Development Practices

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Keep Your Temporary Hacks Temporary with a Shame.cs

Having a space to track temporary changes and known-crufty code helps me avoiding flitting between cleanup tasks, while reminding me to clean up my mess.

Development Practices

How to Read Code (Eight Things to Remember)

When diving into a mature codebase for the first time, you might feel like an archaeologist. That's great—you've got a bunch of shovels at your disposal.

Development Practices

How We Used a Week of Spikes to Map Out a Feature

In less than a week of strategic spiking, we were able to “de-risk” the majority of our upcoming work. We even had time to explore some other options.

Development Practices

Why (and How) Developers Should Care about Design [Video]

Maybe you don't want to pick colors for your application, but you can and you should want to take ownership over the Design of your work.

Development Practices

Don’t Discount Problems You Haven’t Had Yet

If your last project didn't need any insurance, be happy odds fell in your favor. And keep using spikes, automation, etc. to keep your premiums paid up.

Development Practices

How I Learned to Love (or at Least Like) Pair Programming

I found pair programming surprisingly difficult at first. Here are 5 things I learned that made it much easier, until eventually, it was... well, fun.

Development Practices

That’s Not Your Email Address

Four stories of misdirected email, and four lessons we can take from them for implementing email-based account systems.

Development Practices

Ancient Stoic Wisdom for Writing Better Software

The idea of via negativa doesn’t mean “do nothing.” Instead, it means striving toward simplicity and asking, “What can I take away?”

Development Practices

Three Benefits of Automating Development

By abstracting away mundane tasks, we're able to use more of our mental resources to tackle the problems we intended to solve in the first place

Development Practices

Three Attitudes that Lead to Maintainable Code

There are many great coding principles, but it can be hard to keep them all in your head at once. Instead, I try to remember these three attitudes.

Development Practices

Diagrams as Software Documentation – When a Picture Says it Best

In my experience, the diagrams easiest to create and understand are very free of form and well... they're fun!

Development Practices

Debugging Techniques: #1 Break the System into Small Pieces

My PC wouldn’t boot, didn’t even make a sound. I eventually traced the problem down to a particular mounting screw. But how did I figure it out? Debugging!

Development Practices

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