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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 18th, 2023

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  • My experience with maintaining open source projects (though mine are very much smaller) is that it’s quite similar to a business: you just have to deal with stakeholders and people who think they are stakeholders.

    I had all the same experience at work:

    • Some unknown person from an unrelated team contacted me because something that my team does not manage broke. I tried to help a few times and I suddenly became their personal IT support team.

    • Another time someone not even working at my company demanded that I drop everything and fix their problem, because my name appeared in 3rd parties libraries.

    It’s sad that open source authors don’t always receive the recognition that they deserve.







  • After many failed attempts at TDD, I realized/settled on test driven design, which is as simple as making sure what you’re writing can be tested. I don’t see writing the test first as a must, only good to have, but testable code is definitely a must.

    This approach is so much easier and useful in real situations, which is anything more complicated than foo/bar. Most of the time, just asking an engineer how they plan to test it will make all the difference. I don’t have to enforce my preference on anyone. I’m not restricting the team. I’m not creating a knowledge vacuum where only the seniors know how yo code and the juniors feel like they know nothing.

    Just think how you plan to test it, anyone can do that.





  • I worked as engineer for 15 years and then management for the last 2 years. The urge to go back to engineering never stop. What keeps me in management is seeing how I can create the environment where engineers are able to do their work.

    If I go back to being an engineer, I won’t be able to make sure product requirements are clear, priorities are correct, team members will have a chance to practice skills they don’t get to do at work. At the minimum, protecting my engineers from stupid back to office policies that were enforced just because the CEO felt lonely one day. Would someone who has not worked as an engineer understand the feeling of stairing at the screen for 8 hours not able to start anything due to burnout is the worst feeling ever? Will they hear the grinding wheels when soneone used the wrong term during meetings?

    There are just so many things that I can do for MY engineers, exactly what I wanted when I was still an engineer. I don’t trust others to provide that so I take it on myself to do it. Granted, I need support from upper level for this to happen so it’s an important aspect for me when I apply for jobs.