How do you ship a product on schedule? One useful approach is applying the You Ain’t Gonna Need It principle, or YAGNI for short: leave out all the things that seem nice-to-have, but you have no proof you actually need. But beyond the things you don’t need, there are still plenty of features you pre...

Most bugs you encounter have been encountered by others before you; most programming problems you face have been faced by others as well. And many of those people have written down details about what they’ve learned—in issue trackers, documentation, and blog posts. All you have to do is find this in...

How do you setup your dev environment? Depending on your language there are many choices of editor, package manager, build tool, linter, on and on. And every article you find will have a different combination of suggested tools, each of which claiming that their list is The Right Way To Do Things. S...

When you’re looking for a new programming job, how do you explain your value? The usual approach is a long list of technologies, but this leaves out a critical skill: your ability to solve problems. If you can convey your level of skill at problem solving, you can get: More job offers. Jobs with tec...

Another week has passed, and another 3 million people in the US have filed for unemployment. While the current situation hasn’t impacted programming jobs quite as much, it’s just a matter of time before the economic damage hits most everywhere. There will be layoffs, and plenty of them, and occasion...

This article was written during abnormal circumstances, with much of the planet under lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Parents with children at home have far less time, and pretty much everyone is feeling stressed and distracted. Under more normal circumstances there are only so many hours in ...

You need to negotiate at a new job: for your salary, or benefits, or my personal favorite, a shorter workweek. You’re not sure what to do, or how to approach it, or what to say when the company says “how much do you want?” or “here’s our offer—what do you say?” Here’s the thing: that final conversat...

Pines and firs are dying across the Pacific Northwest, fires rage across the Amazon, it’s the hottest it’s ever been in Paris—climate change is impacting the whole planet, and things are not getting any better. You want to do something about climate change, but you’re not sure what. If you do some r...

Looking for a job as a software developer can be scary, exhausting, or overwhelming. Where you apply and how you interview impacts whether you’ll get a job offer, and how good it will be, so in some sense the whole job search is a form of negotiation. So how do you learn to make a good impression, t...

If you’re tired of working long hours, a part-time—or even just 4 days a week—programming jobs seems appealing. You’ll still get paid, you’ll still hopefully enjoy your job—but you’ll also have more time for other things in your life. Hypothetically you could negotiate for more free time, but obviou...