I found this website handy rather than interesting, because I haven’t gotten around to making an icon for my side project yet.
Speaking of side projects, this is what I’ve been working on in my spare time: a simple webapp for generating invoices and emailing them to people.
I’ll do a write up on it in a later post.
I’ve always thought of automation this way. There’s too many chances for errors when humans are involved in repetitive processes, better to script it even if it doesn’t save much time.
An alternative to V8 in Node will be good for the ecosystem overall if it means Google are pressured into fixing some of their bugs. Monocultures are bad.
I love Lodash, but they keep changing their API all the time. I feel like I have to consult the docs every time because I can’t seem to remember what they’re calling things any more. …
I got a bit lazy this time being on holiday, but here’s some interesting articles from the last few weeks.
The Hacker News comments were interesting as well https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10771567
Incorrect conceptual models of systems can make it really difficult to fix bad code. I’ve refactored a few really shitty code bases in my time, but that was only ever possible where there was some model of how it was supposed to work in the first place. No or poor modelling usually means no seams to start pulling things apart, which means you need to make large scale changes to fix individual problems.
As a programmer, I will unconsciously hedge statements of fact. It just took me a few minutes to…
Files are hard
It’s been a while since I’ve had to deal with file systems directly — most of the time I’m writing code against databases or other abstractions on top of the file system. This article reminded me how difficult it is to write 100% safe and correct storage code.
On the unreasonable reality of “junior” developer interviews
Hiring junior developers is difficult. If you haven’t been a junior dev (or worked with one) for a while, it’s easy to forget what a reasonable skill requirement is.
Move fast and fix things
This article was interesting as it peels back the covers a little bit on how Github works, as well as reminding me about…
I recently presented a talk at the Auckland Software Craftsmanship meetup on how we use Raygun internally at Raygun.io to build the site and all of the backing services. I thought it went pretty well, you can see for yourself on Youtube:
I had made it one of my goals for the year to do at least one presentation to a user group. Public speaking used to absolutely terrify me, but I am attempting to overcome it by signing myself up to these sorts of things. …
Jamie Penney
Senior Software Developer
