Making trade-offs is a mandatory part of engineering. Our job is a discipline of delivering the best possible solution to the problem, as defined, within the constraints set. Engineer emeritus, Billy Koen, put it best in his “Definition of the Engineering Method”: [The engineering method is] the strategy for causing…

I absolutely believe in testing, but I don’t believe in absolutes (“Everything in moderation, including moderation itself” is one of my mantras.) …

How to approach the “wrong decisions” made by the folks whose team you are joining. — I am just starting the first proper job search I have conducted in a decade, and I’ll most likely end up joining an established team with an established product. And that brings with it an established code base, with established cruft, mistakes, poor decisions, etc. …

Can we stop talking about the perils and benefits of self-taught developers? On the most recent Stack Overflow developer survey 69% of the respondents identified as being self-taught. You know what? All developers are self-taught. I’m self-taught. I taught myself how to program from the age of 12 to 18…

This isn’t going to be your standard startup retrospective. For one thing, my startup is alive and kicking, having adopted and adapted these lessons, and is now accelerating towards product/market fit. Secondly, the standard startup retrospective has been done over and over and over and over and over again. There…