#25 The Unstuck Guide For Developers Hexdevs podcast

45:38

Can you tell if a Ruby gem is really thread-safe or not? And how do you fix a seemingly thread-safety issue that can be something else entirely? We had no idea. So we asked Nate Berkopec to help us. Nate is an expert in Ruby performance. The verdict: nuking all shared global mutable state in your Ruby code is a bad idea if you don't know what you're doing! Listen to this episode to learn: - How and why faker-ruby became thread-unsafe, especially for Puma users - Questions to ask yourself when trying to debug thread-safety issues - Shared global mutable state is not always the villain, and is not the source of all thread-safety issues - Nate's "watch-out" list of things that can cause undesired behavior when running multi-threaded Ruby applications: Constants, Class Variables, and Rack Middleware. Episode Notes 🔗 Full transcript and links ----- A special thanks to Valentino Stoll, nfstern02, and Gregg P for sponsoring hexdevs ! Enjoy!…

hexdevs

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Building Technical Wealth and Improving Legacy Code with M. Scott Ford 54:06

3 years ago54:06

54:06

Are you working on Ruby on Rails Applications that are constantly on fire, overwhelmed by technical debt? What if you were building Technical Wealth instead? Learn which tools & strategies to work with legacy code effectively, remove dead code, and leave tech debt behind. Listen to and watch our conversation with M. Scott Ford and learn how to build technical wealth, enjoy working with legacy code, tools, and strategies to remove dead code, and how thrive in a world of makers as a mender. About our guest M. Scott Ford is the Co-Founder & Chief Code Whisperer of Corgibytes , where he has quietly led a software maintenance revolution for the past decade. Where most people find nothing but frustration, shame, and bugs in legacy code, Scott has centered his work around his genuine love of software modernization and helping others use joy, empathy, and technical excellence to make their systems more stable, scalable, and secure. Scott’s ideas have been featured in books such as The Innovation Delusion and as a guest lecturer at Harvard University. Scott is the author of three courses on LinkedIn Learning: Dealing With Legacy Code And Technical Debt , Code Quality , and Clean Coding Practices . He is the host of the podcast Legacy Code Rocks and enjoys helping other menders find a sense of belonging in a world dominated by makers. Episode Links Watch the interview on YouTube Episode Notes and Links Legacy Code Rocks Legacy Code Rocks Slack Group (weekly meetups at 1pm EST on Wednesdays) MenderCon (May 10th, 2023) CorgiBytes Scott's LinkedIn profile Scott's Twitter profile Scott's Github profile How to Improve Code Quality on a Ruby on Rails Application Ruby Code Quality with Ernesto Tagwerker Get to Senior Chapters 00:00 intro 01:57 makers vs menders 03:43 menders love improving legacy codebases 05:06 greenfield projects are glamorized 06:30 greenfield-legacy projects 09:07 working with legacy code: tools & strategies 09:53 building technical wealth vs tech debt 14:29 "the big rewrite" never works 18:54 removing redundant code 22:56 features not used very often 25:41 static code analysis tools 27:23 charge extra for features used by fewer customers 30:52 find code that is never used 34:09 code audit with feature flags 36:07 enforce code quality with tests and CI 39:26 measure code quality over time 41:09 churn, complexity, and CodeClimate score 42:43 bus factor 45:59 working with makers 51:24 hanging out with other menders 53:27 follow hexdevs…

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How to Open Source with Richard Schneeman (schneems) 57:47

3 years ago57:47

57:47

"Be a lurker and start small. Read a PR, try to understand what’s going on. Leave a thumbs up 👍 if you like it. This is a very easy way to get started. And build a habit out of that". -- schneems How to Open Source: Learn the secrets of successful contributors Recently, Richard published the book “How to Open Source: Learn the secrets of successful contributors". The missing handbook will guide you from making your first contribution to building a sustainable practice. Listen to and watch our conversation with Richard Schneeman (@schneems) about the book, and how to go from coder to contributor. Episode Links Get to Senior Get to Senior Crash Course Podcast Interview schneems.com Richard Schneeman on Twitter How to Open Source Fearless Change: Learn the secrets of successful contributors Watch the interview on YouTube Chapters 00:00 Intro 02:28 say hello to our cat, bob! 03:25 what prevents developers from contributing to open source? 04:58 the bystander effect 06:42 not comfortable contributing to new repo 08:30 be a lurker: read a PR and leave a thumbs up 10:12 building tiny habits for Open Source 11:19 do you really want to contribute to open source? 13:53 If you contribute to Open Source, can you skip coding interviews? 14:39 do you need a CS degree to contribute to Open Source? 15:14 use a fake account or nickname on GitHub 16:18 what prevents people from contributing more? 17:52 how do you find time to contribute to open source? 19:00 how to do open source work as part of my job? 21:53 how do you find Open Source projects to contribute to? 24:16 how to build a culture of open source at work? 27:20 what is CodeTriage & how it works? 28:56 writing the book How to Open Source 30:07 tips for getting started with open source 32:23 workarounds vs fixing bugs upstream 34:10 can you get promoted by doing open source work? 37:29 open source work and becoming Principal Engineer 40:26 making mistakes in public 41:57 merging the wrong commit in Ruby on Rails 44:39 what if my Pull Request is rejected? 50:00 how to build a contribution practice 55:14 closing remarks…

hexdevs

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How to Beat Impostor Syndrome and Be a Happy Developer with Amor Muto 1:13:00

3 years ago1:13:00

1:13:00

Are you tired of feeling like an impostor? Do you feel like you've been holding yourself back for too long? That you are missing out on growth opportunities because you don't feel confident enough? We believe you can be happy AND grow in your career. No need to sacrifice one to get the other. But to get there, you need as many tools and support as you can get. In this episode, Amor Muto shares strategies to help you beat Burnout, Fear of Success and Imposter Complex. About our guest Amor Muto is a Certified Professional Coach with a vast knowledge and experience on the imposter complex, leadership and fear of success, especially with Software Developers. He is a tetraplegic entrepreneur with 15+ years of experience. Purpose-driven to make burnout a thing from the past. Show Notes Join the Waiting List to the next cohort of Get to Senior Unhappy as a Developer? How Not To Be Miserable with Dr. Randy Paterson Skara.ai Get access to over 400 personal and professional coaches from around the world with Sphere.Guide . Use Code: hexdevs to get 50% off the first month.…

hexdevs

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How to Be a Faster Coder? 25:52

3 years ago25:52

25:52

"How can I practice my skills so I can code faster?" One way is to design Drill Exercises when learning a new skill. It helps break down the steps and practice them in isolation until you master all of them. Plus, you get instant feedback. Master technical skills faster. Design Drill Exercises and practice deliberately. Listen to this short episode about designing effective technical practice as a self-learner. We also mentioned what we've been reading and listening to lately. Chapters 00:00 Intro 00:22 What is deliberate practice? 01:06 Ultralearning and Drill Exercises 01:48 Direct Drills for Technical Practice 04:08 Fast Feedback on Learning 06:02 Foundational Skills 07:13 Practice above your current skill level 10:42 Learn Hard Things Faster 14:27 Improving your memory 15:11 The Feynman Technique 18:08 Subtracting and Doing Less 21:23 Ask good questions and simplify 22:55 Ending Links Join the Waiting List to the next cohort of Get to Senior Ultralearning: Accelerate Your Career, Master Hard Skills and Outsmart the Competition Perceptual Learning == More Ruby Experts? | RubyConf 2021 Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything Do Less - Hidden Brain episode…

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The Surprising Way to Become a Senior Software Developer with Caroline Salib 45:45

3 years ago45:45

45:45

"I had a huge list of the technical things I needed to learn for this new position and turns out none of them was missing for me to get to Senior. I need to do some leadership work, do more mentoring, and is a matter of time. But now I know what to do and I know what to focus on. And that was really surprising. I don't need to spend hours studying programming" -- Caroline Salib . Are you an experienced software developer and don't know how to get promoted to Senior level? Have you been trying to master one technical skill after the other and still not sure how to make the jump to Senior? In this episode, we talk about the non-obvious skills experienced software developers miss when trying to make the jump to Senior -- and how to get out of the technical trap that is keeping them stuck in the mid-career level. Listen to our conversation with Caroline Salib to learn how she is taking control of her career and being on the path to Senior level. About our guest Caroline is a super talented Ruby Software Developer. She is passionate about code quality, automated tests, and open-source projects. She loves the feeling of fixing broken things and building software that will have value to others. We talked about her experience publishing a gem for the first time, and learning C. We also talked about her “spread” experience as a Software Developer. With more than 10 years of experience, she wasn’t sure what she was missing to become a Senior Software Developer. Carol shares the struggles of changing backgrounds from .NET, to PHP and then to Ruby. And the importance of being kind to ourselves, being comfortable with being uncomfortable, and how to embrace our mistakes. Caroline told us how she is changing the direction of her career. By doing challenging things, taking action, and being the person who chooses to fix the problem instead of complaining about them. Show Notes Get to Senior Cohort Caroline Salib Twitter SimpleBlog - Simple ruby blog Are you ready to Get to Senior? Want to become a badass software developer on track to becoming a Senior just like Caroline? We just opened the doors for the next Get to Senior cohort . If you want more support and accountability on your path to Senior, enroll in the next cohort now to start your journey to Senior level.…

hexdevs

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How to Find Your Ruby Software Career Path with Mina Slater 42:03

3 years ago42:03

42:03

Often as developers, we believe we are supposed to know everything. Just figure everything by ourselves. As long as we get faster and better at coding, our careers will progress smoothly. But if you ask around, you’ll notice that most people are feeling technically stuck, despite years of experience. If you ask for career advice, people will throw you an endless list of complex technical skills to master. That’s not what you’ll find here. Have you ever reflected on your career goals as a Software Developer? How often do you talk with someone who’s doing the kind of work you want to be doing? Mina Slater is our guest for this episode. Mina decided she will never be stuck. She is always doing things that are uncomfortable and scary, such as communication and leadership skills. Some people call these "soft skills for software developers". With more than a decade of experience with theater management before becoming a Software Developer, Mina has been progressing in her career as she wanted. She even created her own role. In the week this episode was released, she was promoted to Senior Developer! This episode also addresses this fact: no pacing is right or wrong, everyone has their own journey. How do you make sure you are moving forward and not getting stuck on your journey? That’s what this episode is about. You’ll hear Mina using phrases such as “helping my team”, “reflecting on my progress”, “peer-mentoring”, “people skills”. These are clues of how to explore opportunities to grow in your career organically. About Mina Slater Mina Slater is dedicated to using her "superpowers" for good, to connect people and bring them closer together by contributing to meaningful and inclusive products. Since transitioning from a career in theater management by way of Northwestern Coding Bootcamp in April of 2018, she has developed as Engineer and Consultant, with a specific interest in the backend and Ruby On Rails. — Do you feel like you’re too experienced to be a Junior but not enough to be a Senior? Feeling stuck in your career? Don’t know what to do next in your Ruby developer career? Join Get to Senior, a collection of case Study interviews with Ruby developers. Learn from real people. Follow guided exercises to put into practice the strategies from the case studies to map out your Path to Senior. Grab your Get to Senior copy now . Or sign up for the free Get to Senior Crash Course to receive 5 email lessons over the next 2 weeks. Learn how to identify opportunities to work on challenging projects while on the job. Get started now. — ★ Episode Notes & Links ★ Buy Get to Senior ★ Get to Senior Free Email Crash Course…

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Unhappy as a Developer? How Not To Be Miserable with Dr. Randy Paterson 1:11:34

4 years ago1:11:34

1:11:34

Do you suffer from Slack notification anxiety? On-call schedules and deadlines giving you nightmares? Are your teammates nitpicking your code during code review? Instead of quitting your job out of frustration and having to go through another round of technical interviews, what if you knew how to have a great relationship with your work? Learn how to deal with imposter syndrome, unrealistic deadlines, and stop communicating passive-aggressively today! Communicate effectively with your team and finish the day feeling good about what you've accomplished. Listen to our conversation with Dr. Randy Paterson , a psychologist and author practicing in Vancouver, Canada. He is the author of "The Assertiveness Workbook - How to express your ideas and stand up for yourself at work and in relationships." He taught us effective skills we can use to feel better about our daily jobs as developers. Learn how to tell your manager that the project is running late without being the negative person in the team. And how to deal with conflict without freaking out. Whether you've experienced any of these situations at work or have heard stories about it, it's always good to learn how to communicate better and avoid resentments. Enjoy the episode and share it with a friend or colleague! Sign up for the hexdevs newsletter today and receive exercises, research-based techniques and actionable ideas to help you become an expert developer ! Episode links - Full episode Transcript and Show Notes - Save your spot for the hexdevs Software Design Workshop and take the next right step for your career - Dr. Randy Paterson's website - The Assertiveness Workbook - How to express your ideas and stand up for yourself at work and in relationships - Psychology Salon with Dr. Randy Paterson - YouTube channel - First Person Plural: Emotional Intelligence & Beyond podcast…

hexdevs

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Ruby Code Quality with Ernesto Tagwerker 56:10

4 years ago56:10

56:10

Are you working on Ruby on Rails Applications that are constantly on fire, overwhelmed by technical debt? Instead of being a firefighter, what if you could be a happy programmer again and "Escape the tar pit"? Learn exactly how to measure tech debt and take the right steps to immediately improve code quality! Listen to our conversation with Ernesto Tagwerker ( @etagwerker ). He is the Founder & CTO at FastRuby.io & Ombu Labs . He and his company are the maintainers of many code quality projects: skunk , rails_stats , metric_fu, and rubycritic , and many other important Ruby gems such as database_cleaner , bundler_leak , and next_rails . He's an expert in upgrading and improving legacy Ruby on Rails applications. He taught us some step-by-step strategies you can follow to quickly measure and improve code quality. Sign up for the hexdevs newsletter today and receive exercises, research-based techniques and actionable ideas to help you become an expert developer ! Episode links - Full episode Transcript and Show Notes - Save your spot for the hexdevs Software Design Workshop and take the next right step for your career - Read How to Improve Code Quality on a Ruby on Rails Application - Ernesto Tagwerker on Twitter - Podcast episode about maintaining shoulda_matchers with Gui Vieira - RubyConf 2019 - Escaping The Tar Pit by Ernesto Tagwerker - The Code Quality Challenge - The Mythical Man-Month (book) - Breaking Up the Behemoth by Sandi Metz - Getting Empirical About Refactoring - Code Quality Tools - Makers vs Menders Talk by M. Scott Ford - Surviving Legacy Code Workshop - skunk.fyi (gem) - skunk (gem) - rails_stats (gem) - metric_fu (gem) - rubycritic (gem)…

hexdevs

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#25 The Unstuck Guide for Developers 17:47

4 years ago17:47

17:47

Do you feel frustrated with everything you need to learn as a developer? When you can't learn a simple software development concept, build a simple feature, or find a simple bug, and you feel completely stuck. It's common to think that things will never 'click' for you. Do you know these days when you feel like you're digging yourself into a hole? What if you could use that energy to build up a ladder you can climb instead? What if you had a strategy to get into the flow and focus on doing your best work as part of your coding journey? The Thoughts and Questions from the Unstuck Guide for Developers will help you re-frame your perspective when you’re feeling in a rut on your coding journey. Episode Notes and Free Cheat Sheet…

hexdevs

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#24 Why no one reads your tech blog and how to fix that 25:57

4 years ago25:57

25:57

Episode Notes Sign up for the hexdevs newsletter

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#23 Taking the Leap into Entrepreneurship with Monica Lent 51:17

4 years ago51:17

51:17

Monica Lent is a software engineer and entrepreneur. She started coding before the age of ten, and haven’t stopped since. After working for more than 10 years in the tech industry as an engineer, tech lead and manager, she decided to quit her job and bootstrap a SaaS company full-time. Show Notes & Transcription…

hexdevs

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#22 Unusual Tech Jobs with Brian David Hall 39:14

4 years ago39:14

39:14

Brian David Hall is an expert in conversion optimization. He's a software engineer by training, runs his own company, and is the host of the SaaS Experiments Podcast, where he talks to other experts in growth marketing. We talked about the unusual tech jobs he's had that helped him learn other skills beyond coding. You can use your skills in other areas like Marketing and Sales to transition to a tech job instead of throwing away your current expertise. Learning how to code on top of your existing skills will give you superpowers! If you want to transition into a tech job, you can start by solving problems for your current company. By doing this, you'll build a portfolio, get real-world experience, stand out from other candidates that only know how to code but have no experience in other areas. You can also look for a "weird tech job", which is a job that involves coding but is not a developer role at a tech company. You can find the coupon to Brian's new e-book on the Show Notes (link below) plus some highlights and transcripts! Show Notes and Transcript…

hexdevs

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#21 Why Michael Lynch Quit Google to Work for Himself as a Solo Founder 43:17

4 years ago43:17

43:17

Michael Lynch is a software developer and blogger. He used to work as a software engineer at Google, but he decided to quit and now he's a solo founder, and blogs about his experience. He's recently launched the course Hit the Front Page of Hacker News . The course teaches everything he has learned about Hacker News after getting many of his original blog posts to hit the front page. It covers the site's unique culture, how to choose topics, improve your writing, and what to do if your submission fails. We also talked about going solo founder, and his financial independence journey. Highlights 00:00 Intro 00:41 Who is Michael Lynch? 01:58 Hit the Front Page of Hacker News 03:04 Courses vs e-books 04:00 How many copies were sold 05:04 Beta-testing the course before launch day 07:19 Financial Independence and becoming an entrepreneur 08:16 Financial Independence and travelling 09:16 The shock of going back to a normal job 11:08 Planning for Financial Independence by building a business 12:37 Mr. Money Mustache, the 4% rule and Early Retirement 14:16 How much you make vs How much you save 14:33 What does he want to do when he retires early? 15:12 Life expenses and business expenses 15:49 Negotiating a big salary at Google by getting multiple job offers 18:30 Financial choices in your 20's and the optimum strategy 23:05 A good salary for boring work isn't fun 25:56 Bootstrapping is very different than the startup life 26:48 Having freedom and control over the direction of your product/business 28:40 Prioritizing and evaluating business ideas 31:05 How to do market research 32:57 Lessons after quitting Google: content strategy, marketing, and distribution 36:59 Keep yourself motivated and don't put too much pressure on yourself 39:49 Advice to anyone who wants to quit their job and start a business 42:36 Final remarks Links from this episode Show Notes Hit The Front Page of Hacker News Course Michael Lynch's Site Michael Lynch's Twitter Sign up for our newsletter to get the Highlights from our episodes…

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#20 Growing a micro-SaaS to $30k MRR with Preetam Nath and Sankalp Jonna from DelightChat 1:08:29

4 years ago1:08:29