Stop Arguing, Start Guiding: Six Basics Developers Need to Focus On

Senior Developers often forget what their core role is, they end up arguing about the minutiae of code rather than helping others progress.

Transcript

1. W: rbrt.wllr.info | T: @RobDWaller
   Stop Arguing,
   Start Guiding
   What Developers Need to Focus On
   

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2. W: rbrt.wllr.info | T: @RobDWaller
   Happy Valentines Day!
   

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3. W: rbrt.wllr.info | T: @RobDWaller
   Who Am I?
   

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4. W: rbrt.wllr.info | T: @RobDWaller
   Rob Waller
   T: @RobDWaller
   W: rbrt.wllr.info
   

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5. W: rbrt.wllr.info | T: @RobDWaller
   

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6. W: rbrt.wllr.info | T: @RobDWaller
   History Degree.
   Wanted to Write.
   No £ in Journalism.
   

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7. W: rbrt.wllr.info | T: @RobDWaller
   Coded Spam.
   Ran & Sold Startup.
   Got on The News.
   

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8. W: rbrt.wllr.info | T: @RobDWaller
   Me on CNN!
   

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9. W: rbrt.wllr.info | T: @RobDWaller
   13 Years Coding!
   

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10. W: rbrt.wllr.info | T: @RobDWaller
    Me Today
    Head of Technology.
    Breakthrough Media, London.
    Team of 10: Devs, PMs and QA.
    We do Jekyll, WordPress and Laravel.
    We love Vue.js.
    

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11. W: rbrt.wllr.info | T: @RobDWaller
    

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12. W: rbrt.wllr.info | T: @RobDWaller
    Average Coder.
    Experienced.
    Lots of **** Ups!!
    Know the Basics.
    

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13. W: rbrt.wllr.info | T: @RobDWaller
    Seniors Make
    Mistakes!
    

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14. W: rbrt.wllr.info | T: @RobDWaller
    We Argue.
    Forget the Basics.
    Forget our Role.
    

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15. W: rbrt.wllr.info | T: @RobDWaller
    

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16. W: rbrt.wllr.info | T: @RobDWaller
    “The PHP community is broken. There are
    clear factions of die-hard fans within our wider
    ecosystem viciously guarding their own biases
    and making the same denigrating and sneering
    comments we already face from the much
    wider software community.”
    Neil Brooks, Hackernoon
    The global PHP community continues to toxify itself, and we need to halt it for the sake of our peers
    

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17. W: rbrt.wllr.info | T: @RobDWaller
    Two Developers I Admire
    Jeffrey Way
    Laracasts
    Marco Pivetta
    @Ocramius
    

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18. W: rbrt.wllr.info | T: @RobDWaller
    Jeffrey Way
    Founder of Laracasts.
    2014 published SOLID Principles in PHP
    videos, it was a great help to me.
    He’s helped the team of developers I
    manage improve.
    One of the most successful PHP
    developers on the planet.
    

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19. W: rbrt.wllr.info | T: @RobDWaller
    Marco Pivetta
    Contributor to Doctrine, ZendFramework
    and many more OSS projects.
    PHP SouthCoast 2016 his Extremely
    Defensive PHP talk was inspirational.
    He’s great on Twitter.
    He’s much more talented than I am.
    

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20. W: rbrt.wllr.info | T: @RobDWaller
    #VisualDebt
    In May 2017 Jeffrey Way released an infamous video
    entitled Visual Debt!!
    He suggested we didn’t always need to use type hints,
    return types and interfaces.
    “In so much of the PHP community there is a
    tendency to default to complexity rather than
    to fight for it.”
    

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21. W: rbrt.wllr.info | T: @RobDWaller
    

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22. W: rbrt.wllr.info | T: @RobDWaller
    The Fallout
    

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23. W: rbrt.wllr.info | T: @RobDWaller
    

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24. W: rbrt.wllr.info | T: @RobDWaller
    Angels Dancing on Pins
    

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25. W: rbrt.wllr.info | T: @RobDWaller
    Do These Arguments Matter?
    ? ?
    

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26. W: rbrt.wllr.info | T: @RobDWaller
    

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27. W: rbrt.wllr.info | T: @RobDWaller
    WTF!!
    

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28. W: rbrt.wllr.info | T: @RobDWaller
    Code is Easy!!
    

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29. W: rbrt.wllr.info | T: @RobDWaller
    I Got it Off StackOverflow!!
    

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30. W: rbrt.wllr.info | T: @RobDWaller
    Type Hints Can’t Save Us!!
    

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31. W: rbrt.wllr.info | T: @RobDWaller
    

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32. W: rbrt.wllr.info | T: @RobDWaller
    You Don’t Have Time
    You don’t need to explain the
    complicated stuff.
    Juniors can learn it themselves.
    Teach them where to start.
    

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33. W: rbrt.wllr.info | T: @RobDWaller
    Where to Learn
    Google
    HTML Goodies ;)
    Laracasts
    Dev.to
    Hackernoon
    

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34. W: rbrt.wllr.info | T: @RobDWaller
    Wax On, Wax Off
    Use the command line everywhere!!
    Especially with SQL.
    Use simple text editors, vanilla Sublime.
    Learn to debug.
    Try to do it without error messages.
    

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35. W: rbrt.wllr.info | T: @RobDWaller
    Keep It Simple
    Short Classes.
    Short Methods.
    Minimise Control Structures:
    if
    if
    foreach
    while
    if...
    

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36. W: rbrt.wllr.info | T: @RobDWaller
    Be Kind to Your Friends
    Write some comments.
    Name things clearly.
    Don’t use variables like $a or $b.
    

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37. W: rbrt.wllr.info | T: @RobDWaller
    Don’t be Stupid
    Test things!!
    Don’t hot-fix on production!
    Think about security.
    

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38. W: rbrt.wllr.info | T: @RobDWaller
    Remember Your
    Primary Function
    

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39. W: rbrt.wllr.info | T: @RobDWaller
    

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40. W: rbrt.wllr.info | T: @RobDWaller
    Rob Waller
    T: @RobDWaller
    W: rbrt.wllr.info
    

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