Building software is a mostly creative endeavour, and as such, it sometimes resists progress. No matter how hard you try to push forward, if you are truly stuck, continuing on the same path is unlikely to work. Fortunately, there are a few different tricks you can use to get going again. Take a restThe easiest way I’ve found to get back on track is to take a break. When in the office this was ofte...

A junior developer needs to strengthen their technical skills to advance. An intermediate developer needs to strengthen their organizational skills to advance. Senior developers need to master these and also demonstrate that they can move multiple teams forward together. Influencing people (and especially developers) is no easy task, but a positive reputation can do a lot of the heavy lifting. One...

The most challenging bug I’ve ever fixed was a performance issue in a matchmaking routine. Matchmaking is the process of finding players to compete against each other in a video game. An excellent matchmaking algorithm doesn’t just stick players together randomly; it tries to make the game more fun by balancing power levels and preventing anyone from waiting too long for a match. About six weeks b...

Unit tests are undeniably a good thing, but you only realize the full benefits of them when you have enough tests that you can make changes with confidence. If you can make a change, run your tests, and be comfortable enough to ship your changes, then you and your team can get work done much faster. More drastic changes to the shared code become feasible. Life gets better. It makes sense then that...

As an architect I’ve been asked to answer a lot of hard questions. I used to waste time figuring out how to structure my answers, preventing me from getting into a good flow sooner. Now I have a simple template that is easy to use, easy to read, and saves me that wasted time up front. This template works for simple reports that are only a couple of pages, but can easily be adjusted or expanded for...

Always use a NoSQL database so your app can scale. NoSQL databases can be more scalable, but schema-on-read has other drawbacks. NoSQL databases are much less capable of transactional changes. Relationships are difficult or impossible. Designing schemas to be efficient is much harder, and requires more up-front knowledge about your problem. NoSQL databases are sometimes the right tool for the jo...

When I was promoted to the role of architect it was a new role in the organization. The stakeholders I had to work with were not used to talking to an architect, and weren’t sure what I did or when I should be involved in a conversation. I started using recurring one-on-one meetings with each stakeholder separately. It worked great. It’s also made me a much better communicator. One of the first an...

A couple of years after solving The Case of The Disappearing Users, I was assigned another high profile bug where new users were being spontaneously created. They were being generated without a name or any profile information, but still filling up space in lists and appearing on schedules. A couple of other developers had tried fixing it but had no luck, so it was assigned to me. I went through my...

I recently worked on a project to move a complicated legacy application onto Kubernetes. It was quite an undertaking, but in the end we were successful. One of the biggest challenges was figuring out how to automate our legacy deployment process, one where the whole application has to be stopped completely for schema upgrades to run. The normal “Kubernetes way” to upgrade an application is by chan...

Unless you work entirely alone, alignment is a big deal. When you are well aligned with your company’s goals you are a more valuable employee. When you are well aligned with your manager they can keep you on the right track and be an ally against obstacles. When you are well aligned with your peers you can keep each other focused on the most important work. On the other hand, when you have poor al...