DEV Community: Cubicle Buddha

Are Timed Coding Interviews A Good Indicator Of Job Performance?

Cubicle Buddha — Thu, 26 Sep 2019 01:36:39 +0000

So... I just failed an interview because I didn't finish the HackerRank challenge in time. I'm annoyed that I couldn't complete it, but I'm more frustrated by how robotic the process was...

When I've interviewed candidates, I focus on their problem-solving skills not their speed. If someone is focusing too much on one problem, I’ll encourage them by saying, ”I think you got close enough. Why don't we try the next one.” After all, I want the candidate to see that were a company that embodies forgiveness and iterative learning. But you don’t get any compassion from an automated email sending you to HackerRank.

So what does that say about the company that relies on this impersonal processes? Should companies even use timed coding challenges? Or are they necessary for certain types of high-pressure companies?

What’s your favorite piece of code that you had to throw away?

Cubicle Buddha — Wed, 18 Sep 2019 14:23:57 +0000

Ever been here before...?

Developer: “Hey, I just finished the feature”
Product Owner: “Oh, the customer actually wanted something different. Sorry about that.”
Developer: “Oh” {furiously clicks delete}

I know I have had to toss some of my favorite things I’ve written. And I’ve written about how change can be okay and might even be the best thing for the user.

Your Code Is Not Pretty / Your Code Is Already Dead Code

Cubicle Buddha ・ Jul 24 '19

#motivation #productivity #agile #webdev

But... sometimes you need to mourn something before you can really move on. So tell me about your favorite bit of code that you’ve had to throw away. We can mourn it together so you can move onto even greater software!

What is the best quality a developer can have?

Cubicle Buddha — Mon, 09 Sep 2019 17:30:15 +0000

If you had to narrow it down to the most important aspect of a developers personality... what would that be?

What quality could an interview candidate have that would make you extra interested in hiring them?

Screwing up. Advice on forgiving your inner child.

Cubicle Buddha — Mon, 02 Sep 2019 23:30:16 +0000

I made a mistake today. Not the “calculated risk” kind of mistake that we recommend on this blog. I’m talking a plain-old, stupid error. I get it that bugs happen. But the problem was my response to discovering the bug. Strangely enough, after a minutes I found myself thinking judgmental thoughts about family, co-workers, and friends about behaviors of theirs that I don’t like. Is that a coincidence? No, it doesn’t take a psychologist to identify that I was project my feels of self-criticism out to others. Great. Now I’m being critical of myself for being critical of others!

So how does a person break out of this blame cycle?

To be honest, when I was in the middle of my recursive, blame tornado… I was completely unable to see a solution. Moreover, I was unable to see the problem of how my work snafu was unrelated to the actions of my family. Well luckily for me, there were some chores outside that would force me to use my body and to disconnect. Miraculous things happen when you exercise even a little bit. While out in the yard, it occurred to me that I was forgetting the most useful solution that Buddhism has to offer: the inner child. There’s no better way to approach self-judgment than with this question:

Would you let your son or daughter judge themself so harshly?

If the answer is “no,” then why are continuing to judge yourself? Not only is that a simple logical conclusion, but it’s also a great framework for healing. You can use this metaphor where you imagine the portion of yourself that are hurting to be a child. This is your inner child. Buddhist teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh, completes the metaphor by describing how the process of caring for ourselves can spark remarkable change:

“Just by holding this child gently, we are soothing our difficult emotions and we can begin to feel at ease. When we embrace our strong emotions with mindfulness and concentration, we’ll be able to see the roots of these mental formations. We’ll know where our suffering has come from. When we see the roots of things, our suffering will lessen. So mindfulness recognizes, embraces, and relieves.”

And just like that I realized that I shouldn’t be upset at myself for the programming mistake I made at work. As they say,”mistakes happen.” And all it took was a little bit of exercise, a little bit of quiet contemplation, and a lot of forgiveness.

Once I made the breakthrough, I was able to see that random thoughts that had popped up about my family and friends were simply unrelated and unnecessary. After all, if I can forgive myself then it was easy enough to forget the transgressions my brain was coming up with.

Now I’m free to go enjoy my time with my wife and my cat without worrying about my day at work. There’s no time like the present and presently I am mistake free! It’s so strange that I, the author of a self-care blog, would be stuck in mistakes of the past. But we can’t escape our biology. As evolutionary psychologist and author Robert Wright mentioned in an interview with WHYY, “we are condemned to always want things to be a little different, always want a little more. We’re not designed by natural selection to be happy” (1). But as his book “Why Buddhism Is True” described, we have an opportunity to override our programming. So as I described above, take the time to see yourself, acknowledge/accept the pain, and to forgive yourself.

Calculated risk or silly screwup, they’re all opportunities to learn and grow, which requires acceptance. So while your at it, give your friends, family, and coworkers the true gift of forgiveness so they can also life with freedom in the present moment.

When you can’t relax

Cubicle Buddha — Mon, 26 Aug 2019 11:32:37 +0000

So the weekend is over, and you don’t feel relaxed. What happened? Maybe you even “stayed home and did nothing,” and yet you didn’t really replenish your energy. Well, today I’ll share a little guidance that will hopefully give you a booster shot to help you truly rest the next time you get a chance.

It turns out that Thich Nhat Hanh describes this exact scenario of resting but not really resting:

Calming allows us to rest, and resting is a precondition for healing. When animals in the forest get wounded, they find a place to lie down, and they rest completely for many days. They don’t think about food or anything else. They just rest, and they get the healing they need. When we humans get sick, we just worry! We look for doctors and medicine, but we don’t stop. Even when we go to the beach or the mountains for a vacation, we don’t rest, and we come back more tired than before. We have to learn to rest.

Did you notice that part about all animals needing to rest? You need to rest too. You need to replenish your mental energy from many hard days of work.

So how do we learn how to rest?

There are many ways to learn to disconnect, but most mindfulness practitioners point to breathing techniques. I had to employ it myself last night when I couldn’t get to sleep. [Click here for our article on breathing techniques and their values.](https://dev.to/cubiclebuddha/mindfully-breathing-to-prepare-for-a-big-meeting-

Mindfully Breathing to prepare for a big meeting

Cubicle Buddha ・ May 1 '19

#motivation #beginners #productivity #career

Hey, is this article over already?

Yes, it is. Sorry, but I needed a rest this weekend too. So I gave myself a break. I used the time that I would normally be researching psychology studies and combing through Buddhist text to instead doing nothing but stare out my window.

What can you “slack on” to make time for rest?

So that’s my challenge for you. Is there one thing in your life that you can give up or put down for five minutes? Try installing a screen time app on your phone to see where you’re spending your time. Then you can audit the results and say, “hmm, maybe I don’t need to spend 4 hours on facebook.” All you need to do is carve out 5 minutes to doing nothing.

Doing nothing: The cure for procrastination

Cubicle Buddha ・ Jun 26 '19

#career #help #motivation #agile

And if you’re finding it difficult to really enjoy the calm and quiet, you need a positive voice in your head. When your brain is telling you that “you shouldn’t be resting” please try to insert my voice saying “you deserve it.” Because you really do.

Why I was wrong about Scrum + “Hard Goals”

Cubicle Buddha — Mon, 19 Aug 2019 14:27:02 +0000

I am so happy to admit to you that I made a mistake.

I thought reaching the goal was the most important thing. “Isn’t that what Scrum is all about?” (I thought). I used to value making sure my team’s completed point values looked good at the end of the sprint. I thought pushing them to produce work would be more helpful so they learned how to commit to a goal. But sometimes that attitude of mine simply encouraged the developers to produce code that either they weren’t personally proud of or that I sure as heck wasn’t happy with when it came to the code review. So what was the value of making it to the goal line if the ball is busted and deflated when it whizzes past?

Keep reading to learn why admitting your mistakes in not only ”okay” but also possibly the most productive thing you can do.

I recognize my misunderstanding of Scrum’s goals when the Scrum Alliance announced changes that were made to the Scrum guidelines:

“As of 2011 the Development Team no longer commits to the work planned in the Sprint. Instead, the team creates a forecast.

This is a major change.

A commitment implies that there will be no new insights during the Sprint. A forecast is taking into account empiricism: transparency, inspection, adaptation.”

That last line really excited me, so let’s break it down. I’m hoping that by putting less emphasis on committing to deadlines I’ll be giving my team the opportunity to take the time to embody the values that Agile really emphasis:

• Transparency: It would be so amazing for me (as the frequent Scrum Master of the team) if I didn’t have to consistently coach/bother the team to communicate early and often about difficulties. Are my teammates keeping quiet because they’re afraid I’ll find out that they’re maybe going to miss the “commitment?” I certainly hope that’s not the case, but it’s possible that they’re afflicted by the same procrastination issues I also have had to deal with. And as I’ve described before, the best cure for procrastination is to remove the fear that is preventing progress— so commitments are out for me. So maybe the simple language tweak of using “forecasting” will help my team to communicate sooner if a particular user story looks like it’s going to take more time than we originally predicted. This way the blame is focused less on the developer’s tech skills and more on the scientifically proven difficulty that all humans have with accurately estimating time.

• Adaptation: I would be unbelievably happy if I watched one of my teammates ask the team if we can pivot and rearrange the user stories we brought into the sprint. This could easily be needed if we have surprising learnings that tell us our plan will need to adapt to reality. I have always told my teams that negotiating before a sprint is kicked off is better, but that we can still talk about necessary changes inside of the sprint… but I guess that the big bad commitment was preventing them from bringing up any changes. That’s no good. I need to foster an environment where any topic (especially necessary changes) can be brought up. After all, accepting change (ie acknowledging impermanence) is a core aspect of Buddhism, and I have to say it’s made my life so much nicer… so why would I want to deny my team the peace that comes from knowing that change is okay and is to be expected. Hey, I don’t have to throw away all that Scrum used to be— I can always tell a teammate that the change in scope can be represented as new work in the next sprint if the change is more of an enhancement than a misunderstanding of the original acceptance criteria. We can slice and dice the work however we want. We can do whatever works best for the team… so long as the team is comfortable to bring it up.

• Empiricism: Not knowing is core to one of my great loves, the scientific method. TheHappyScientist.com describes the scientific method best when they write: “A theory starts as one or more hypotheses, untested ideas about why something happens. […] To become a scientific theory, an idea must be thoroughly tested, and must be an accurate and predictive description of the natural world. […] theories change frequently as new evidence is discovered.” Empiricism is also core to Buddhism (which is the through-line of most of my articles on CubicleBuddha.com). I wish that everyone can know the peace and calm that comes from accepting that it’s okay to not know the answer. You can’t learn unless you admit that you don’t know. That’s why I’m always trying at least two or three solutions when I’m trying out a new language or technology. For instance, I recently decided to challenge my tendency towards functional programming. So I made a hypothesis that a reduce function is better for aggregating data but then after I had to hand-roll a groupBy-style hashmap (because my lambda function didn’t have lodash) I determined that a foreach was the most readable solution. How amazing? By challenging my own preconceived notions, I now have multiple theories on aggregating data and I have a more refined knowledge of what constitutes readable code.

Why Empiricism Is More Important Than Scrum Points

I want my team to also have the time and freedom to question their own code. If they do, then ultimately we will have a better product, more confident developers, and happier customers. Oh, and I won’t have to cringe when a code review request is sent to me and the submission looks like the developer threw the code together quickly. Take the time to enjoy your craft!

What have you been wrong about that brought you happiness?

Recognizing my misunderstanding led to greater happiness for my team and for myself. So what are some notions that you've had that you were amazed when they flipped?

Making Small Positive Changes: 5 easy examples

Cubicle Buddha — Mon, 12 Aug 2019 11:45:15 +0000

We all know the deal– if you want to lose 20 pounds, start with losing 1 pound. But how do I lose 1 pound? And if you want to become a violinist, start by learning one song. But you think, “how the heck can I motivate myself to start?”

Sometimes the best way to make the change is to remove obstacles. In the example above, how can I learn violin if I don’t buy a violin? And maybe I consistently tell myself that I cannot buy a violin because I need to save money for more valuable things. Well, why not consider renting a violin so that you have high reward to low risk? This lets the pressure off.

An Example Of A Tiny Step That Paid Off

I experienced the power of un-roadblocking myself recently when I was trying to set a goal to read more. I love reading. Or at least I tell myself I do. But how often do I actually sit down to read? Probably twice a year. At least that’s how often I used to read books, until I:

Bought myself a book stand
Bought myself a reading light that charges really easily

And now that I have no excuses, I read all the time. And I’m a much happier and I’m a much more relaxed person on the days that I carve out a few minutes of reading time– because reading helps me quiet my mind. And it only cost me a tiny amount of money, but it brought on a bigger change.

“Equipped with that energy of mindfulness and concentration, you may take a step. And if you can take one mindful step, you can take another and another.”

~ Thich Nhat Hanh

Other Examples Of Small Steps

So if you’re trying to make what feels like a big change, try making a small change first.

Worried about your terrible posture? One life hack involves getting out of bed instead of reading your phone in bed in some slouchy position. So the trick is to plug your phone into an outlet this is far away form your bed so you have to get up to turn off your morning alarm.
Worried about switching careers? Take a tutorial course on something that interests you, like an online programming course. The obstacle is the cost of course or the materials, so just do it. No, I’m not talking about investing tons of money, but sometimes you have to throw down a little cash, even if it’s a trial membership to PluralSight (or any online course website).
_ Feeling low on energy? _ Eat at breakfast and dinner at the right times. It’s been proven that cortisol (the stress hormone) is introduced into the body whenever you delay your usual eating times. So if you often find yourself hangry, keep a box of low-glycemic energy bars around. The simple act of buying food to keep around is an easy way to un-roadblock your goals. Remember, you’re not just a brain in a jar. You have to eat so you can take care of that body!
Feeling like you’ll never brush your teeth more than 2 times a day? Buy a toothbrush and a travel sized toothpaste and leave it in every place you can. If you have one at your desk at work, then maybe one day you’ll remember to use it before pair-programming or after you had stinky fish lunch.
Feeling sore? Wear more layers. This one came compliments of my incredible wife, who recognized before I did that I am often cold. But the interesting part is that I didn’t realize how being slightly cold was having a major negative effect on my health and well-being due to reduce flexibility that was causing significant muscle strain in my shoulders and neck. After one winter where I experimented with wearing many comfortable, nice layered hoodies and cardigans, I found myself in much better health by spring. Life hacks don’t get much smaller than that.
Losing confidence at work? Enroll in that online course or subscription. If you find yourself nervous about the weight of your monthly payment to PluralSight, LinkedIn Learning, or EggHead.io, then you might be more motivated to take the time to educate yourself. With education comes confidence and pride.

It's okay to make a mistake

One of the best ways to feel better about taking a step is to forgive yourself of the past. That's easier than it seems:

Fixing Bad Habits By Learning To Love Them: Agile Retrospectives

Cubicle Buddha ・ May 15 '19

#beginners #productivity #career #explainlikeimfive

What Was The Best Step You Took

Those are just a few ideas. Sometimes you just need a little something to get you started, and though they may only involve a very small cost or small change to your day they could have a huge impact over time. We’d love to hear from you on similar experiences you had, so reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. What small step helped you to make the biggest change?

How To Be Productive + Avoid “Analysis Paralysis”

Cubicle Buddha — Mon, 05 Aug 2019 11:30:15 +0000

You’re staring at the blank screen and you have no idea what to write. Or maybe you’re staring at a bug in some software you have to fix. Every career has these moments where you have no idea where to start. You’re overwhelmed by the options, and you’ve found yourself firmly in a state of “analysis paralysis.” So how do you get productive when you can’t even begin?

We’ll share a wonderful tip from a surprising place: Hollywood.

Inspiration can be found anywhere, and I often learn a lot from hearing about other careers. They call this “multidisciplinary learning.” It’s largely the reason why Leonardo DaVinci was so successful– he grabbed as much knowledge as he could from engineering, art, anatomy and more.

How Hollywood Deals With Writer’s Block

Today’s discovery came to me while listening to the podcast Armchair Expert, where Dax Shepard was interviewing Mike Schur (the show-runner and head writer of NBC’s hit comedy, “The Good Place”). Dax Shepard was shocked to discover that a writer is only allowed 3 days to write an entire episode, saying “[that’s] not a lot of time for writer’s block!”

Dax Shepard and Mike Schur then share their secret:

Dax Shepard: “My technique as a writer, to get over writer’s block is to give myself permission to write something shitty.”

“Don’t you think it’s own of the greatest assets you can have?”

Mike Schur: “Of course.”

Dax Shepard: “You become paralyzed with trying to write something perfect, and you’ll just never write.”

It turns out that there’s a term in Hollywood for this process of iterating: “The Vomit Draft.”

The Vomit Draft

The idea is that you just vomit something out. Maybe there are some good chunks in there (forgive me), but ultimately you are most likely going to throw away the whole draft.

So how does that even help?

Well, once you’ve started creating you have effectively removed the roadblocks. You have become un-paralyzed. Now you’re free to write a second draft that will almost certainly be better than the first. As I’ve heard it said before, “there’s only one direction to go from here: up!”

How To Apply It

So if you’re working on a software bug, make a guess about the cause the bug and investigate it even if it’s wildly wrong. Just by getting into the motion of investigating will help you find the real root cause sooner.

If you’re trying to write an email to your boss about a promotion… write a very bad one first. After you’re done, you’ll know what not to say. Just be sure to avoid adding an email address first so you don’t accidentally send it! We believe in impermanence, but some things are not as easily undone.

Those are just a few practical examples of how to get in the motion. What we’re really talking about here is iterating. You start small and you build on it. More importantly, don’t be afraid to chuck things out if they aren’t working. But you can’t throw away pages if you haven’t written any. So get started with something crappy!

Other Examples Of How Iterating Solves Quality And Productivity Problems

It’s clear that iteratively developing a product can help to refine the idea into it’s best version over time. Here are some other examples from other careers that prove that “vomit drafts” or prototypes can help immensely.

Software: The software development world introduced a concept called Agile that has recently been applied to all types of careers. You can read more about it here.

Samsara: 5 Agile Techniques to End Suffering And Increase Learning

Cubicle Buddha ・ Apr 7 '19 ・ 6 min read

#productivity #motivation #agile #career
Novel Writing: Charles Dickens was famous for writing his novels in sections. And if you look at how prolific he was, you’ll see that he was onto something. Read more about his iterative novels here.

How Charles Dickens Wrote Like An Agile Programmer

Cubicle Buddha ・ Jun 5 '19 ・ 5 min read

#career #agile #productivity #motivation
Visual Design : We discussed “design thinking” recently, and how this lesson from User Experience (UX) Design can help you to move past perfectionismand to improve yourself iteratively.

Using Self-Affirmation to “Fake It Till You Make It”

Cubicle Buddha ・ Jul 31 '19 ・ 3 min read

#agile #career #motivation #psychology

But What’s Worked For You?

I’d love to hear how you’re learning to overcome the paralysis that comes from a blank white canvas. How are you getting started?

Using Self-Affirmation to “Fake It Till You Make It”

Cubicle Buddha — Mon, 29 Jul 2019 11:45:17 +0000

“Oh, that’s just what I’m like”

Have you ever heard you or a coworker say the following?

“Oh, geez. I’m such an idiot.”
“Don’t mind me, I’m just a pessimist.”
“Hah, I guess my perfectionism is showing today.”
“I could never present at a meeting, I’m too antisocial.”

Beware of thoughts like this. I’ve heard it said that “we become the stories that we say about ourselves.” So try this:

Tell yourself a good story , or at least the myth of what you want to become. And then believe it.

The Power Of Myth

You have the ability to change your neural pathways (or what Buddhists call your “habit energy”) through self-affirmation or “the process of reflecting upon important personal values or strengths.” Psychologist such as Professor Peter Harris of the University Of Sussex frequently write on the power of self-affirmation:

“Self-affirmation appears to promote several key processes relevant to health behavior change, including more open-minded appraisal of otherwise threatening information, higher levels of mental construal, and reductions in the likelihood of self-control failure.” (1)

The Danger Of A Negative Myth

Unfortunately, the opposite is true and that believing you are something negative can cause you to grow even further into those negative qualities.

For instance, I used to tell myself that I was someone who is always late. I had thought that about myself from age 0-28. With the help of mentors, I began telling myself the opposite. I now tell myself that “I am a professional and accountable person.”

I didn’t believe myself at first. But I desperately wanted to change. I have learned from the past that making sweeping changes are difficult, and that it is important to have realistic expectations (you hear me perfectionists?).

How To Turn It Around

So I started small. At first, I tried getting to meetings one minute earlier than I would have. Then 3 minutes. Then 5 minutes before the meeting even started.

Once I discovered the joy of being early and the innate calmness of having a few minutes to breath before a meeting, the process of waking up early became easier. (P.s. Also, my team was happier that I was coming to meetings prepared. As a lead developer, you have to do your prep work!)

So now, when I hear myself saying “oh, I’m not a morning person” I cut myself off. “I am someone who respects time.”

Be the myth. Fake it till you make it. Eventually you won’t be faking it.

P.s. Sometimes I slip up, and I’m late again. But I don’t judge myself too harshly, because every moment is an opportunity for reinvention. The “me” of one second ago made that mistake, the “me” of right now can choose to behave wisely. Be in the present moment, and earn that forgiveness by being better. You can’t change the past, but you can change this current moment.

Addendum: Discovery processes like this yield interesting findings about your own mental processes. I realized that the previous me didn’t like being early to meetings because I didn’t like to be alone with my thoughts. Coming face-to-face with that realization, I had to remind myself what I’ve always known: being alone with your thoughts is one of the most valuable things you can do. In fact, a quiet mind might even be productive.

Your Code Is Not Pretty / Your Code Is Already Dead Code

Cubicle Buddha — Mon, 22 Jul 2019 11:45:07 +0000

“Wow. Look at this code, it looks so nice! And it’s so clear and easy to read!” Clarity and readability are admirable things to aim for, but is it possible that the quest for “perfect” code is preventing you from actually RELEASING real functionality to the user?

When my perfectionism is owning me more than helping me, I remind myself:

“Yesterday is already gone. Tomorrow is not yet here. Today is the only day available to us; it is the most important day of our lives.”

– Thich Nhat Hanh

What Thich Nhat Hanh is referring to is the Buddhist concept of Impermanence.

“Impermanence..?!?” What a crazy thing to be talking about in relationship to software. “Aren’t we trying to build something that will stand the test of time?” is something a rational human might say. But what impermanence refers to is the fact that all things decay and/or change. Maybe that notion is scary or sad to you, but that’s not what we’re trying to do– CubicleBuddha.com is all about lifting you up! So instead of being sad about the staleness of yesterday’s effort, remember that your users want the code to change to support new use cases. So why not focus on what your users need today– after all, “[today] is the most important day of our lives.”

How Do I Know When Fear Is Preventing Me From Helping My Users?

It doesn’t take very much time to find a company that is afraid of change. Here are some clear markers of that “fear of change” and how it can lead to a slow development process:

Products that are delayed because “it wasn’t all ready.” (Who cares if it’s not all done? Release what you have!)
Code that never gets released because of poor understanding of the requirements/ acceptance criteria. (If you’re trying to add value for your users, you should probably ask them what they want. And better yet, try to limit the number of people that the message has to flow through between the user and the developer. Whisper down the lane is a killer.)
A product that never gets released because the contract was canceled before it had a chance to “go live” to the customers. (This means that the company clearly waited too long to get the work out to the users.)
Code that is rewritten all of the time because new requirements come in all the time– i.e. “swirl” or “churn.” Again, this is a clear sign that it took too long to get the product out to the users. Software isn’t made out of stone like I used to think– it’s very easy to change. And if you don’t think it’s easy to change, then you’re not writing with an eye towards refactorability. Think about it this way: a contractor who is building a porch or a roof can’t build it quickly and then ask the home owner if he likes the work. They’d get fired and/or taken to court if their work was deficient. But a house contractor can draw up plans and get feedback on these low-fidelity mockups of the work. We have almost no excuses in software since not only can we have the users review our plans, but we can also get the work out and then change it almost immediately.

What do these scenarios have in common? They’re all examples of how embracing change would have made for more pleasurable experiences for all involved.

So, How Can I Embrace Change?

Maybe you’ve recognized that you want to make the jump, but you don’t know how. You ask, “what does embracing change mean in software?”

It means writing code that lets you make quick changes without breaking the past. This means using good design patterns (like we’ll discuss in future articles).
It means writing unit tests so you can make new updates without worrying about whether or not you broke your last updates.
It means removing “Dead Code” so that the past doesn’t slow you down and creep up as unexpected bugs.
It means worrying less about the “beauty” of your code and more about if it makes your users happy and if it makes future developers happy to build upon it.
It means loving and understanding your peers, even when your Product Owner comes to you and says that we misunderstood the customer and therefore we have to remove the code you just worked so hard on. That’s change. And as long as your listening to the needs of the customer, you’re changing for the better.

We’ll be touching on many of these solutions in future articles, but let’s unpack that last point a little bit:

How I Learned To Be Happy Deleting Code

In my years of professional programming, I have had to delete functions, features, and entire products countless times when my bosses “refined” their understanding of the customer’s needs or the market’s needs. So when that happens, did I get sad over the loss of my code? Heck yea I did! I’m only human. But eventually you realize that every time we write code, we’re producing our best guesses of what the customer needs. As we refine that guesstimate, we have to remove or delete the parts of the product that were bad assumptions. Sometimes that means deleting your favorite parts– yes, even the parts that you really thought were beautifully written. But was it really beautiful if it wasn’t helping the customer?

You might have read my critique of “beautiful code” and thought, “is he asking me to not worry about readability?” Of course I’m not! I am simply recommending that you don’t let yourself become slowed down or paralyzed by thoughts on how the code should be structured.

The best way I find to unburden myself from these thoughts is to ask myself, “Do you think that future developers will see your code and think this is beautiful?” The answer is almost certainly “no.” The dirty secret about software maintainability is that most of us only like the way our code looks.

Ignoring “pretty” and perfection

What we’re trying to do is make a tiny amount of room for acceptable failure so that perfectionism doesn’t control you. When you’re thinking from the perspective of balance you can consider thoughts like “I want the code to be maintainable but I also want to get value out to the users today!” We would be wise to remember the words of Confucius who said:

“Better a diamond with a flaw than a pebble without.”

So my wish for you is that you accept and learn from the flaws so you can grow your work into a diamond day by day. And if your peers have flaws, accept them too– they’re also trying to grow and learn too. If you don’t let go of the past, then you can’t make room for what really matters today.

—————————————

If this article helped you, you might interested in other articles from CubicleBuddha.com such as:

Doing nothing: The cure for procrastination

Cubicle Buddha ・ Jun 26 '19

#career #help #motivation #agile

Samsara: 5 Agile Techniques to End Suffering And Increase Learning

Cubicle Buddha ・ Apr 7 '19

#productivity #motivation #agile #career

Thanks again for reading. I’d love to know what has helped you to accept change in the workplace?

Finally, an easy way to use TypeScript enums

Cubicle Buddha — Mon, 15 Jul 2019 16:37:16 +0000

One of the best things that TypeScript provides is a standard enum type that simply doesn't exist in JavaScript. Yes, yes... there are thousands of enum libraries out there in Github with various implementations. But there's something wonderful about having a standard built into the language.

tl;dr: I'm going to show a cool library that makes interacting with enums a joyous experience.

So what's the problem?

Well, as great as TypeScript enums are... they've lead to some verbose or unreadable code.

Like, let's say you have an enum for food ordering:



export enum FoodPreference {
    vegan,
    vegetarian,
    meatEater
}

Beautiful. But now you need to write some presentation logic. Let's first show a simple but highly-unreadable way to write that presentation logic:



const presentationString = filter === FoodPreference.vegan
            ? 'Do you have a nut preference?'
            : filter === FoodPreference.vegetarian
            ? 'Which protein would you like?'
            : 'What type of meat would you like?';

So, just like how people have food preferences... some people love nested ternaries. I am not one of those people.

While I love the immutability benefits that come with const, there are serious problems with the "eye-scan-ability" of nested ternaries. Furthermore, I recently described how fall-through approaches like that example put the code at risk for when a new case has been added to the enum.

Is “Defensive Programming” actually healthy?

Cubicle Buddha ・ May 8 '19

#discuss #help #typescript #javascript

The more readable, more defensive, but sadly verbose option

So we could rewrite the above code using our defensive technique by using the assertUnreachable function I described in my other article:



function askFirstQuestion(pref: FoodPreference): string {
    switch(pref){
        case(FoodPreference.vegan): {
            return 'Do you have a nut preference?';
        }
        case(FoodPreference.vegetarian): {
            return 'Which protein would you like?';
        }
        case(FoodPreference.meatEater): {
            return 'What type of meat would you like?'
        }
        default: {
            assertUnreachable(pref)
        }
    }
}

Hmmm, that's still a lot of typing. I don't even like switch cases that much because of known issues like falling through. And although assertUnreachable eliminates a lot of the problems with switch cases, I still feel like we can do better.

Look up in the sky! It's `ts-enum-util` to the rescue!

Some wonderful person decided to make a library that would simplify many enum operations. Check out their readme for more information, but for the moment let's see how this ts-enum-util improves our code:



function createPresentationString(pref: FoodPreference): string {
    return $enum.mapValue(pref).with({
        [FoodPreference.vegan]: 'Do you have a nut preference?',
        [FoodPreference.vegetarian]: 'Which protein would you like?',
        [FoodPreference.meatEater]: 'What type of meat would you like?',
    })
}

Isn't that much clearer? It's certainly shorter.

So is this just about less code?

Wait, before you say that it's just syntactic sugar... let's show the TLC (tender, love, and care) that the library author added to their library.

Watch what happens when you add a new entry into the enum:

Isn't that cool? We get all of the benefits of assertUnreachable without the readability problems of nested ternaries or the verbosity (and other known issues) of switch statements.

Thoughts?

So I'm a big fan of this new approach. But I'm interested in hearing your thoughts so please reply on twitter or in the comments. Also, be sure to throw a Github star or two to Jeff Lau's ts-enum-util library.

Mindfully Screaming: How to deal with anger at work

Cubicle Buddha — Mon, 15 Jul 2019 11:45:12 +0000

Wait, what? You want me to scream on purpose? Yes. And I promise this won’t lead to the Human Resources department knocking down your door. In fact, it might even help prevent negative interactions with your peers.

Try the following surprising advice to get truly calm.

Go out to your car and SCREAM.

Sometimes you have a bad interaction at work and it simply makes you furious. The logic center of your brain knows that it’s uncouth to be angry, but let’s be honest… logic has nothing to do with anger. After all we are scientifically classified as animals. Even software engineers like me, who operate in logic all day, can’t escape the feelings that arise when a coworker is being cruel or if the computer just isn’t behaving.

Of course we all hope that we can fight off our anger, but Buddhism has a surprising suggestion: don’t fight your anger. Famed Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh perfectly describes how you can accept and forgive the anger as a way of dissipating it:

“The practitioner knows that her anger is not her enemy; her anger is her suffering baby. She must take good care of her baby, using the energy of mindfulness to embrace her anger in the most tender way. She can say, “Breathing in, I know that anger is in me. Breathing out, I am peacefully holding my anger.”

– Thich Nhat Hanh

One of the easiest ways to get through anger that may pop up is to go outside or to go someplace you’re comfortable with and just yell. It doesn’t have to be loud or to sound like William Shatner’s Kahn yell… but it’s just the act of acknowledging your anger.

And once you’ve given yourself permission to feel your anger, you will most likely feel it dissipate.

“People who use venting techniques like hitting a pillow or shouting are actually rehearsing anger. When someone is angry and vents their anger by hitting a pillow, they are learning a dangerous habit. They are training in aggression. Instead, our approach is to generate the energy of mindfulness and embrace anger every time it manifests.”

~ Thich Nhat Hanh

So the trick is to not act out in a way that masks your frustration, but to really embody the pain. When you are screaming in your car, allow yourself to feel the catharsis that comes with actually expressing your emotions.

Once you stop judging your anger, it begins to feel less important to direct that anger at another person. In fact, you might find that you were in the wrong. Apologizing is not something to be ashamed of and can be very cathartic, and we have advice on how to apologize well. Or, you might find the clarity of mind to transparently share your concerns with your peer. Or perhaps it was something very silly to be mad at. Maybe you will find yourself laughing with your new friend.

Mindfulness is like a big brother who does not suppress his younger brother’s suffering. He simply says, “Dear brother, I’m here for you.”

So what do you think… could you see yourself walking out to the car to scream a little? What have you tried that’s helped to authentically embrace your feelings?

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So what's the problem?

Is “Defensive Programming” actually healthy?

Cubicle Buddha ・ May 8 '19

The more readable, more defensive, but sadly verbose option

Look up in the sky! It's ts-enum-util to the rescue!

So is this just about less code?

Thoughts?

Mindfully Screaming: How to deal with anger at work

Look up in the sky! It's `ts-enum-util` to the rescue!