Design patterns are great to use. However, they can lead to roadblocks when used in excess — Learning patterns has become a core aspect for many people on their journey to becoming software engineers. Countless articles have been written about patterns and how to apply them. Courses, YouTube videos, and GitHub repos all exist to help engineers master the power of patterns. …

Everyone wants to progress in their careers. To go from junior to senior; from associate to partner. Maybe you want to move into management. It’s a noble pursuit, and for most of us, with enough work and skill, we will get there. And as we do, there is a phenomenon…

Last week I was researching some best practices and conventions. I was trying to learn how other teams name their Kafka topics since I’ve recently been working on some event broker technology. I wasn’t looking for anything super concrete — just something to help me start to reason about things…

Technical debt. Many software engineers will be familiar with this term and the constant arguments about its definition. A popular analogy of technical debt is personal financial debt. People often take out loans on large purchases to allow them to make the purchase much sooner. For example, buyers often take…

The other week I saw a pretty upsetting Tweet by Allen Holub. Holub is an Agile coach and software thought leader. A lot of his focus is on helping teams get away from process and “Agile-ish” workflows to workflows centered on team productivity. He wrote the following:

Fixer Upper. We all love it. Even if you hate it… you still kinda love it. If you are unfamiliar with the show (living under a rock?), Chip and Joanna Gaines help prospective homeowners build their dream homes by finding cheaper “fixer-upper” homes and remodeling them, saving the homebuyer’s money…

What to write down, what to generate, and coming to terms that documentation is always out of date — I recently joined a new team. An entirely new company actually. I’m now an engineer working for Policygenius — the leading online insurance marketplace (in the US at least). I’ve enjoyed the change so far; it was well needed. When joining a new team — and a new company —…

Every year I try to take a short inventory of the books I read through that year. I find that doing so helps me solidify the concrete things I learned from each. You can see last year’s list too if you would like. Let’s jump right in. Dune by Frank Herbert After hearing the…

I’ve played team sports my whole life, and I learned the unique power and ability a team can take on early on. I’ve seen how a great team can elevate each team member to achieve better results than if alone. …