Ep 20, Write Software For Your Users: A Bold, New Concept
Release Date: 06/19/2017
Ep 49, Leadership and Junior Developers
A Programmer, Refactored
We're all leaders to some degree. Even if your job title doesn't have words like "manager", "architect", or "senior", you're still every week presented with opportunities to display good or bad leadership traits. These traits can have an especially outsize effect on junior developers. In this episode, I go over the importance of honing your leadership skills.
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Ep 48, Avoid Dogmatic Thinkers
A Programmer, Refactored
If you haven't encountered a programmer who's dogmatic about some aspect of their work, you will. Dealing with these software developers can be very trying. In this episode, I explore the topic and give some pointers on how to identify and deal with them.
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Ep 47, New Year's Career Assessment
A Programmer, Refactored
About once a year I like to do a career self-assessment. In this episode, I talk about how I go about doing it, why I think they're important for programmers, and whether or not trying to plan out a career in such a fast-changing field even makes sense.
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Ep 46, Things I Wish I Knew 10 Years Ago: Seniority Doesn't Always Count For Much
A Programmer, Refactored
Software development is a fast-changing environment. New tech, platforms, libraries, and frameworks seem to come every week. How does being a senior developer fit into that? Is it possible to even be senior in such an environment? In this episode, I explore the idea as well as recap the "Things I Wish I Knew" series as a whole.
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Ep 45, Things I Wish I Knew 10 Years Ago, Coding Ability Does Not Determine Career Trajectory
A Programmer, Refactored
As a young programmer, I figured that my abilities as a developer would be the primary driver of my career trajectory. As the years have gone on, I've realized that notion was a bit naive. In this episode, I examine what I've seen drive career progression in this industry.
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Ep 44, Things I Wish I Knew 10 Years Ago: Job Titles Are Often Meaningless
A Programmer, Refactored
Up until a few years ago, I held this assumption that job titles carry at least some meaning and weight. As I've advanced in my career, I've found this to be a dubious assumption at best. In today's epsiode, we I talk about job titles for programmers and their meaning (or lack of) within the software development industry.
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Ep 43, Things I Wish I Knew 10 Years Ago: Job Postings Can Be Highly Inaccurate
A Programmer, Refactored
Programming is unique in that job postings can be...creative with the truth. This is, unfortunately, something we typically only learn after a few years in the industry. In this episode, I examine inaccurate job postings.
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Ep 42, Things I Wish I Knew 10 Years Ago: Friends and Family Have No Idea What You Do
A Programmer, Refactored
Being a programmer means that often people outside of other developers will have no idea what you do. Trying to explain your career to them will often lead to glazed over expressions. In this episode, I talk about some of the more humorous aspects of this, as well as some of the more serious.
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Ep 41, Things I Wish I Knew 10 Years Ago: Software Dev Is Often More Hype Driven Than Experience Driven
A Programmer, Refactored
I like to think that our industry is one such that each generation of programmers builds on the experience of the previous. In some cases, I think this is true, but more often I feel like we let ourselves get caught in the cycle of hype. In this episode, I dig into the topic of experience vs hype and which drives the other.
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Ep 40, Things I Wish I Knew 10 Years Ago: Why Users Use Your Software
A Programmer, Refactored
We like to think that users use our software because they've evaluated their options and found our software to be the best at enhancing their lives or jobs. However, in the enterprise or B2B environments, this is rarely the case. In this episode I explore the real reasons such users are using your software.
info_outlineAs software developers, our job is to deliver software that is appropriate for our user base so that they may solve some sort of problem. This is something I think we struggle with as an industry. In this episode, I dig into the topic of understanding your user base and then offer several takeaways to help you deliver better solutions to them.