Finding Beauty in the Mundane

Amongst the exciting challenges of making software, there are some tasks we try to avoid: linting files, updating dependencies, writing docs. In this talk, you’ll learn how to make even the most mundane development tasks exciting in order to improve your applications and become your team’s hero.

Presented at We Rise Conference on June 24th, 2017

Transcript

1. Finding Beauty in the Mundane Megan Tiu We Rise - June 24, 2017
2. We can’t love every part of our jobs
3. Some tasks are less fun than others
4. How can we love our jobs more?
5. We must understand and change to make good
6. Empathy
7. All computer problems are people problems.
9. Hi there Software Engineer at CallRail Communications Coordinator at Rails Girls Atlanta @megantiu on Twitter megantiu on GitHub my name is Megan Tiu I am:
10. Technical debt
12. I know we can do better
13. – Caitie McCaffrey The Manager’s Path, Camille Fournier “One of the first projects I tackled after becoming the tech lead was to stop all feature development and focus on technical debt…the team reduced the number of critical paging alerts by 50%.”
14. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
15. – Apprenticeship Patterns, David Hoover and Adewale Oshineye “What’s the grungiest task that your team has been putting off for months?”
16. – Apprenticeship Patterns, David Hoover and Adewale Oshineye “See if you can creatively resolve the problem in a way that exceeds people’s expectations and makes it fun for you.”
17. What we do is so much more than code
18. What we do is so much more than best practices
19. What we do is so much more than prestige
20. It’s about respect for our teammates
21. It’s about respect for our users
22. It’s about respect for ourselves
24. How can we change our perspective?
25. Updating dependencies
27. • more secure applications
28. • exposure to the open source community
29. • more debugging experience
30. • more familiarity with documentation
31. • use of supported versions
34. Writing Documentation
36. Docs help spread knowledge
37. Docs help prevent silos
38. Docs help make onboarding easy
39. Documentation helps:
40. Documentation helps: • New developers
41. Documentation helps: • New developers • Current developers
42. Documentation helps: • New developers • Current developers • Future developers
43. Documentation helps: • New developers • Current developers • Future developers • Support team members
44. Documentation helps: • New developers • Current developers • Future developers • Support team members • You, later
45. Writing documentation is a concrete way to help others
46. How can you start?
47. Make a glossary of common terms
48. Comment your code as you write it
50. Testing
53. – The Pragmatic Programmer, Andrew Hunt and Dave Thomas “Just because you have finished hacking out a piece of code doesn’t mean that it’s done.”
54. • more reliable software
55. • allows refactoring with peace of mind
56. • an all-green test suite!!!
59. Linting
62. • opportunity for a quick win
63. • learn best practices
64. • more consistent codebase
66. Establish a style guide
69. Refactoring
71. Sometimes it’s necessary
72. We all want readable code
73. Refactoring is the closest we have to visual art
74. $==%
77. Refactoring is beautiful ✨
79. Code is beautiful
80. Software is beautiful
81. Wrapping up
82. How can we love our jobs more?
83. • Updating dependencies • Writing documentation • Testing • Linting • Refactoring
84. Change takes time
85. Empathy
86. Better software through empathy
87. Positivity
88. Through good development practices, we can make good change together
90. Spread this mindset to your team!
92. Thank you! Software Engineer at CallRail Communications Coordinator at Rails Girls Atlanta @megantiu on Twitter megantiu on GitHub Again, my name is Megan Tiu I am:
93. References • Apprenticeship Patterns, David Hoover and Adewale Oshineye • The Manager’s Path, Camille Fournier • The Pragmatic Programmer, Andrew Hunt and Dave Thomas
94. Thank you! Software Engineer at CallRail Communications Coordinator at Rails Girls Atlanta @megantiu on Twitter megantiu on GitHub Again, my name is Megan Tiu I am: