Matt Durham

There are two types of mid-level software developers out there: First: Those teaching and sharing how to handle thousands or millions of transactions per second (100K tps). Second: Those avidly watching and reading about how to handle thousands or millions of transactions per second. Meanwhile, both are working on systems that barely handle 10 transactions per second on a good day. #ScalableSystem

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"The only valid measurement of code quality is # of WTFs/minute" I can't remember if he's the origin, but I got that from Robert Martin's clean code. And honestly looking back on my career it is true. But it does not only apply to SWE, I think it applies to Engineering or better yet symmetry in general. You see, the problem with bad code or a bad design, is that based on what you know to be right (and hopefully you are indeed right) what you are seeing is asymmetrical. Examples: An API fails to implement the intuitive use case. Or Drastically changing the behavior of an SUT does not trigger a failing test. Or Someone writes code that only expects the happy path.... what if the remote item you are trying to interact with is unavailable? In all this, it is probably worth noting that Symmetrical doesn't necessarily mean "Correct", it just means it makes sense to you. So make sure you are indeed correct (probably by fact checking and having empirical data)

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I often run into Business types or even Developers who are kind of fuzzy on what DevOps is. The TLDR I give is "you know your application and features? DevOps is *everything else*: databases, pipelines, permissions, networks, domains, certificates, architecture..." Here's a quick and breezy high-level explanation by National Treasure Nick Janetakis -- https://lnkd.in/gdMFCCbh

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I have a question for software teams that meet ISO-27001 / SOC 2 Type II *and* who use outsourced software development with git. Do you have all your contractors sign all your policies so they can contribute to your codebase directly? Or do you have the outsourced team work in a separate git repository and then have an employee merge to the main repo? Or some other model?

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Most of the tech folks talk about tech debt, also known as technical debt or code debt. There is another less known debt is "feature debt" hiding in plain sight, it is the cost of not implementing feature completely. At some point later these starts to bite your team, identifying these and fixing them will save lot of headache for your team in dealing with customer issues.

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Real nuggets in this circa 2000 article by Highsmith. Main message is that we can't use strict planning methods in contexts with high uncertainty. Later, there are specifics about how to. ASD - Adaptive Software Development. I like this better than Agile Software Development; it's less nebulous. Too bad it never caught hold. "form does not follow function, it follows failure" Second page, first two paragraphs are definitely worth noting. There's a whole part that reads eerily familiar to the Agile Manifesto... "____ over ____" x4.

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Some 90% of the work in software engineering today continues to be about keeping the lights on and delivering working products. Though GenAI gets all the attention, it does not exist in a vacuum. And yet, it’s the only thing everyone talks about. I really liked the idea of https://normconf.com/ -- a conference dedicated to "middlebrow topics" like how to structure Python packages. We need more of these types of meetups. Let's talk about the mundane and mediocre topics that everyone works on day to day but does not get credit for doing. Let's talk about the bugs in socket.io, whether Node.js is good for enterprise software, and whether Rust is truly needed to build web-scale applications.

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If you are using contractors to build your software (Part 2): They often write unmaintainable code with little to no tests and a brittle deployment pipeline. When this happens, your code repository becomes a liability over time as maintenance costs increase. If you are not a software engineer, have an engineer review the contractors' work. For a quick review, prompt the code through a premium LLM like GPT-4, GitHub Copilot, or Claude 3 Opus. #softwareengineering #cleancode #cicd #agile #refactoring #legacycode #llm #chatgpt #claude3 #github #copilot #techfounder #startup #engineeringmanagement #contractors

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The Capital One Tech blog is full of useful tips to help make you and your work more efficient. Today’s tip: Consider using these design patterns in your next microservices app and make organization more manageable >> https://dy.si/fadoBS

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Developer downtime: don’t overwork your devs. It’s memorial weekend and I’m lazily sitting on my porch. My kids keep coming in and out of the house, but get stuck because the sliding door keeps coming off the rails and won’t open. Well, since I’ve got nothing else scheduled for the afternoon I investigate the issue. Turns out sliding doors have a bunch of adjustment screws. I adjust them till the door slides smooth. Left in the broken state my kids learned to hit top left side of the door before opening it. Bringing this back to work, I know customer success teams that have a cheat sheet of these maneuvers. Give devs space to observe, we naturally fix these issues.

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I just sent this email to #BigBasket #bbdaily about inconsistent billing. Some (like I) would call it fraud. I had a customer experience and fraud confrontation with #Flipakart a couple weeks ago. What's going on with me? Really... Is it me or them? When will they really get serious? I understand that there can be software errors. In digital world, or technically - a software, N number of things can break. But there are few things that cannot be compromised. OK, here's that email 👇 Dear Grievance Officer at Bigbasket, I am writing to bring to your immediate attention a serious issue regarding incorrect billing of products on my account between <redacted> and <redacted>. This matter is not just a simple error but constitutes financial fraud, which cannot be taken lightly. During the specified period, I noticed that the billing for one item (<redacted>) was inflated. For <redacted> milk, the correct billing was <redacted>. However, between <redacted>, both dates included, <redacted> was charged. Although I have been promised by the customer support that the additional amount has been refunded to my account, I am concerned that other customers might have been similarly affected. This issue likely extends beyond my account and could have impacted numerous other customers. I am also worried that these things might just be occurring and will continue to occur. Out of 100 customers impacted, a few may notice and the remaining may not even know that this happened. Bigbasket is making money in unscrupulous ways. Given the gravity of this situation, I urge you to initiate a thorough investigation into the matter. It is imperative that corrective measures are implemented promptly to ensure that all affected customers receive appropriate refunds. Additionally, robust measures must be put in place to prevent such issues from occurring in the future. Please provide me with detailed information on the steps you are taking to resolve this issue for other customers and the preventive measures you plan to implement to avoid such incidents in the future. I also intend to bring this matter to the attention of the concerned government authorities to ensure that appropriate actions are taken. I look forward to your prompt response and resolution of this matter. Trying to do the right thing Saket Modi

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I've been working with automated review/analysis for more than two decades - created multiple automated code review systems for different artifact types - Java, YAML, workflows. About half a year ago I started working on a generic model-driven framework for management and enforcement of rules/standards/principles - Nasdanika Rules. Recently I've managed to free up some time to document it and write this story - https://lnkd.in/edxpkfB4. If you operate in an environment with many rules/principles/standard which are not automatically enforceable and maybe not even clearly defined, Nasdanika Rules may help you to increase the level of rigor and structure!

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Once you hit the #SeniorDev title, your career as a #SoftwareEngineer can go one of three ways. All of these are legitimate decisions and don't ever let anyone tell you otherwise! 1. Management -> This is the oldest and likely the most well-known option. You can head into management and start developing careers of those younger than you. If you love mentoring others and like focusing more on the non-technical management of a project, this is probably the route you want! 2. Staff -> The term "#StaffEngineer" is relatively new to the industry. Many think its title bloat, but I disagree! I think the industry as a whole saw that we needed a new role and we created it. (See my blog on https://iamsellek.com for in-depth info on what a Staff Engineer role looks like!) If you prefer to work in the tec, and you enjoy the bigger-picture aspects of running a codebase/project from the technical side, this might be the route you want! 3. Stay Senior -> Some people look down on this option. Those people are wrong. If you love writing code and doing some light mentoring, there's nothing at all wrong with sticking around as a Senior dev! Some people spend their entire careers here. TLDR? Figure out what you like best about your job. If you prefer mentoring and the non-technical aspects of managing a project, you can head into management. If you want to focus more on the technical side of managing a project and/or a codebase, go with Staff! And if you're happy where you're at, there's nothing wrong sticking with Senior Dev. Now go seize your future! #career #SoftwareEngineer #CareerLadder #future

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🏎️💨 Making of a Ridiculously Fast™ API client in R. Why my package is **~17x faster** than the community alternatives that call the **exact same API endpoints**. 👇🏽**design choices matter** ✨ https://lnkd.in/ggi_2XyQ

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Don't waste your time with TDD. Writing tests-firsts is only necessary when... ... you want your coworkers to be able to refactor what you wrote this morning. The title is clickbait, but I appreciate your curiosity. Thank you for sticking along! I find that TDD as a whole is tightly connected with other Extreme Programming principles and disciplines. The outside-in-flow is going through the entire delivery cycle: 1. We are wrong about most requirements 2. So we want to deploy early and frequently 3. With features that were built just-enough and just-in-time 4. Expressed with written and automated tests 5. That match our understanding of desired behavior 6. So that anyone on the team can change it 7. When we figure out what we were wrong about TDD comes in between step 3 and 6. But you see... none of that makes sense if your engineers only ever write new code 95% of the time Rather than iterating over entire wholes with the team. #tdd #extremeprogramming 🚫 It's you vs. the algorithm—take control of what you see and join thousands of engineering leaders 🔔 Hit the 'view my blog' button under my name to subscribe 🔔 ♻️ Reposts feel like hugs

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It's been a couple weeks since I stepped into the role of Engineering Manager. At my company its a hybrid role - the goal is 50% managing the team, 50% coding/building. Now that I've had a couple weeks doing both its clear - coding is easier than managing 😂 #softwareengineering #leadership

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There’s something for everyone in web development in here:

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Let's face it: "software engineers" and "software developers" are *not* craftspeople. We are usually a business cost-center that converts business requirements into customer dollars. Setting aside the political baggage of the Software Craftsperson (nee "Craftsman") movement (and those original words alone convey some of the baggage), I find now that I regret the entire movement itself. Paid software development is about serving a business need and rarely about crafting software that is optimized for flexibility, reliability, and understandability. When businesses seek to turn a need into software, they are often concretely planning for a quarter, loosely planning for a year, and pipe-dreaming when they "plan" for anything over three years. This has an impact on software developers. The cost of converting ideas into software usually scales something like logarithmically to exponentially with the complexity of the business. Software is usually developed with an eye toward achieving a quarterly or annual goal or an investment round--so let's say 3 to 12 month window. Management expects to be able to measure results. And, so, in most environments, you need deliverables that can be demonstrated to management in order to show progress. Except for those ideal cases where eXtreme Programming actually works (e.g., customer is always onhand for clarification, no artifacts other than code and test code, team of up to maybe 8 people, often working in pairs, etc.), the complexity of converting business needs into code is complicated bordering on complex because businesses are complicated bordering on complex. (I use the Cynefin definitions of "complicated" and "complex" where "Complicated" means something like"with a reasonable amount of effort, you can somewhat reliably predict outcomes" and "Complex" means that "this system/business is so complicated that you cannot reliably reason about its properties and so properties and outcomes are emergent) Given anything but a project or business with an exceedingly clearly bounded minimum viable product, we're rarely crafting but instead struggling to meet quarterly/annual/funding round deliverables. But wouldn't it be wonderful if we could find our way back to when software developers were able to ship software they could be proud of and businesses were better for it? Perhaps it's still possible. But we all have to be playing a long game, business and developer.

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