Link tags: developers

Generative AI Is Not Going To Build Your Engineering Team For You - Stack Overflow

People act like writing code is the hard part of software. It is not. It never has been, it never will be. Writing code is the easiest part of software engineering, and it’s getting easier by the day. The hard parts are what you do with that code—operating it, understanding it, extending it, and governing it over its entire lifecycle.

The present wave of generative AI tools has done a lot to help us generate lots of code, very fast. The easy parts are becoming even easier, at a truly remarkable pace. But it has not done a thing to aid in the work of managing, understanding, or operating that code. If anything, it has only made the hard jobs harder.

Home-Cooked Software and Barefoot Developers

A very thought-provoking presentation from Maggie on how software development might be democratised.

Get it shipped — building better relationships with Devs

This advice works both ways:

1. Collaboration
2. Communication
3. Respect

WWC22 - Design Principles For The Web - YouTube

Here’s the video of the talk I gave in front of an enormous audience at the We Are Developers conference …using a backup slidedeck.

Why you should hire a frontend developer - Technology in government

This is a really good description of the role of a front-end developer.

That’s front end, not full stack.

CSS Architecture for Modern JavaScript Applications - MadeByMike

Mike sees the church of JS-first ignoring the lessons to be learned from the years of experience accumulated by CSS practitioners.

As the responsibilities of front-end developers have become more broad, some might consider the conventions outlined here to be not worth following. I’ve seen teams spend weeks planning the right combination of framework, build tools, workflows and patterns only to give zero consideration to the way they architect UI components. It’s often considered the last step in the process and not worthy of the same level of consideration.

It’s important! I’ve seen well-planned project fail or go well over budget because the UI architecture was poorly planned and became un-maintainable as the project grew.

What Makes a Mid-Level Developer? | Amber’s Website

I love the way that Amber is documenting her journey—I think this is so useful for others making the progression from junior to mid-level developer.

Ooops, I guess we’re full-stack developers now.

Chris broke both his arms just to avoid speaking at the JAMstack conference in London. Seems a bit extreme to me.

Anyway, to make up for not being there, he made a website of his talk. It’s good stuff, tackling the split.

It’s cool to see the tech around our job evolve to the point that we can reach our arms around the whole thing. It’s worthy of some concern when we feel like complication of web technology feels like it’s raising the barrier to entry

7 absolute truths I unlearned as junior developer

This is a wonderfully written post packed with hard-won wisdom.

This are the myths that Monica dispelled for herself:

1. I’m a senior developer
2. Everyone writes tests
3. We’re so far behind everyone else (AKA “tech FOMO”)
4. Code quality matters most
5. Everything must be documented!!!!
6. Technical debt is bad
7. Seniority means being the best at programming

I’m a Web Designer - Andy Bell

Something that I am increasingly uncomfortable with is our industry’s obsession with job titles. I understand that the landscape has gotten a lot more complex than when I started out in 2009, but I do think the sheer volume and variation in titles isn’t overly helpful in communicating what people actually do.

I share Andy’s concern. I kinda wish that the title for this open job role at Clearleft could’ve just said “Person”.

“Designer + Developer Workflow,” an article by Dan Mall

Dan compares the relationship between a designer and developer in the web world to the relationship between an art director and a copywriter in the ad world. He and Brad made a video to demonstrate how they collaborate.

PWA: Progressive Web All-the-things - Tales of a Developer Advocate by Paul Kinlan

Very valuable observations from Paul on his travels, talking to developers and business people about progressive web apps—there’s some confusion out there.

My personal feeling is that everyone is really hung up on the A in PWA: ‘App’. It’s the success and failure of the branding of the concept; ‘App’ is in the name, ‘App’ is in the conscious of many users and businesses and so the associations are quite clear.

I Don’t Believe in Full-Stack Engineering • Robin Rendle

A good ol’ rant from Robin.

HTML and CSS and JavaScript have always been looked down upon by many engineers for their quirks. When they see a confusing and haphazardly implemented API across browsers (HTML/CSS/JS), I see a swarming, writhing, and constantly improving interface that means we can read stuff that was written fifteen years ago and our browsers can still parse it.

Before jumping to conclusions, read the whole thing. Robin isn’t having a go at people who consider themselves full-stack developers; he’s having a go at the people who are only hiring back-end developers and expecting them to automatically be “full stack.”

Developer happiness considered harmful (sometimes)

Thoughts on my favourite design principle (because I’m that much of a design principles nerd that I have a favourite).

Developer happiness is only a benefit if it first does no harm to others. Even better if it genuinely amplifies benefits to those further up chain of priorities.

Am I a Real Developer?

A Voight-Kampff machine for uncovering infiltrators in the ranks.

SA Labs | Just a Developer

I like this distinction between coders and developers.

The Coder is characterized by his proficiency in a narrow range of chosen skills.

By contrast the Developer’s single greatest skill is in being an applied learner.

I’m definitely not a coder. Alas, by this criterion, I’m also not a developer (because I do not pick things up fast):

Quite simply the Developer has a knack for grokking new [languages|frameworks|platforms] and becoming proficient very quickly.

I prefer Charlie’s framing. It’s not about speed, it’s about priorities:

I’m not a “developer” in that I’m obsessed with code and frameworks. I’m a “developer” as in I develop the users experience for the better.

Full-Stack Developers | Brad Frost

In my experience, “full-stack developers” always translates to “programmers who can do frontend code because they have to and it’s ‘easy’.” It’s never the other way around. The term “full-stack developer” implies that a developer is equally adept at both frontend code and backend code, but I’ve never in my personal experience witnessed anyone who truly fits that description.

The Amazing Women of CSS

Rachel lists some of the best CSS developers working on the web today:

• Anna,
• Charlotte,
• Estelle,
• Jen,
• Lea,
• Léonie,
• Sara,
• Una,
• Val, and
• Zoe.

Down with the tool fetish - QuirksBlog

PPK responds in his typically strident way to posts by Tim and Bastian. I don’t agree with everything here, but I very much agree with this:

It’s not about what works for you. It’s about what works for your users.

If a very complicated set-up with seven brand-new libraries and frameworks and a bunch of other tools satisfies you completely as a web developer but slows your sites down to a crawl for your users, you’re doing it wrong.

If serving your users’ needs requires you to use other tools than the ones you’d really like to use, you should set your personal preferences aside, even though it may make you feel less good. You have a job to do.

But it’s worth remembering this caveat too.

Instagram to third-party developers: drop dead - Zeldman on Web & Interaction Design

Jeffrey’s right. Instagram’s new deal with developers is openly hostile. It probably means the end of OwnYourGram in its current form …a service whose existence is frankly the only reason I’m able to use Instagram at all.