10 Years Later

Back in a day I used to think that 10 years of experience is a lot. Today it feels like just a number. I’ll talk about how my perspective on writing code, working in teams, talking to users, etc. has changed over time. If you’re still at the start of your career that may be my advice for you, if you’re in the 10+ club let’s compare the notes.

Transcript

1. 10 years later
2. @listochkin
3. I <3 Ruby
4. ICFP Contest Teams 3 days 1 problem Very interesting 2011 2012
5. RubyC talk 2015
6. <10 days!
7. Offered: Software Architect at a RoR project <10 days of Ruby
8. Go beats Ruby
9. Offered: Software Architect ZERO days of Go
10. <3 Ruby Ruby Community RobyMeditation
12. 10+
13. 1 day of Ruby per year?
14. 10 years Long? Short?
15. 2007 iPhone IE, Opera, Firefox PHP, ASP.NET
16. Framework wars Struts vs Tapestry vs Stripes vs Wicket Django vs Pylons vs TurboGears Rails vs Camping vs Merb vs Ramaze Prototype vs Dojo vs jQuery
17. 10 years later we still have framework wars Rails vs Hanami vs dry-rb React won … but Vue, Svetle
18. Young Impressionable
19. Sponge
20. Before internet
21. All paper books I could find All Turbo Pascal Docs All Delphy Docs Borland jBuilder + JDK + J2EE Mandrake man pages and Books (Picaxe 1st ed)
22. Just for Fun The Cathedral and the Bazaar Burroughs B5000 Oral History The Mythical Man Month
23. 2007 - my first internet year
24. 1st Google rejection
25. Blogs
26. Steve Yegge Joel Spolsky Kenneth Downs Patrick McKenzie Bill Venners Why the Lucky Stiff
27. So much to learn So little time
28. 2-3 hours to close JIRA tickets 10+ hours of reading
29. Programming Architecture Engineering practices
30. Blogs
31. Joel Interviews
32. Kenneth Software lives and dies Databases stay forever
33. Steve Languages matter JavaScript is the future
34. Patrick Charge more Ask for more
35. “Middle”
36. 800+ engineers
37. “Priorities”
38. Sell your idea
39. Fight for mindshare
40. “Convince your boss”
41. “Soft skills”
42. 2007-2008 Bank Users next door Instant gratification
43. 2008-2010 Opera Hundreds of Engineers 2+ years 3 days of press
44. 100m+ users of my code People on the street using my app
45. I want to talk to users
46. Since 2008 Server-side is DONE
47. Router + Middleware DTO Controllers Repositories Entities R+E ≈ ActiveRecord
48. UI turmoil
49. Flex Silverlight HTML5
50. Dojo Extjs YUI GCL GWT Air RIA Backbone Spine Batman SproutCore Cappuccino Angular Knockout Canjs jQuery UI & Mobile Titanium RubyMotion Xamarin
51. Users speak UI Customers speak UI Business speaks UI
52. $€ UI ¥£
53. Leadership Mentoring
54. Conference talks Workshops Community work
55. I used to hear “NO”
56. Now I’m telling “NO”
57. My “learning how to lead” strategy
58. Watch what others do
59. Do the opposite
60. Give the hardest tasks to least experienced people
61. Give them ownership
62. Give them freedom
63. Sense of Pride & Accomplishment
64. Boring Moot tasks go to me
65. Team Motivation = My Motivation
66. Some of my junior people hated me
67. They got over it :)
68. Following Loyalty Commitment Cohesion
69. Years later: “Good Tech Lead Bad Tech Lead”
70. Seniority? 2011 2012
71. 3rd Google email I haven’t replied
72. Full cycle: Specify Implement Launch Measure impact Measure revenue
73. I made it With it we earned $X
74. Architecture? Engineering Practices?
75. Optimize for Change
76. 3 month of IE8 profiling
77. I’ve seen some
80. Code can rot Developers may suffer
81. Making the impossible possible
83. Not something people expect of me
84. Older lessons come back to me
85. Data > Code
86. Survivability bias in tech
87. The older the tech that is still in use the more likely it will be used 50 years from now
88. Shell SQL C Vim PCRE
89. Company Platforms
90. IBM Sun Oracle Microsoft Apple SalesForce Automatic Google
91. Most developers are <Company> Developers
92. Some companies are very good at maintaining their platform
93. Apple 40+ years Transitions: few, smooth
94. Microsoft / Google Internal conflicts bleed through Too many half baked revolutions
95. Hard to stay independent <10%
96. Unix Ruby / Perl / Python G C/C++ MS JavaScript FB & G
97. Violent Independence
98. Java => JS IJ => Sublime / Vim YUI => Ember
99. 10X Developer
100. 10+ / 20+ Experienced Few hours ≈ 10 people in a week
101. I make fewer bugs I use more tools to catch bugs earlier I can predict bugs I can predict features My code is ugly yet extendible
102. Software X% code Y% communication
103. X↓ Y↑
104. I talk
105. Requirements Scenarios Context Roadmaps
106. “Why?”
107. I talk And people listen to me
108. My features My ideas My product direction My accomplishments My pride
109. Patrick Don't Call Yourself A Programmer
110. MVP
111. A good lawyer A good doctor A good financial advisor
112. Junior Mid Senior
113. Junior Ideas Reading a lot Apply very few lessons
114. Paradox
115. As a junior I learned all things I’ve talked about today
116. Yet I was able to apply only a handful of them
117. Mid Making choices Opportunities
118. Different people Choose different paths
119. Early soft skills vs No soft skills
120. Fascinating Same background Different outcomes
121. Senior Solidifying beliefs Making a difference
122. Next 10 years?
123. 20+
124. Jobs => Topics Stories => Sagas Experience => Wisdom
125. Programming is never boring
126. I’m looking forward to my next 10 years