the purpose of documentation is to save time, not at the point of writing it, but in the future when you use it. When onboarding a new hire or answering a colleague’s questions on my code, I would usually first refer them to the README.md file in …
Just came up with some guidelines which I feel would help in protecting developer time with regards to meetings and sprints, mainly by putting in some kind of structure. Disclaimer: These guidelines may not be applicable to everyone or every company 😛 Do read Paul Graham’s article on Maker’s Schedule, Managers Schedule which clearly explains …
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About 5 years ago, I wrote a post titled “10% Development, 90% Maintenance“. That was my view on software development and still is today. Was frustrated by some code review recently and was thinking of how to communicate my penchant for maintainable code simply to both developers and non-developers. Came up with 3Cs for coding …
Continue reading “3Cs for Coding – Consistency, Context, Continuity”
Been developing a HTML5 video player solo from scratch at work for the past few months. The experience is summed up in the title of this post 😛 This post is not about discrediting the complexity of backend development or shooting back at backend developers who scoff at front-end developers. To be clear, I have …
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Was sitting on an interview panel recently and the interviewee was asked to rate himself for the Laravel PHP framework, on a scale of 1 to 10. Some basic questions on Laravel were asked before this but the answers were not satisfactory. His reply? 9/10. Personally, for PHP, I would probably rate myself 5/10, and …
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When we design a user interface (UI) for our application, we want it to be user-friendly, for the user to have a good user experience (UX). How about application programming interfaces (API)? Shouldn’t an API be designed to be user-friendly as well? And in this case, who are the main users/consumers of APIs? Developers, of …
Continue reading “Designing Developer-Friendly JSON for API responses”
Had a chat recently with a colleague and the topic of Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) came up. Whenever I talk about concepts or technical stuff with other people, I typically try to explain it in a way that is easy to understand for a non-technical person. It is a way of challenging myself cos if …
Imagine going into a restaurant. You see a nice decor, with tables laid out in an orderly fashion, pretty tablecloth, walls sprinkled with beautiful artwork, ambient lighting, etc. You pick up the nicely done up menu with attractive photos, juicy titles, succulent descriptions and a myriad of options for each dish. Hidden from your view …
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m going to start off this post with this assumption: the usual working hours for a typical office job is 9am to 6pm, with an hour of lunch break in between. The start and end times may vary, but it’s still 8 working hours plus 1 hour lunch. The …
Continue reading “Is There Value in Meetups and Conferences?”
Was reminded of Paul Graham’s 2009 blog post “Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule” recently. The article sums up why programmers dislike meetings and if I may add, anything that disrupts their intense train of thought while programming – phone calls, incoming Skype chats, reports, etc. Before I blabber on, let’s play a simple game to help …
