James W

I just watched Daniel Terhorst-North's talk at Kotlin conf, having sadly missed it in person (nothing to do with being hungover on day two of the conference). Daniel is the originator of Behaviour-Driven Development and gave a talk titled 'The best programmer I know'. A few interesting takeaways: - You don't need a degree to be an exceptional programmer - Everyone is a kinesthetic learner. Some people might lean towards seeing or hearing things, but everyone learns through doing, so just start and iterate as you go. Lean into uncertainty. - Invest in the product - not the code - Watch your users and find out what frustrates them - TDD pays off. Daniel's team at BP won a software quality award for their trading system. Unlike other teams, they found zero bugs during six weeks of UAT, thanks to TDD. BP paid them to stay on for the UAT period, which they spent in the pub. If that's not an incentive to learn TDD, what is?" - Explore different languages, tools and paradigms to give you more options and help you solve specific problems throughout your career - Help others - teaching is the best way to learn - Overall takeaway for me is that soft skills are clearly equally as important as hard skills in software engineering Worth a watch. https://lnkd.in/e8bau4X9

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Quick gauge of opinion - thinking of writing a talk called "Financial Literacy for Engineers" (aka everything you need to know about savings, investments and pensions but never asked for techies) ? I've been doing a whole heap of financial planning stuff recently and I've sharing bits of my plans with colleagues and friends. I get the impression that even for highly technical engineers the level of financial literacy is quite low ? Certainly a common theme of "I put into the work pension and I'll deal with pensions and stuff later coz I got bills to pay". Another common theme I see amongst my peers who are at that point is they wish they had started planning earlier. So do you think some sort of talk at tech meetups about how all this finance stuff works and what you could be doing would be useful ? (I'm not offering financial advise just making people aware of things they "could" be doing). What do you all think ?

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If you’re curious about TDD and want to know more, I highly recommend giving this talk by Kent Beck from at today’s techexcellence.io conference a watch: Personally, I find TDD great for enhancing my focus, clarity and speed when writing code. It really takes the stress out of it and it’s just a buzz to watch your failing tests go green after you’ve implemented your code. https://lnkd.in/ga6D53DJ

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I’m super excited to dig into this book, #FlowEngineering! It arrived today! “ as scale increases, waist and delay grow exponentially, and interdependence exacts a massive tax on the business” “We need to dismantle and decouple crippling dependencies and enable effective descaling to improve flow.” Here’s to improving flow!

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Great catching up with Radius today! It’s always inspiring to see talented professionals thrive, and he’s certainly doing that with his venture, TurnBackLink (https://turnbacklink.com/). If you’re looking for a digital marketing agency that delivers exceptional results, look no further. I’ve seen firsthand how dedicated and knowledgeable he is in the world of SEO and digital strategy. Wishing you continued success, Radius! 🚀 #DigitalMarketing #SEO #Growth #Collaboration

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I've started a long-deferred read through of Team Topologies, which speaks to some of the problems I was talking about recently around the ways "utopian" software development maxims can fail when they encounter the "topos" of an organisation's incentive and communicational structure. There's a thought-provoking section on John Sweller's 1988 breakdown of "cognitive load" into three categories ("intrinsic", "extraneous", "germane"). The thought it provoked in me was that I tend to disregard the burden of the "intrinsic" when looking for ways to reduce "extraneous" load (ways a codebase and development environment distracts me with boilerplate and arbitrary irregularity) and gain traction over "germane" problems (those particular to the domain we're working in). For me, leveraging advanced language features to eliminate boilerplate and build out a little embedded DSL that can express the problems I care about is an obvious win - I often refer to Paul Graham's maxim that you should first create the language you want to solve your problem in, then solve your problem in it. The problem with this is that it can shift extraneous load into intrinsic load, by requiring programmers who were comfortable with repetitive constructs using basic language features to familiarise themselves with much more advanced features (and the DSL's idiomatic usage of them) for the sake of eliminating what may seem to them to be quite harmless repetition. This suits me personally, because I like having an advanced model of a programming language in my head and using it creatively, but one isn't accounting properly for the distribution of cognitive load if one doesn't also take "intrinsic" load into account. I think of Golang as an intentionally low-intrinsic-load language - it has a small kernel of features, and is structured in a way that discourages higher-order abstraction over those features. If in doubt, write another for-loop! By comparison, I remember Scala adoption at TIM Group being an intensely painful experience for some of my colleagues, because it introduced so many constructs and type-level features that could be used in so many colourful ways. While I was elated by its endless opportunities for minimising extraneous load, they felt the burden of ballooning intrinsic load, and the frustration of being temporarily deskilled by the change of fundamental environment. The real art is to leverage small changes of technique and perspective, that will fit comfortably in everybody's head, to chisel away at extraneous load, until they feel that the nuts-and-bolts of their tasks are simpler than they have ever been.

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Over the last couple of weeks I've had people asking me if there is going to be another DDD (DeveloperDay) or DDDNorth - the short answer is yes! Sorting out venues, locations, dates, all whilst still dealing with what life throws at us has meant that things have slowed. But be assured, discussions are happening, plans are afoot, and we will let you know as things have firmed up! #DDD #DDDNorth #DeveloperDeveloperDeveloper #Community #TechCommunity

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Now that the Microsoft AFO UK redundancy consultancy period has concluded, I can start to share details of where people are headed. Firstly there are people not actively job hunting for a software engineering role. - A decent number of people are taking the opportunity to go travelling for an extended period - A few folk are looking at changing career - e.g. starting a masters course, going into teaching, etc. - A bigger chunk have decided to take a couple of months off and begin job hunting in September. They'll have an easier time then, because they will have a stronger network.  - And finally let’s not forget the few that are still processing the shock; spare a thought for them. For the majority who are actively job-seeking though, early results are in. I'm thinking of it as like election night, there is excitement around those initial results, and we can start to form narratives, but they won't necessarily reflect the final picture. The job market dynamics will likely shift after the summer, interview process lengths vary by company size, and my guess is that those taking a relaxed approach may find themselves in different roles compared to the early movers. Nevertheless, here's the landscape so far: - Startups, with available funding, have moved the quickest  - Medium-sized companies are beginning to make offers. - Larger companies, with longer cycles, are interviewing, but not yet complete. Except Nvidia, who have hired a big bunch. Here are some specific destinations I've heard about within Engineering, with a very strong bias towards those "close" to me.  evroc (2) Oakdoor UNDO Squarepoint Capital Hymans Robertson Ciena Kraken NVIDIA (10+) Technical consultancy Microsoft (2) Update 5th Aug: NVIDIA (5 more, making 15 so far) Deliveroo (2) Cisco (1) Checkout.com (2) Cellular Origins (1) ---- Outside Engineering, I'm less in touch with where people are at, but I've noticed posts of people moving towards existing customers:  Award Consulting (2) weavix https://lnkd.in/egnSKVYd If you have more updates to add, please share in the comments!

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📢 📢 📢 The electorate has spoken! The next Workshop Wednesdays session (3 July) will be on Kotlin coroutines and concurrency. How much do you know about scopes, contexts and jobs? What really happens in a suspend function? I've updated the listing and you can sign up right now (https://lnkd.in/dNY6MCgG), it's free and takes place online. Thanks to all 209 of you for taking part in the vote! We'll do the other sessions soon too, the Bluetooth probably next, as that came second (and it's suuuuper fun). #androiddeveloper #kotlin

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The last clip from my podcast with John Barnett, where we discussed the leadership needed to increase performance in Software Engineering teams. John gives his take on the work from home debate, sighting psychological safety and mental wellbeing as two key factors in increasing performance and happiness. Thanks for your time John and the full podcast is up on the YouTube Channel for viewing: https://lnkd.in/ei7MuFxi

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Interviewing isn't always a science, but there are several simple things that can really increase your chances to stand out from the crowd. One of the biggest tips professionals give is the simplest of all... => SMILE One of the biggest unconscious questions that any interviewer has is "can I see myself working with this person in the future". You're ability to create rapport is greatly enhanced with just a smile, and this one little behaviour will reduce nerves and improve your ability to respond favourably to questions you've been asked. The other suggestion I'd recommend... => Prepare your stories Your stories are the key points in your career so far where you made an impact, and they don't always have to be positive situations. A story outlining a situation where you stuffed something up, what you did to recover and what you learnt from the experience can actually add more value and insight to the interviewer and even give you more credibility than only highlighting successes.

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I'm thrilled to share fantastic feedback we've received about Agilebase from potential partners. Andy Garner of Elastic Mint and Simon Sleight of Dixi Data are from respected software consultancies here in Bristol. They have praised our no-code platform. They think it is a perfect fit for SMEs. Key highlights: • "As a tool, Agilebase is powerful," says Andy Garner. He sees Agilebase as a game-changer for SMEs, making bespoke software development accessible. • Simon Sleight commends our sophisticated architecture. He noticed it's "more sophisticated than we were expecting." • Both partners appreciate our commitment to long-term relationships and responsive support. • They see significant potential in Agilebase for SMEs undergoing digital transformation. It's gratifying to hear that our approach resonates with industry experts. We're always looking to improve. Simon mentioned interface refinements we could make, and we're taking that feedback on board. Interested? Let's connect! #NoCode #DigitalTransformation #SME #SoftwareDevelopment #AgileBase https://lnkd.in/gmnn5WYa

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It's interesting to see people so pressed about the Levels podcast. Of course there is a time to purchase tools and at certain scale it makes a lot of sense to optimise for speed and enterprise support over cost and customisability but there are far too many people entering the industry an only learning how a specific tool e.g. serverless Vercel hosting works over spinning up a VPS and learning the whole journey. This is leading to a trend where hard infrastructure and engineering problems are going unsolved except by the most senior engineers. Every couple of months there is some big post about how a serverless company has "ripped off" a person who had some success with their application. These companies are offering open source software to sell the platform on the backside which is exactly where they should be but consider if you are at the point where locking into and paying for that ecosystem is where you should be as an engineer or small business. It is still my belief that people new to the industry should focus on the fundamentals of how the underlying thing works even if using a tool like Next (I pick on Next a lot) because hand waving away all the complexity and hosting does not help in the long term. When I started out I would hear comments that Rails or Python were not "serious business" because they were not low level enough which I am sure is how I sound now but really consider when starting your business or indie hacking if you need the latest and greatest resume building tools or if you need to just build the thing in PHP and jQuery to get revenue. Ecosystems that do everything for you are great but if you try to work outside of their happy path you can have issues. Build your independence and learn how things work. You can watch the episode here: https://buff.ly/3YVp7t2 #softwareengineering #engineeringmanager #PHP #jQuery #NextJS #serverless #entrepreneurship #founder

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Building a single-page application can be a daunting undertaking. Fortunately, by combining the Umbraco Delivery API with the traditional Razor rendering, the challenge can become significantly easier 🎉 And yes, I've just published a blog post about it 👇 https://lnkd.in/dZGtsKFN #umbraco #headless

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