The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source

ONE MORE thing every dev should know (Interview)

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Mar 11, 2022

Jessica Kerr, a software developer at Honeycomb, shares her journey and expertise in observability and developer relations. She discusses the thrill of getting projects into production and the importance of monitoring them. Kerr also addresses the challenges of context switching with pull requests and offers insightful book recommendations. She connects game theory to team dynamics, emphasizing collaborative coding and the advantages of ensemble programming. Dive into her innovative views on gamification in software and learning, ensuring developers stay engaged and satisfied.

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ADVICE

Deploy Early and Observe

Deploy your projects to production as soon as possible, even if they don't do anything yet.
Then, immediately set up observability to see if people are using it.

INSIGHT

Changing Software

Software development isn't about writing code; it's about changing software.
This process extends indefinitely into the future.

ADVICE

Public vs. Advertised

Make your projects public early, but don't advertise until there's real value.
Public doesn't mean exposed.

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The incomparable Jessica Kerr is back with another grab-bag of amazing topics. We talk about her journey to Honeycomb, devs getting satisfaction from the code they write, why step one for her is “get that new project into production” and step two is observe it, her angst for the context switching around pull requests, some awesome book recommendations, how game theory and design can translate to how we skill up and level up our teams, and so much more.

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Featuring:

Jessica Kerr – Website, GitHub, X
Adam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
Jerod Santo – GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X

Show Notes:

The ONE thing every dev should know (and other words of wisdom) with Jessica Kerr
Graceful.Dev - the successor to Ruby Tapas
Games: Agency As Art
Trespassing on Einstein’s Lawn
Shigeru Miyamoto on Wikipedia
Better coordination, or better software?

Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!