Maintainable

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.

Robby has a chat with Andy Croll (he/him/his), the CTO at CoverageBook, a Rubyist, the Organizer of the Brighton Ruby Conference, an author, speaker, and bootstrapper. The most important thing when it comes to the maintainability of software is “That code is read much more than it’s written”, Andy says. He insists that the core focus should always be on readability. Andy will dive into the rationale for why weird things in our code should stay weird until we find a better way to express it and even shared some specific examples within a Ruby on Rails environment. He will share his career journey from the front end into the backend, what prompted him to start the First Ruby Friend project to connect newcomers to a community with people who want to be mentors, examples of how to manage technical debt in a small team and why it's okay to let some stuff "sit in the air", and so much more. Stay tuned. It’s going to be an epic one.Book Recommendations:The Overstory by Richard PowersHelpful Links:Andy's websiteOne Ruby ThingBrighton RubyFirst Ruby FriendSubscribe to Maintainable on:Apple PodcastsOvercastSpotifyOr search "Maintainable" wherever you stream your podcasts.Join the discussion in the Maintainable Discord Community 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 Marianne Bellotti (she/her/hers), the Engineering Manager at Rebellion Defense. Marianne is the author of the books, “Hiring Engineers” and “Kill it with Fire”. She talks about the maintainability of software being about whether software can be changed and how easily changes can be made to it. She dives into her experience with legacy modernization and talks about how to effectively judge software.Marianne also shares her insights on the challenges teams face when people don't understand how older code works, the value of developing a plan around tests to naturally build confidence within an organization, why it's important to have a safe space to break things (e.g., staging/QA environments), how onboarding metrics can be difficult to compare when dealing with regulatory systems, and building empathy toward previous engineers on a project. Tune in for that and a whole lot more in this value-packed 61-minute episode.Book Recommendations:Drift into Failure: From Hunting Broken Components to Understanding Complex Systems by Sidney DekkerHelpful Links:Kill it with Fire: Manage Aging Computer Systems (and Future Proof Modern Ones) by Marianne BellottiWebsite - bellotti.techhttps://github.com/mbellottiTwitter - twitter.com/bellmarSubscribe to Maintainable on:Apple PodcastsOvercastSpotifyOr search "Maintainable" wherever you stream your podcasts.Join the discussion in the Maintainable Discord Community 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 Arpit Mohan, the Co-Founder and CTO of Appsmith, an open-source low-code tool that helps developers build dashboards and admin panels very quickly. Appsmith helps businesses build any custom internal application within hours. In regard to well-maintained software, Arpit points to the importance of engineers writing code for humans and not machines while also focusing a lot on readability. He believes useful code comments are also very crucial in facilitating well-maintained software.Arpit will share his wisdom on the importance of conveying the why over the how behind any code being developed, how open source and closed source projects have different code commenting/documentation needs, why engineers should always keep an eye out for code smells and friction in their ability to deliver software functionality, the problems that AppSmit helps organizations solve, the differences between B2C vs B2B when it comes to the benefits of automated testing, performance concerns, etc, and much much more. Stay tuned, enjoy, and if you like the episode, don’t forget to share.Book Recommendations:The Score Takes Care of Itself: My Philosophy of Leadership by Bill Walsh - https://www.amazon.com/Score-Takes-Care-Itself-Philosophy/dp/1591843472Helpful Links:https://twitter.com/mohanarpithttps://twitter.com/theappsmithhttps://www.appsmith.com/Subscribe to Maintainable on:Apple PodcastsOvercastSpotifyOr search "Maintainable" wherever you stream your podcasts.Join the discussion in the Maintainable Discord Community 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 Noah Clark, a consulting applications developer at Merchants Bonding Company, one the top 15 largest surety writers in the United States. On the top of Noah’s list of things that facilitate the maintainability of software is team dynamics. Well-maintained software can never be achieved by a single individual refactoring code or having grand ideas/visions. It’s made possible by a team coming together and committing to a practice of well-maintained software. He highlights trust and communication between a team and the company they’re developing software for as key. He also advises engineers to avoid writing code just to solve problems.Tune in as Robby and Noah discuss why engineers should ensure that their software code leans on the business domain especially when it comes to naming things, how teams can determine when it’s necessary to refactor and/or improve existing software, the complexities that come with basing software development projects on best practices, why and how to avoid blog post driven development, why referring to "organizational debt" might be more effective than "technical debt", and so much more. Enjoy!Book Recommendations:The 5 Love Languages by Gary Chapman - https://5lovelanguages.com/I Will Teach You to Be Rich by Ramit Sethi -  https://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/Helpful Links:https://www.linkedin.com/in/noahmclark/https://twitter.com/nolarknoahSubscribe to Maintainable on:Apple PodcastsOvercastSpotifyOr search "Maintainable" wherever you stream your podcasts.Join the discussion in the Maintainable Discord Community 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.