This is a weekly roundup of awesome DEV comments that you may have missed. You are welcome and encouraged to boost posts and comments yourself using the #bestofdev tag.
Answering What is a good team lead in your opinion?, @jankapunkt points out that sometimes a great lad insulates you from work, in addition to helping you accomplish it:
The good team leads protected me from more tasks (management never stops to ask for more) and emphasized to finish current ones first.
@healeycodes replies to When is learning what to Google good enough? to share a story about a regex wizard's journey:
In a previous job, there was a regex wizard. Things were good. He was wise. We could go to him, present him with a problem, and he would write a solution on some yarn (Slack).
A short while after he left, I found myself with a problem that regex could solve. I was left with Google. So I hacked. I copied and pasted and used the regex-helper websites as I ran around the china shop that is string parsing, smashing everything as I went.
I didn't know it at the time but when I searched and hacked a solution together, I was learning bits and bobs. Stray phrases of advice stuck me with. Occasionally and without knowing it I would find myself on a tech blog explaining the intricacies of search patterns.
Then one day someone who had seen some of my diffs approached me and requested a regex solution. Without knowing it I had become the wizard. An expert who knew almost nothing.
It would have been quicker just to learn the theory from the start! 😊
@mkrl shares a massive accomplishment in re: What was your win this week? — good luck with the big and exciting transition!
I got a job offer I was waiting for almost a month. And now I have to pack my stuff, sell my car, apartment, things, throw old junk away and then travel ~6.5k kilometres away from my place. A whole new life in less than 2 weeks from now! Yeehaw!
Hopping in to the How do I compete with Wix, SquareSpace, and WordPress as a freelancer? thread, @jamesthomson offers some additional thoughts about opportunities for developers among all these self-serve website builder platforms:
I've always actually looked at this as a positive. Rather than mindlessly pumping out templated Wordpress sites, developers can actually focus on solving real problems for real businesses. We can focus on what really drives us as developers and push web further. The products mentioned may help small businesses gain a web presence (which is great!), but anything that requires custom work (medium+ businesses, many startups, government, etc.) there's just no possible way cookie cutter products can compete with real developers.
I've been in the business in one way or another for the past 15 or so years and I've never seen such a demand for frontend and backend web developers as we have now. I think as long as you can develop your skillset to those businesses that require custom work you will have plenty of work come your way.
Finally, in How to overcome bad periods at work. Let's share from our experiences, @andrewjensen42 shares some sage wisdom from over 20 years in the industry:
I've been coding since 1998, needless to say I've had several moments in my career where I've felt that my environment had become toxic or simply unbearable. There are a few simple things that I've learned along the way to prevent and mitigate times like that.
Firstly, understand that you are an individual. You cannot know everything. There is no shame in asking for help.
Secondly, no matter how big the issue, most things can be resolved by talking it out. If you don't understand something, ask.
Lastly, and I can't put enough emphasis on this one, you create your own environment. If you are continuously grumpy, that's your environment. Interactions dictate your workplace success.
See you next week for more great comments ✌
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Congrats to @jankapunkt , @healeycodes , @mkrl , @jamesthomson , and @andrewjensen42 for making the list this week!