So my company has a budget of around 200$ which would expire by the year end if I don't spend it on courses, books, trainings, etc.

I'm interested in knowing what you'd do or suggest. I'm in a full stack role and have tried the below.

1. Pluralsight has good material for many topics but they're outdated many times, especially for cloud topics.
2. Udemy has mostly up to date content and many really good creators but lacks coverage of advanced topics like pluralsight.
3. Coursera has good University courses but make little sense in real life development.

What are some of the ways you'd have spent this budget? What are some other sites worth looking into?

What's something you've gotten into your CICD pipeline recently that you like?

I recently automated a little bot for our GitHub CICD. It runs a few tests that we care about, but don't want to block deployment, and posts them on the PR. It uses gh pr comment --edit-last so it isn't spammint the channel. It's been pretty helpful in automating some of the more annoying parts of code review.

Over the years I feel brainwashed by the thoughts of others with no willpower to affirm my own beliefs.

Simply, to me blockchain/crypto is this idea of P2P communication where the intermediate technology that "handshakes" our connection isn't essentially governed by a centralized entity. But, "handshaking" in this world costs and gas is often times used as the processing/energy to enact this exchange.

Now, for what can be exchanged, it can be quantities of an item. Or information stored within an item. Kind of like Pass by value vs. Pass by reference, in a weird way? Or cryptocurrencies vs. smart contracts?

Now, my own belief is, comparing this system with torrenting, seeding and other technologies that existed long ago. What makes "blockchain/crypto" so valuable that cannot be solved with the technology invented prior to it. To me, it seems like there is extra charge and latency and thus just more negative values overall, when the final overall goal should be this idea of exchanging information. We still need ISPs, we still need physical wires to complete the "end-to-end" connection with a peer. So isn't everything still fundamentally centralized?

What is it actually improving? And is my way of thinking accurate? Why can't there be a normal P2P project handling exchange of information and/or modern fiat in the same way (Something like Paypal, but transactions have no middleman)?

DORA metrics aren’t enough on their own. Here's how dev teams can make the leap to elite performance by focusing on pull request size and dev workflow while improving their cycle time.

cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/864349

I have spent some time trying to simplify the release process. For a variety of reasons, we can only release on Thursdays. The code is "frozen" on Tuesday before it can be released on Thursday. But we sometimes squeeze in a quick fix on Wednesday as well.

The question, is when should QA test the code?

Here is what I have seen happen:

1. Dev writes code and sends it to QA.
2. QA finds problems, sends it back to the Dev.
3. Dev fixes and sends it back to QA.

I have seen a Dev fix their code on Tuesday, and then QA comes back on Wednesday with problems, when the code should have been frozen anyway.

I am looking, what should be the best solution here.

We have several problems going on at once:

1. Developers test on the same server as QA tests. I am working to switch developers to a separate Dev server, but it is a long work in progress.
2. We don't have an easy way to revert code back from the QA server. It is easier to build revisions than revert changes. We can try to revert code more, but it will require a culture change.
3. QA don't really have a schedule when they are supposed to do functional testing vs regression testing.

I don't know what is the best way to proceed forward. Thus far, I haven't thought too much about the QA because I was focused more on getting releases out. Now that releasing is more simplified, that we can potentially do weekly releases, I am trying to see how we should proceed with the testing process.

In my short career I've noticed that employers are notorious for underpaying you to the point that people with 3-4 years of experience are getting paid the same as freshers. The management always has an excuse to not increase pay or increase it very minimally. The best way to increase pay has been to keep moving every 2-3 years from one company to the next if switching means at least 1.5x or 2x the current salary.

This means major interview prep requiring solving leetcode style questions, solving system design questions, then some more. I just wanted to how often do you prepare? Are you always interview ready or start prepping a few months before switching jobs?

Developers are operating and building in more and more heterogeneous and complex systems. This article offers some thoughts on how to think about "developer experience" in this world that's increasingly more like a "rainforest" than a "well tended garden".

I'm wondering if there is a new tool out there that I'm missing out on.

I wanted to ask a technical questions, maybe high level, on why sites may have bad search and what the bottlenecks might be in almost never updating such in years. Was there something in the original development of the stack that is affecting progressive updates around the feature, how should one approach "Search" then in this case? Or is it simply a management issue.

I have been working in the industry for 8 years and am now considered a senior developer, also as a team lead.

Three years ago, my first child was born, and a few months ago, a second one arrived. While I don't regret my decision to have kids at all, I do feel bad about how the lack of free time affects my career and how my knowledge falls behind the industry.

Before having kids, I used to spend a few hours a week on never-ending personal projects to learn new things. However, now I neither have the time nor the energy for that.

The only way that has worked for me is to read some tech books, which are often not about coding, and to read some blogs or subs like this.

However, I feel like this approach is too passive and is not providing the best outcome that I would expect.

Any tips there, perhaps from someone who was is similar situation?

I was wondering if anyone else had any questions they always asked the interviewer in the "we'll give you five minutes at the end to ask us questions" bit in interviews.

Personally I always ask what the staff turnover rate is. Mainly because in my first dev job I was one of four people who started on the same day. One of the other guys left after two days, I left after six weeks, and another guy left after two months.

Another I'll be asking after my current job is if they have a mainframe. I've now worked at three companies with mainframes and they all were old corporations where they were outsourcing loads of stuff to unhelpful companies (often IBM) which generally meant lots of headaches.

I've thought it over, and I've decided the best next step for me is to shift from a software developer to a management role.

I've worked a lot of high stress, fast paced positions, mostly in R&D groups/companies, which I always excelled at. I now understand why I did well in that type of environment (undiagnosed ADHD), and how to be properly organized enough to perform in an SDM role (ADHD meds lol).

Honestly sitting in meetings for 30+ hours a week doesn't sound so bad anymore. Racing to get a lot of technical work done in a tight timeline now sounds miserable. I've had some amazing SDMs, and I'm confident I can be better at it than most I've worked under.

So: any and all thoughts, what books or resources would you have recommended to yourself, what companies or roles might be a particularly good fit.

Hiya

If you're at all like me, there's the manic periods of development, where things get done... and there are the lulls. What do you like to do in those lulls? Do you have a bin of fun work shit to do? Do you watch videos? Touch grass? Socialize?

Just curious

Now have direct reports under me. No idea wtf I'm doing, I guess I did a good job? Any advice you have for me?

I wonder if there are others using ADRs for documenting their decisions.

I have been working at a large bank for a few years. Although some coding is needed, the bulk majority of time is spent on server config changes, releasing code to production, asking other people for approvals, auth roles, and of course tons of meetings with the end user to find out what they need.

I guess when I was a junior engineer, I would spend more time looking at code, though I used to work for small companies. So it is hard for me to judge if the extra time spent coding, was because of me being a junior or because it was a small company.

The kicker, is when we interview devs, most of the interview is just about coding. Very little of it is about the stuff I listed..

I'm netting < $10 an hour doing part-time full stack dev at an ultra-small organization for a few years post-BSCS.

Fear of resume gaps and the current job market have me afraid to renegotiate. In fact, they're going to cut my hours soon, which makes it seem like they can only afford ~$150 a week.

I'm getting worse at programming and there's no one to learn from.

What do you think I should do?

Hey folks,

I'm reaching out because I've hit a bit of a wall and I reckon a few brains from this crowd might have the insight I need.

I've always been a big believer in learning by doing - give me a real-world problem and a keyboard and I'll bash away at it until I get the thing working. But I've been finding that in my day job, I don't often get the chance to really experiment. Business needs and project timelines get in the way.

So here's what I'm thinking. I want to dive into a few short-term, project-based learning adventures where I get to be the architect, the engineer, the QA... you get the idea. I don't want to start a new business or anything - just want to get my hands dirty and build something from the ground up.

What I'm hunting for are some solid software system specifications. The kind of thing you might get from a client or stakeholder that has enough detail to get going but leaves room for you to make some design and implementation choices. Basically, I want to flex some creative muscle, test out new architectural patterns, and make my own mistakes - and learn from them - along the way.

If you know of any resources, repos, websites, books - anything where I could get my hands on something like this, I'd be super grateful for the heads up. And if you've done something similar, I'd love to hear about your experiences and what you learned along the way.

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts and ideas, and diving into this new challenge.

I'm a mid-level backend dev, ~3 years YOE. I wanted to seriously start thinking about expanding my skillset and learning new stuff / new technologies outside of my daily tasks. But I'm unsure of how to start, how to decide, what would be most helpful to my career, etc. Any advice?

Anyone know if it’s possible to have custom-styled newsletter signup forms in gatsby sites? Having a hard time. Thank you.

I've noticed something interesting about most of the engineers I know—they often lack a deep understanding of the business implications and overall impact of their work. As someone who recognizes the significance of the "bigger picture," I find myself spending a considerable amount of time explaining and demonstrating the real-world effects of our projects.

I often gather data from various departments, particularly sales & marketing, and present it to the engineers. It's amazing how engineers who grasp the big picture become more engaged and excel in their roles.

However, I face a challenge in collecting this "big picture" myself. I constantly find myself having to follow artifacts and communication channels from other departments, which can be quite overwhelming.

So, fellow leaders, I'd love to hear your thoughts on measuring the business impact and ensuring that our engineers are aware of it. How do you tackle these challenges in your own organizations 🚀💡

I recall a regular piece of advice for software engineers: “change your job every two years.”

There’s innumerable Google results for this, even from as recently as 2022 — but none of them really seem that high-quality?

I’m really, really enjoying my current (somewhat unusual, hard-to-replicate) position; am about a year and a half into it; but I also don’t want to relax into that and have it cost me in the long-run, career advancement wise.

So, what’ve y’all been doing? Especially in the post-pandemic/fully-remote world, does that advice still apply?