Maintainable

Nadia Odunayo - Don't Try to Solve a Pain Point For a Problem You Aren't Experiencing

Jun 19, 2023

57:11

Creator website

AI Chapters

Episode notes

Introduction

2min

How to Maintain a Product

2min

How to Keep Software Gems Up to Date

2min

The Impetus to Upgrade to Ruby 3

3min

The Importance of Documentation in Software Development

4min

How to Be a Successful Solo Entrepreneur

5min

Goals for Storygraph for 2024

3min

The Importance of Having Traceability in Projects

3min

How to Cleanse Your Backlog

4min

10.

The Importance of Reaching Out to People

4min

11.

How to Oversee the Development of Your Own Product

2min

12.

How to Be a Product Person on a Project

5min

13.

How to Pair With Someone to Debug a Problem

5min

14.

How to Avoid Premature Optimization

4min

15.

How to Handle Edge Cases

2min

16.

The Storygraph: An Alternative to Good Reads

4min

17.

Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg

2min

18.

The Battle of the Band

2min

Robby has a chat with Nadia Odunayo (she/her/hers), the Founder and CEO at The StoryGraph. Nadia starts off by highlighting solid test coverage, up-to-date gem language platform versions, all security patches, and proper documentation as some of the few common characteristics of maintainable software.

She talks about when it makes sense to document debugging processes for your future self, the tradeoffs made when you're the solo developer and founder of a software project, how she approaches product management, how working within Pivotal Labs influenced her approach, and the differences one experiences going from an environment of constant pairing to being a solo developer.

They also dive into why every engineer should be comfortable clearing out their product's icebox, the realities of being a solo developer and thinking about vacations, the fine line between premature and proactive optimization, and everything that The StoryGraph app has to offer. Nadia’s engineering wisdom will be super insightful so don’t miss out!