How to be a productive programmer on a new team

This is an evolved version of a talk that I have given at Madison Ruby in 2012 and Steel City Ruby in 2013. It seems ridiculous that I have spent time talking about the same thing over the past two years. However, until a solid on-boarding experience becomes a norm & not an exception, new developers coming into an organization with limited experience can hopefully utilize some or all the strategies that I outline in this talk and be able to create a individualized on-boarding experience. I also hope that more experience developers who are in the position to create a better on-boarding experience for new people joining their organizations can use some of the ideas presented here and soon a good on-boarding experience will be the norm.

This iteration of the talk was presented at Dev Bootcamp Chicago.

Transcript

1. How to be A productive PROGRAMMER on a new Team Ashish Dixit @tundal45
3. The F Word
4. Managing Uncertainty
5. A Series of Firsts
6. First Day
7. You have ! no idea where to begin
8. Channel your inner 3 year old Who are our customers? What are the biggest problems our customers face regularly? What metrics do we care about? how are w e ensuring w e are delivering value? what are some of the biggest challenges ahead for our team? what is our primary focus in the nest three months? What is the long term goal of the project? Who ya gonna call?
9. You have a ! high level understanding
10. First Week
11. Dive into the gory ! details
12. It’s dangerous to go alone.
13. Interactive ! guided tour of the codebase
14. Syntax becomes secondary
15. You are comfortable with ! the codebase & ! the team
16. First Bug
17. Bugs are ! your friend
18. Platform to test ! your knowledge
19. You have an enhanced understanding of ! the codebase
20. First Feature
21. Sense of ownership
22. You made someone’s life better
23. You are comfortable with ! the codebase & ! the problem domain
24. Few things to lo_Ok out for
25. “Make it work, Make it right, Make it fast” - Kent Beck
26. Ask for help
27. Therapeutic Shipping™
28. Onward
29. Share your ! experience
30. Automate
31. One-on-One
32. Resources
36. exercism.io
37. Embrace the Uncertainty
38. Thank you