The Software Life

On Taking a Step Back: Gracefully Managing Your Commitments When Everything is a Little Too Much

Recently, my husband and I received some great news: We’re expecting our first child in February! We’re thrilled, and the journey is going to be very exciting, but it does come with some significant changes. Namely, for the last few months, I’ve felt that the things I needed to do have required several times the amount of energy that I’ve had available.

During this time, I felt like I was dropping the ball on all of my commitments at once. I was keeping up with daily project work, but I was falling behind on almost everything else. Every way I turned, it felt like I was letting someone down.

Here’s how I managed to get through this time, mitigate issues, and repair some of the damage. Read more on On Taking a Step Back: Gracefully Managing Your Commitments When Everything is a Little Too Much…

Unpacking the Confidence Code, Part 4 – Instilling Confidence in Others

One of the key messages in Katty Kay and Claire Shipman’s book The Confidence Code is that, while each of us may begin with higher or lower levels of confidence due to gender, genetics, and nurture, the concept of neuroplasticity means that anyone’s confidence levels can increase. Read more on Unpacking the Confidence Code, Part 4 – Instilling Confidence in Others…

Unpacking the Confidence Code, Part 3 – Defining Confidence

Much of the research done by Katty Kay and Claire Shipman, the authors of The Confidence Code, had one unexpectedly complex goal: find a simple definition of confidence. The journey was much more involved than they originally envisioned, and they learned a lot about what confidence is–and isn’t–along the way. Read more on Unpacking the Confidence Code, Part 3 – Defining Confidence…

Four Ways to Contribute as a Junior Developer

As a junior developer here at Atomic, I’ve learned a lot in my first few months of work. It’s certainly not easy to begin a career as a professional developer. Surrounded by smart and experienced developers, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by a feeling that you need to contribute to your team and project at the level of everyone else–but it’s hard to do that when you don’t share that level of experience. So here are a few things I’ve learned that have helped me to contribute at work. Read more on Four Ways to Contribute as a Junior Developer…

Fixing the External Monitor Color Problem with My 2018 MacBook Pro

I recently upgraded to a 2018 MacBook Pro. I’m enjoying the additional cores and memory (😀) and coming to terms with the touchbar (🤨). A low point of my first week came when I plugged into my external display, and the image looked really bad. In this post, I’ll describe what I learned and how I managed to fix it. Read more on Fixing the External Monitor Color Problem with My 2018 MacBook Pro…

How to Draw the Path of a NavMeshAgent in Unity

One of the most convenient new features added to the Unity game engine is the NavMesh system. These built-in components allow for automatic pathfinding with minimal configuration in a scene. They also offer an impressive amount of customization out-of-the-box, such as dealing with more complex geometries and adding multiple custom agent sizes and step heights. Read more on How to Draw the Path of a NavMeshAgent in Unity…