I empower people to become software developers, especially those with kids/family responsibilities, full-time jobs, or who feel too old to start over. 🥰👩🏽💻
Location
Washington DC
Education
Duke University | The Firehose Project (coding bootcamp)
That the increased salary is worth anything you give up or endure ... in my short time as a dev, I've realized that balance and mental health are every bit as important as the paycheck.
That you ALWAYS have to be ahead of the curve in terms of latest languages, frameworks, processes, methodologies etc.
Personally I think the blog posting masses, with their "You absolutely must adopt this latest, greatest framework today!"-esque articles that seem to appear through the various technology/software development related channels all the time can add a huge burden to people in an environment where things like mental health and impostor syndrome are often talked about at length already.
It's almost like, at times, we are our worst enemies?
I stopped even reading those titles till the end, complete waste of time and content is usually so bad, you could literally read only names, open their websites and get better information within less time than read the post itself. But hey, people click those clickbaity things, they get engagement for years, so this has to be what people want, right?
"Incredible javascript tricks - backend developers hate him" - book by me, coming this year for only $99.97.
I hate such titles as well, even more the actual content which just lists some stuff. Still, gave in and wrote one myself to see how it would perform, it actually performed quite good in views and likes, which was disappointing personally since such posts didn't take much time or effort to write, whereas there are many other posts which I spent quite a lot of time and effort and still didn't do as well as the click baity ones. I guess its still ok to make titles catchy as long as the content inside has quality. Unfortunately we don't live in a fair world.
I couldn’t agree with this more! I think it’s important for all developers, junior to senior, to not get lost in the sauce of the industries flavour of the week. Have faith in your own skill, and adopt different technologies that have a positive impact in the context of your work, not just because an article online told you to!
I do agree to, I think that it is not about what you know, but about what you can learn. Languages and frameworks sprout everyday faster than you can read, but the ability that you can learn a given language or framework in a short period is, as I think, more imporant
Hi, I'm Gregory Brown.
My goal is to help software developers get better at what they do, whether they've been at it for five weeks or fifty years.
(he/him)
The most obvious one but still worth mentioning: That the job is to develop software, rather than to help humans solve a meaningful problem in the world.
(Both the business side and the engineering side of a company can be biased towards thinking this way, to everyone's detriment.)
Since when we programmers know what to do for the customers?
It's a reality we fall in rabbit holes all the time and we forget that at the end it's all about the user and the usage.
Hi, I'm Gregory Brown.
My goal is to help software developers get better at what they do, whether they've been at it for five weeks or fifty years.
(he/him)
But the speed at which we gain experience is pretty much directly tied to our willingness to listen, learn, and communicate effectively with the people around us, whether that is customers, coworkers, or business leaders.
As developers we have a lot of direct ways of improving our ability to communicate and learn from the people we're working with and for, as well as plenty of opportunities to get support where needed to get better at those things. But developing a human-centric rather than tech-centric mindset is a key starting point for those who want to head down that road.
Hi, I'm Gregory Brown.
My goal is to help software developers get better at what they do, whether they've been at it for five weeks or fifty years.
(he/him)
This is a post about what common falsehoods exist among software developers.
The common misconception is that a tech-centric focus is normal and reasonable for software developers.
I am saying that this is a bad thing, and that software developers should instead see themselves as people who first and foremost are human problem solvers, and that software just happens to be the toolset we use to help others.
That even if you love coding/creating software the job will always be fun. No matter how much you love something, if you are forced to do it to make a living there will be times when you are like "DAMN IT IM DONE!". At least occasionally :P
True, there are times where I felt like that. Maybe because I had a challenging task or because my boss just decided to change the entire design of the godda...
One of the most salient features of our Tech Hiring culture is that there is so much bullshit. Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share. But we tend to take the situation for granted.
We are a super inclusive tech company and want to have female developers, but we just can't find them. Where are they hiding? it must be a pipeline issue or something unrelated to us.
How’s it going, I'm a Adam, a Full-Stack Engineer, actively searching for work. I'm all about JavaScript. And Frontend but don't let that fool you - I've also got some serious Backend skills.
Location
City of Bath, UK 🇬🇧
Education
10 plus years* active enterprise development experience and a Fine art degree 🎨
How’s it going, I'm a Adam, a Full-Stack Engineer, actively searching for work. I'm all about JavaScript. And Frontend but don't let that fool you - I've also got some serious Backend skills.
Location
City of Bath, UK 🇬🇧
Education
10 plus years* active enterprise development experience and a Fine art degree 🎨
And yet most juniors or atleast I did, started out like Ash Cetchem, wanted to be a Pokémon, I mean developer master and be the best there ever was. How nieve I was. 🤣
Trying to prove your worth by doing something difficult to understand is an inevitable stage of most developers. It isn't until you tey to figure out somebody else's clever code that you realize that maintainability is so important.
I would say that in most companies, good communication is more important than writing good code. As long as your code does what it needs to do and is maintenable you've done a great job writing the code.
The key there is writing code that does what it needs to do. You can only figure that out with good communication. Even if you write the cleanest, most beautiful code in the world if it doesn't do what it is supposed to do then it's all for naught.
Max is a life enhancer for tech & entrepreneurship. Which seeks to blend both to build innovative products or services for the world that solves hard problems.
Max is a life enhancer for tech & entrepreneurship. Which seeks to blend both to build innovative products or services for the world that solves hard problems.
Max is a life enhancer for tech & entrepreneurship. Which seeks to blend both to build innovative products or services for the world that solves hard problems.
I guess that depends. If you have to write algorithms, signal processing and so on it would help greatly to be good at Math. If you are doing web apps or generic applications it might not matter much.
Max is a life enhancer for tech & entrepreneurship. Which seeks to blend both to build innovative products or services for the world that solves hard problems.
Which is why it's a common falsehood that gives people the perception of it.
To me, if you are inventing or dealing with the deep tech with the bleeding age technology. It's a yes if not it's a hell no.
Then again I'm biased since I had suffered greatly in classes for my university during algorithm classes or anything maths-related modules in school while I was growing up.
That job titles matter very much. Roles and responsibilities matter a lot more. The expectations of a "senior software engineer" at one company may have very little in common with the expectations of a role with that same title somewhere else.
I don't know the titles of most of the people I work with on a daily basis, and it doesn't impact our ability to collaborate. Hell, I don't even know the title of my manager. I've only found titles to matter when advertising a rough skill+experience level to other people, or when setting goals with my manager to "rise" within a hierarchically structured employment scheme.
One of the most salient features of our Tech Hiring culture is that there is so much bullshit. Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share. But we tend to take the situation for granted.
pro-tip: if you really need a job title for marketing purposes, you can create a startup "Uber for flying fish". Fill the paperwork, incorporate in Delaware, there are people that can explain how to do it. No need to find paying customers.
Instantly you can call yourself CTO or whatever else you wish.
Not a new idea, mind you, this is what a lot of people are already doing on LinkedIn
Lover of technology, developer of things.
From big platforms like Salesforce to NodeJS and all the way to home automation with Arduino, I tinker with it all.
Location
Newmarket, Ontario, Canada
Education
York University
Work
Technical Lead / Full Stack Developer at The Regional Municipality of York
As a full-time student having jumped into the programming world several months ago, I can really say that regardless of where you are in your learning path, we should be helping each other up, not breaking each other down. I can't say how many times I've seen the worst of people on StackOverFlow. Honestly, I think we're all here to learn and further our common goals and our industry- let's do it together. Rudeness has always been a major pet peeve of mine, as I'm sure it is for others!
Imposter syndrome may always stick with me but I'm putting mental health, physical health, social awareness, and self-efficacy first before I boot up my computer each morning.
I'm a Systems Reliability and DevOps engineer for Netdata Inc. When not working, I enjoy studying linguistics and history, playing video games, and cooking all kinds of international cuisine.
Nah, ill just reinstall my system, invent new aliases, try out 3 new editors, find a theme, etc. that should keep me busy for a week. Much more fun than doing something with business value. /s
Gotta love this. Real story, i met a guy that started programming under the wing of someone who constantly fiddles with editor, for years. I knew exactly how it will go. Ive been meeting him every couple of months (conferences, eventually working together in the same company) and asking whats up, what he learned, how his stuff is looking.
Every time he had something new. New editor, 10 shell scripts to increase productivity, new laptop with great shortcuts on touchbar.
Needless to say, he was fired from my company because he couldnt deliver anything.
Beware juniors - dont waste time. If it works and doesnt get in a way - stick with it until it does. Then fix what is itchy, and move along. Otherwise your resume will contain more about buzzwords than results. And this is not a good thing.
Senior Software Engineer started programming over 20 years ago.
C C++ python
flask QT django
AWS GCP Airflow
k8s terraform
JS CloudDB's
rust vue TS
API backend dev
#Intp #mathematics #nerd
Not having enough time for my girlfriend and pursuing other non tech related things. If you want to stay on top in the Software Development you need to give up a lot of time that you can use for other things. Its rewarding anyway.
That you know everything. It's impossible for us to know everything - that's why we have Google. Don't feel like you're expected to know everything all the time, knowing what to Google is the most important thing.
Miranda is a technical writer and product lead at VMware as well as founder of Books on Code, which is a platform for programmers who love to learn through technical books.
Location
San Francisco, CA
Education
MA English Literature
Work
Senior Technical Writer at VMware (previously Pivotal)
That you must know as many programming languages and frameworks. One year into my professional journey my top key takeaway has been that design patterns and paradigms are the most important thing. All code is the same as long as you know the fundamentals of programming, can read docs and be willing to spend your day 'crying' while searching error messages on Google. I was convinced that language/framework A is the best tool and you can't achieve this on language/framework B. Today I'm open minded about the best tool for the job and also being in a software development agency start up for 6 months, I have been forced to get out of my shell and work with tech I once considered unworthy or languages I thought I'd never work with professionally .
That the increased salary is worth anything you give up or endure ... in my short time as a dev, I've realized that balance and mental health are every bit as important as the paycheck.
Once you have the paycheck :)
girrrrllll you are spot on!
You know how to install printers
That you ALWAYS have to be ahead of the curve in terms of latest languages, frameworks, processes, methodologies etc.
Personally I think the blog posting masses, with their "You absolutely must adopt this latest, greatest framework today!"-esque articles that seem to appear through the various technology/software development related channels all the time can add a huge burden to people in an environment where things like mental health and impostor syndrome are often talked about at length already.
It's almost like, at times, we are our worst enemies?
"20 Frameworks you need to try in 2020"!!!!!!
Month later
"12 Frameworks you will love"
...
"Best 10 frameworks to jumpstart your career"
I stopped even reading those titles till the end, complete waste of time and content is usually so bad, you could literally read only names, open their websites and get better information within less time than read the post itself. But hey, people click those clickbaity things, they get engagement for years, so this has to be what people want, right?
"Incredible javascript tricks - backend developers hate him" - book by me, coming this year for only $99.97.
I hate such titles as well, even more the actual content which just lists some stuff. Still, gave in and wrote one myself to see how it would perform, it actually performed quite good in views and likes, which was disappointing personally since such posts didn't take much time or effort to write, whereas there are many other posts which I spent quite a lot of time and effort and still didn't do as well as the click baity ones. I guess its still ok to make titles catchy as long as the content inside has quality. Unfortunately we don't live in a fair world.
I couldn’t agree with this more! I think it’s important for all developers, junior to senior, to not get lost in the sauce of the industries flavour of the week. Have faith in your own skill, and adopt different technologies that have a positive impact in the context of your work, not just because an article online told you to!
I do agree to, I think that it is not about what you know, but about what you can learn. Languages and frameworks sprout everyday faster than you can read, but the ability that you can learn a given language or framework in a short period is, as I think, more imporant
Exactly, and having the knowledge to understand and reason why one technology is better suited to the task than another :)
The most obvious one but still worth mentioning: That the job is to develop software, rather than to help humans solve a meaningful problem in the world.
(Both the business side and the engineering side of a company can be biased towards thinking this way, to everyone's detriment.)
I remember overhearing a joke between interns,
"Just do what the product designer says and no one gets hurt."
lmao
good joke - the product designers should be "asking" not telling programmers what to do!
Since when we programmers know what to do for the customers?
It's a reality we fall in rabbit holes all the time and we forget that at the end it's all about the user and the usage.
Reality is, 90% of people have no idea what to do for customers, including customers, programmers, founders, project managers.
Only experience can teach that, and very often people dont learn on failures for a long time.
Well, experience certainly helps.
But the speed at which we gain experience is pretty much directly tied to our willingness to listen, learn, and communicate effectively with the people around us, whether that is customers, coworkers, or business leaders.
As developers we have a lot of direct ways of improving our ability to communicate and learn from the people we're working with and for, as well as plenty of opportunities to get support where needed to get better at those things. But developing a human-centric rather than tech-centric mindset is a key starting point for those who want to head down that road.
that probably wasn't a joke.
...Yeah, you're right.
Edited: my original comments where because I misunderstood the comment I was replying to. Turns out we're both on the same side. 🤦♂️
This is a post about what common falsehoods exist among software developers.
The common misconception is that a tech-centric focus is normal and reasonable for software developers.
I am saying that this is a bad thing, and that software developers should instead see themselves as people who first and foremost are human problem solvers, and that software just happens to be the toolset we use to help others.
Ah yes, so we're on the same side, sorry. The double negative confused me.
That even if you love coding/creating software the job will always be fun. No matter how much you love something, if you are forced to do it to make a living there will be times when you are like "DAMN IT IM DONE!". At least occasionally :P
True, there are times where I felt like that. Maybe because I had a challenging task or because my boss just decided to change the entire design of the godda...
Sorry I got angry.
We are a super inclusive tech company and want to have female developers, but we just can't find them. Where are they hiding? it must be a pipeline issue or something unrelated to us.
Writing fancy code is a good idea.
Clever code is almost always harder to understand.
And yet most juniors or atleast I did, started out like Ash Cetchem, wanted to be a Pokémon, I mean developer master and be the best there ever was. How nieve I was. 🤣
Trying to prove your worth by doing something difficult to understand is an inevitable stage of most developers. It isn't until you tey to figure out somebody else's clever code that you realize that maintainability is so important.
Writing fancy and complex code is easy. Writing simple understandable code is harder
You don't need to interact with people. Such a lie. We talk to people constantly, communication is almost as important as writing code.
I would say that in most companies, good communication is more important than writing good code. As long as your code does what it needs to do and is maintenable you've done a great job writing the code.
The key there is writing code that does what it needs to do. You can only figure that out with good communication. Even if you write the cleanest, most beautiful code in the world if it doesn't do what it is supposed to do then it's all for naught.
Hahaha totally agree with that
You have to be great with maths to be a developer.
try audio programming :)
Hahaha game AI development :)
could work as well 😄😄
I guess that depends. If you have to write algorithms, signal processing and so on it would help greatly to be good at Math. If you are doing web apps or generic applications it might not matter much.
Which is why it's a common falsehood that gives people the perception of it.
To me, if you are inventing or dealing with the deep tech with the bleeding age technology. It's a yes if not it's a hell no.
Then again I'm biased since I had suffered greatly in classes for my university during algorithm classes or anything maths-related modules in school while I was growing up.
That job titles matter very much. Roles and responsibilities matter a lot more. The expectations of a "senior software engineer" at one company may have very little in common with the expectations of a role with that same title somewhere else.
I don't know the titles of most of the people I work with on a daily basis, and it doesn't impact our ability to collaborate. Hell, I don't even know the title of my manager. I've only found titles to matter when advertising a rough skill+experience level to other people, or when setting goals with my manager to "rise" within a hierarchically structured employment scheme.
pro-tip: if you really need a job title for marketing purposes, you can create a startup "Uber for flying fish". Fill the paperwork, incorporate in Delaware, there are people that can explain how to do it. No need to find paying customers.
Instantly you can call yourself CTO or whatever else you wish.
Not a new idea, mind you, this is what a lot of people are already doing on LinkedIn
When I attend a conference or other community event, I often give myself a different title depending on what I'm working on that day/week/month 😏
My official corporate title is meaningless to me and everyone else I work with.
That everyone in programming is a genius. Some people are just great abstract thinkers.
that you know every programming language off the top of your head.
that you can fix their phone.
that you're a gamer
That you should always be coding. Burnout is a real thing, it sucks, and it can be prevented.
Taking breaks, don't code all weekend, have hobbies outside of code. All good things to help prevent burnout.
medium.com/always-be-coding/abc-al...
Genius IQ Score
As a full-time student having jumped into the programming world several months ago, I can really say that regardless of where you are in your learning path, we should be helping each other up, not breaking each other down. I can't say how many times I've seen the worst of people on StackOverFlow. Honestly, I think we're all here to learn and further our common goals and our industry- let's do it together. Rudeness has always been a major pet peeve of mine, as I'm sure it is for others!
Imposter syndrome may always stick with me but I'm putting mental health, physical health, social awareness, and self-efficacy first before I boot up my computer each morning.
That you spend all day typing.
Good developers spend most of their day figuring out how best to solve a problem, and then only type as much as they need to.
Nah, ill just reinstall my system, invent new aliases, try out 3 new editors, find a theme, etc. that should keep me busy for a week. Much more fun than doing something with business value. /s
Gotta love this. Real story, i met a guy that started programming under the wing of someone who constantly fiddles with editor, for years. I knew exactly how it will go. Ive been meeting him every couple of months (conferences, eventually working together in the same company) and asking whats up, what he learned, how his stuff is looking.
Every time he had something new. New editor, 10 shell scripts to increase productivity, new laptop with great shortcuts on touchbar.
Needless to say, he was fired from my company because he couldnt deliver anything.
Beware juniors - dont waste time. If it works and doesnt get in a way - stick with it until it does. Then fix what is itchy, and move along. Otherwise your resume will contain more about buzzwords than results. And this is not a good thing.
Sorry, I have to disagree... I cannot write code if I have to look at loading bars that dont resemble nyan cats... ;)
Not having enough time for my girlfriend and pursuing other non tech related things. If you want to stay on top in the Software Development you need to give up a lot of time that you can use for other things. Its rewarding anyway.
That you know everything. It's impossible for us to know everything - that's why we have Google. Don't feel like you're expected to know everything all the time, knowing what to Google is the most important thing.
That you should have a solution for every problem.
Just developer stereotypes, like an assumption that I don't have soft skills and would be happy spending my life coding in a dark basement.
I think it's so interesting how a job title completely changes how you're seen. Going from marketing to development was like whiplash.
I always thought that you need to be skilled in order to get a good job, but sometimes you just need to lucky.
That you must know as many programming languages and frameworks. One year into my professional journey my top key takeaway has been that design patterns and paradigms are the most important thing. All code is the same as long as you know the fundamentals of programming, can read docs and be willing to spend your day 'crying' while searching error messages on Google. I was convinced that language/framework A is the best tool and you can't achieve this on language/framework B. Today I'm open minded about the best tool for the job and also being in a software development agency start up for 6 months, I have been forced to get out of my shell and work with tech I once considered unworthy or languages I thought I'd never work with professionally .
It’s all about making more money....
That everyone makes an assload of money. Not true.
fix a broken computer parts.
You are suddenly an IT guy who will always be able to fix any Facebook or printer problems
That we have unhealthy habits, we eat junk, we this, we that...
NotAllCoders
That the demand for web developers is high.
That you need to work for companies that make you work 60-70 hours a week to make ends meet.
that 90% of the startups FAIL
forbes.com/sites/neilpatel/2015/01...