Maintainable

Robby has a chat with Ahmed Wasfy (he/him/his), the Senior Development Manager at Amazon. On the topic of the common characteristics of well maintained software, Ahmed feels that one critical thing is that software should serve a purpose in terms of what values it adds and the trackable business goal it fulfills. He shares some valuable insights about legacy code based on his vast experience and dives into how to approach the management of technical debt so that an engineering team trusts there is a time and place to work on that.Robby and Ahmed discuss how to strike a good balance between new feature development and incremental improvements, challenges that large organizations face when recruiting a lot of engineers in a short period of time when there are no local domain experts, the Ageism bias in the software engineering industry, Ahmed's coaching work under TheThrivingEM.com, and how to approach your first 90 days in a new role. There is that and so much more software engineering wisdom to gain from this episode, so make sure you tune in.Book Recommendations:Mastery by George LeonardHelpful Links:TheThrivingEM.comAhmed's InstagramAhmed's LinkedInSubscribe to Maintainable on:Apple PodcastsOvercastSpotifyOr search "Maintainable" wherever you stream your podcasts.Keep up to date with the Maintainable Podcast by joining the newsletter. Subscribe to Maintainable on:Apple PodcastsSpotifyOr search "Maintainable" wherever you stream your podcasts.Keep up to date with the Maintainable Podcast by joining the newsletter.

Robby has a chat with Independent Python Instructor and Consultant, Naomi Ceder (she/her/hers). Naomi values clear organization, separation of concern and capsulation, visibility instrumentation, and tests when it comes to creating a legacy piece of code that will be continuously useful. She will talk about the importance of weighing up the costs of using 3rd party tools vs rolling your own solution, working in small teams through a career, and what to consider when weighing up a rewrite vs refactoring.They will discuss her involvement in the Python Foundation and what a foundation typically offers to a community on the global and local levels. Naomi will tell us about her book, The Quick Python Book, 3rd edition, and give us an overview of who the ideal audience is for it. For those of you who want to become technical writers, she will share considerations for how you can get more involved in open-source communities.Book Recommendations:Debt: The First 5000 Years by David GraeberPaula by Isabel AllendeHelpful Links:https://www.naomiceder.tech/https://www.manning.com/books/the-quick-python-book-third-editionhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/naomiceder/https://mastodon.art/@naomicederSubscribe to Maintainable on:Apple PodcastsOvercastSpotifyOr search "Maintainable" wherever you stream your podcasts.Keep up to date with the Maintainable Podcast by joining the newsletter. Subscribe to Maintainable on:Apple PodcastsSpotifyOr search "Maintainable" wherever you stream your podcasts.Keep up to date with the Maintainable Podcast by joining the newsletter.

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!Book Recommendations:Nonviolent Communication by Marshall B. RosenbergThe Eighth Life (for Brilka) by Nino HaratischwiliHelpful Links:Nadia's Websitehttps://www.thestorygraph.com/Nadia on TwitterThe StoryGraph on TwitterSubscribe to Maintainable on:Apple PodcastsOvercastSpotifyOr search "Maintainable" wherever you stream your podcasts.Keep up to date with the Maintainable Podcast by joining the newsletter. Subscribe to Maintainable on:Apple PodcastsSpotifyOr search "Maintainable" wherever you stream your podcasts.Keep up to date with the Maintainable Podcast by joining the newsletter.

Robby has a chat with Senior Staff Engineer, Daniela Baron (she/her). Daniela starts by listing the following things about the characteristics of well-maintained software; it should be easy for new people to join and get the project running on their laptops just by following the README, it should have conventions in place for what kind of code goes where, and several less obvious aspects like how to integrate with third parties and how to deploy to a test environment.Daniela will share ways to improve the onboarding experience for new developers to a project, examples of reliable traceability from code to tests to business goals across repositories and project management tools, how to avoid bikeshedding in pull-requests, and approaches to managing maintenance tasks within your team's workflow.In addition, Robby and Daniela will discuss the importance of having a process for addressing deprecation warnings, documenting the non-obvious aspects of the system, tips on how to start documenting how to test and/or debug integrations with third-party services, and moving documentation about edge case scenarios under a Troubleshooting heading. They will also reference to Daniela's blog post, About Those Docs. Tune in for all that and more! You’ll get tons of valuable insights out of it.Book Recommendations:WHEN: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing By Daniel H. PinkHelpful Links:Slides from Daniela's talk about “When”Daniela on LinkedInDaniela’s Personal WebsiteDaniela on Twitterhttps://github.com/danielabarSubscribe to Maintainable on:Apple PodcastsOvercastSpotifyOr search "Maintainable" wherever you stream your podcasts.Keep up to date with the Maintainable Podcast by joining the newsletter. Subscribe to Maintainable on:Apple PodcastsSpotifyOr search "Maintainable" wherever you stream your podcasts.Keep up to date with the Maintainable Podcast by joining the newsletter.

Robby has a chat with Cory House (he/him/his), the Founder at Reactjsconsulting.com, a software developer, author, speaker, and consultant. “I love the old saying that we write software for humans. So, I think about that regularly”, Cory says about what the maintainability of software is all about. When it comes down to it, he thinks more about his fellow developers than the compiler. He talks about the importance of good variable naming, shares the tactics for writing good tests for your regular expressions, and lists the benefits of automating pull-request feedback on potentially subjective feedback so that we can focus our attention on objective curiosities. He will also dive into testing strategies for React JS applications, how granular unit testing patterns don't apply well to automated browser tests, why it's valuable to keep a running list of opportunities for improvements rather than a list of technical debt, and why he believes that not every software project requires a dedicated architect but there should be someone who is acting in that role. You’re going to love this one so stay tuned!Book Recommendations:So Good They Can't Ignore You By Cal NewportHelpful Links:Pluralsight coursesCory on LinkedInCory on TwitterWebsiteReactJS ConsultingSubscribe to Maintainable on:Apple PodcastsOvercastSpotifyOr search "Maintainable" wherever you stream your podcasts.Keep up to date with the Maintainable Podcast by joining the newsletter. Subscribe to Maintainable on:Apple PodcastsSpotifyOr search "Maintainable" wherever you stream your podcasts.Keep up to date with the Maintainable Podcast by joining the newsletter.

Robby has a chat with Senior Software Engineer, Avery Quinn. Avery was previously a Senior Software Engineer at Remotion. Avery starts by sharing that she finds well-maintained software to have cohesive modules, be singularly responsible in its functions, and have just a general level of refinement over time.They will dive into the benefits of having a skeleton project that you can experiment with when weighing up different dependencies, tips for onboarding engineers to your teams, things to consider when building desktop applications, what it is like to work as a consultant, and later at a product company, the software product that Remotion is building for remote software engineers, why measuring velocity on a team can be a useful metric to track, and how her recent employer tracks and prioritizes technical debt work. Avery will also share advice for those who are struggling to get buy-in to prioritize technical debt work. Stay tuned for more!Book Recommendations:Just Enough Software Architecture By George FairbanksHelpful Links:https://remotion.com/blog/refactoring-legacy-systemsSubscribe to Maintainable on:Apple PodcastsOvercastSpotifyOr search "Maintainable" wherever you stream your podcasts.Keep up to date with the Maintainable Podcast by joining the newsletter. Subscribe to Maintainable on:Apple PodcastsSpotifyOr search "Maintainable" wherever you stream your podcasts.Keep up to date with the Maintainable Podcast by joining the newsletter.

Robby has a chat with Carlos Blé, the CEO of Lean Mind, an organization focused on boosting the growth of developers and teams. Carlos is a software crafter, entrepreneur, mentor, speaker, podcaster, blogger, and author of several tech books in Spanish (Diseño Ágil con TDD and Código Sostenible). He is also the Founder of Savvily, a publisher specializing in tech books. Carlos will start off by sharing the four important traits of well-maintained software and examples of what maintainable tests are. He will dive into the benefits of mutation testing and exploratory testing, why engineers should advocate for a TECHNICAL_DEBT.md file in their git repository, why software engineers should aim to reduce the technical burden for their product team, services that Lean Mind offers, his latest book, Código Sostenible, and how to be a good guest in another team's codebase. Stay tuned for that and so much more!Book Recommendations:Nonviolent Communication by Marshall RosenbergHelpful Links:Carlos on LinkedInCarlos on GithubCarlos on TwitterHis Websitehttps://leanmind.es/Subscribe to Maintainable on:Apple PodcastsOvercastSpotifyOr search "Maintainable" wherever you stream your podcasts.Keep up to date with the Maintainable Podcast by joining the newsletter. Subscribe to Maintainable on:Apple PodcastsSpotifyOr search "Maintainable" wherever you stream your podcasts.Keep up to date with the Maintainable Podcast by joining the newsletter.

Robby has a chat with Executive and Leadership Coach, Lena Reinhard (she/her/hers). Lena is a speaker, writer, and Founder of Lena Reinhard Leadership Coaching and Consulting. Previously, Lena served as the VP of Engineering with CircleCI and TravisCI, as well as the startup Founder and CEO of The Neighbourhoodie Software GmbH.From Lena’s perspective, well-maintained software is supposed to serve a business’s goals and continuously improve not just reactively. She highlights the importance of organizations investing in their engineering team's skills. Lena will also talk about software as a team sport, strategies for managing technical debt, how technical debt is a loaded term, challenges teams have faced with micro-services, and what engineers might be encountering after teammates have been laid off. Tune in for that and so much more.Book Recommendations:Into The Planet by Jill HeinerthHelpful Links:The lettuce pact 🥬  https://twitter.com/lrnrdhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/lenareinhard/Subscribe to Maintainable on:Apple PodcastsOvercastSpotifyOr search "Maintainable" wherever you stream your podcasts.Keep up to date with the Maintainable Podcast by joining the newsletter. Subscribe to Maintainable on:Apple PodcastsSpotifyOr search "Maintainable" wherever you stream your podcasts.Keep up to date with the Maintainable Podcast by joining the newsletter.

Software engineer and author Eric Normand discusses the maintainability of code bases, pros and cons of microservices, higher-order functions, challenges of writing a book on rapidly evolving technology, and provides book recommendations on architecture.

Robby has a chat with Henrik Warne (he/him/his), the Senior Software Engineer at Talos. In Henrik’s view of well-maintained software, he talks about the importance of code having structure early on because, without structure, code tends to inevitably drift over time toward complexity. He highlights the importance of engineers being able to not only read code when they join a project but also be able to run the code and test it.Henrik will share the details of his blog titled, "There is No Software Maintenance," where he argues that software maintenance is simply software development, and how software is better seen as a product versus a project. He will talk about why all software engineers should spend a portion of their time working on bugs, tactics engineers can use to reflect on and capture their thoughts after fixing a bug, and strategies for teams to improve software and avoid rot. Stay tuned for more and enjoy.Book Recommendations:How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale CarnegieHelpful Links:There is No Software Maintenance By Henrik WarneHenrik's BlogHenrik on TwitterHenrik on LinkedInSubscribe to Maintainable on:Apple PodcastsOvercastSpotifyOr search "Maintainable" wherever you stream your podcasts.Keep up to date with the Maintainable Podcast by joining the newsletter. Subscribe to Maintainable on:Apple PodcastsSpotifyOr search "Maintainable" wherever you stream your podcasts.Keep up to date with the Maintainable Podcast by joining the newsletter.