Mike McQuaid - Ignorance, Incompetence and Insignificance: The Ingredients To Build Great Software (Turing Fest 2022)

In this talk, Mike McQuaid walks you through some heuristics to build better software, quicker by learning from the past, the present and the future in your software projects.

Head to www.turingfest.com to learn more about Europe's best cross-functional tech conference.

Transcript

1. 🤨 ignorance, 😫 incompetence + 😕 insignificance The Ingredients to Build Great Software @MikeMcQuaid
2. me 👋
3. Principal Engineer in Communities (GitHub Engineer 2013 – Present)
4. Project Leader on Homebrew (Homebrew Maintainer 2009 – Present)
5. the best project 🎉
6. avoiding legacy systems and building nicely from scratch ✅
7. doing things right the first time and avoiding failure ✅
8. well-staffed team with well-planned backlog of work ✅
9. project result: 💩
10. ignorance 🤨
11. you know everything
12. you know everything nothing
13. (How I Get Things Done) https://mmq.lol/how
14. (G.K.) Chesterton’s Fence
15. “this fence is useless, let’s remove it!” 🙅
16. “this fence was used for keeping sheep out, let’s remove it!” 🙌
17. “this code is useless, let’s remove it!” 🙅
18. “this code was used for keeping bots out, let’s remove it!” 🙌
19. “this code was used for ….? let’s be careful…” 🥳
20. incompetence 😫
21. do things right the first time
22. do things wrong the first time
23. https://timharford.com/2022/05/cautionary-tales- bless-the-coal-black-hearts-of-the-broadway-critics/
26. do things right the tenth time
27. you will fail
28. you will fail privately
29. you will fail publicly (unless privately)
30. failing privately == low cost
31. failing privately == low traffic
32. failing publicly == high traffic
33. insignificance 😕
34. huge ship! 🛳
35. huge team! 🏢
36. huge scope! 🔭
37. huge risk! 💣
38. tiny ship! 🛶
39. tiny team! 👭
40. tiny scope! 🔬
41. tiny risk! 😌
42. your MVP is not very M
43. your MVP is not released yet
44. the worst project 🎉
45. built on legacy systems with little understanding ⛔
46. shipping hacks to clean up later and failing early, often ⛔
47. under-staffed team doing unplanned and backlog work ⛔
48. project result: 🥳
50. 😫 assumed ignorance 😫 expected incompetence 😕 initial insignificance
51. 🧑🎓 assumed ignorance 🧘 expected incompetence 🔍 initial insignificance
52. questions? 🙋 https://mmq.lol/best/ @MikeMcQuaid mike@mikemcquaid.com