DEV Community: Derek Strickland

Release Day Observations

Derek Strickland — Mon, 18 Oct 2021 11:24:39 +0000

Release Day is the great unwinding of all your back/neck muscles that have, for the past several weeks, been strung together into series of nerve connected Gordian Knots
Release Day never goes as expected
Not going as expected doesn't always mean bad
Release Day nearly always results in realization of previously unrecognized downstream enablement tasks
Users don't remember if you released on time
Users totally remember if you released a bad experience
Your manager totally remembers if you released on time
Time available before release will never exceed work available for said release because inevitably someone, perhaps even you, will suggest adding something since there is perceived "extra time"
Release Day should always be, but is rarely ever, followed by Release Recovery Week

Derek Strickland — Thu, 07 Oct 2021 08:20:30 +0000

Go is a mixed bag
Its possible to write elegant go
The go community doesn't want you to
If you do, you might regret it, and end up deleting it all
if err != nil was invented by evil monkeys that get paid by scrollbar pixel movement
if err != nil will seriously save your bacon
In many languages, the standard library is a good place to look for examples of good code
In go, the standard library encourages many practices I have, over the too many years, come to consider harmful
I am learning to question my beliefs, but it hurts really bad, and I'm not always wrong
Go docs are syntax references, not docs
Go docs assume too much prior knowledge
There are some foundational Go essays that are absolute gold
Ardan Labs has some killer go content and doesn't assume you know it all already - no affiliation, just mad respect
Many well respected go experts seem to believe in copy paste coding
This makes me want to vomit locusts
Gophers really hate dependencies, which leads to the aforementioned copy pasta
Not managing tons of lib dependencies of your own making is really liberating
I'm learning to eat locusts, but sometimes cotton candy is better
Go mod needs a UX/DX designer to join the team badly
Go mod's job is hard - so that's not a criticism as much as a real hope

Derek Strickland — Thu, 07 Oct 2021 07:51:10 +0000

Derek Strickland — Wed, 04 Nov 2020 12:46:21 +0000

Community Office Hours returns today. Join us to discuss #Consul Streaming & Metrics