architecture A Real-World Scaling Challenge This week I've been solving scaling challenges. Not the kind of CV-embellishing "at global scale" stuff, but some simple and honest problems I actually have. It's all bundled up into one scaling problem,
organisations Specificity I've become that annoying person who asks, "you say it takes a long time - but how long exactly? Which part consumes the most time? How did you measure?"There's a reason. For
iconoclastic nonsense Your Tech Blog Isn't Helping For the third time in a week, I found myself having to look at source code to solve a simple problem. First it had been Terraform, then it was the AWS SDK, and
organisations Steak and Salami Ever had the feeling you're working constantly and getting nowhere? Specifically, the one where you've got a dozen things to do and none of them are getting done? Did you find that the
go C# to Go: a beginner's journey (part 5) It's time to clean up GoRender and establish a solid base for adding all the lighting, shading and multiple output targets a full-featured sprite renderer needs. One thing I've noticed is my "iterate
go C# to Go: a beginner's journey (part 4) Last time round I had got to the point of raycasting a silhouette on a spritesheet, with a largely clean solution that only had a few areas of potential messiness. I think the
go C# to Go: a beginner's journey (part 3) The next step for GoRender is an easy choice. I want to write the raycaster, a critical part of turning voxel objects into pixel sprites. The C# version involves a lot of vector
go C# to Go: a beginner's journey (part 2) I'm back on the Go trail, and I have two options for what to do next: 1. Improve my existing code with better knowledge of the IO libraries. 2. Port across some more Transrender functionality.
go C# to Go: a beginner's journey How do you learn a new language? Books, practice and a decent chunk of pair programming with someone who knows what they're doing, if available. Those are my favoured options, and when it
existential crisis Improvement and imperfection I had a minor crisis of confidence earlier today looking at some of the things I've done. Most of my impacts could be uncharitably described as, "you took something that was outrageously shit
agile Servant Leader, Helicopter Parent Why is developing software so slow now?Provocative statement, so let's unpick. Maybe I'm getting more impatient as I get older, but the pace of modern software development feels glacial. Honestly, why do
teams Interviewing by Teaching I've been trialling a new technique in interviews recently, and the results so far have been good so it feels worth sharing.Essentially it's a refinement of the "try to make the interview
teams Mentoring, not hiring: The Reality Semi-anonymous Internet idiots like me love telling you all these things you should be doing about team structure, organisational approach and Really Exciting Technology but we're often a bit light on what happens
agile Methodology? What Methodology? I think I'm getting kind of post-methodology in my thinking. I don't really care what it is or what it's called, but I do care that it facilitates three critical things
teams How to really identify a 10x developer The sudden trending of "hashtag 10x developer" worries me. It worries me because it's not really about 10x performance, at least most of the time I've seen it. Instead, it tends to bundle two often overlapping movements which are unrelated to performance.
agile Agility and the power of No One of the nice things for me about writing is I get to go back to my old articles every once in a while and see where my viewpoint has matured, where it's changed...
organisations The 10x Developer and You I'm in the mood for sarcastic graphs. I think (I hope) that the idea of the "10x" developer is not an astonishingly new and radical one. People in the upper quartile
teams Thoughts on Interviewing I think I'm destined to always be an iconoclast when it comes to interviews. Not quite so much as the days when "let's ask programmers some questions about programming" was a
teams Thoughts on team leadership and metrics I realise that in four or so years of this site I've never talked properly about team leadership, which is a bit of an omission given how much time I've devoted to organisational
development The Unreasonable Speed of Rust Rust is fast. No, not the systems language - I'm talking about rust in the sense of losing skills in programming languages when you're no longer actively working in them. I've spent a
development How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Uncertainty Data/object anti-symmetry broke me. The reason for this breakage was established a year or two ago. I had the fortune to work with some very smart people, who were very good at
organisations Two Transformation Questions What exactly is a transformation? Is it "go to the cloud" or "be Agile" or "containerise the things"? Despite the number of organisations which state those as
teams Performance Reviews I had an interesting conversation last night about that old bugbear, the annual performance review. No matter how many well-meaning attempts have been made with SMART targets or peer review systems, every annual
technical debt The Sierra Adventure Codebase We broke something this week. Well, I broke something, if you go by code authorship. It was supposed to be a bug fix, and we did everything by the book - pair-programmed the
organisations Bias for action and agility What has linked all of the high-performing teams and organisations I've worked for or with? That title is a bit of a clue: it's a bias for action. What this means is they
