This is truly a concept that has only dawned on me recently – in fact, probably within the past day or two. The ironic part about this, I’ve actually considered myself an author for the past 3 years, since the release of my first book. And most developers I meet or work with seem to have the same reaction when I tell them, “Oh you’re an author, that’s pretty cool.” When in fact – as the title states – all developers are authors, including you! Now let me tell you why.
Category: Theory
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My Epic Farewell Poem
I blogged recently about how I had to decide to leave my job and I tweeted about how I was Googling funny farewell letters. I found some pretty funny stuff, but definitely nothing appropriate to write before I left.
Instead I wrote the following poem in a parody of “Twas the night before Christmas”. P.S. I think this is probably the greatest thing I’ve ever written.
Twas the night before my last day at XYZ, when all through the pit
All the XYZian’s were stirring creating a hit.
The build system is hung on the VMs with care,
In hopes that Jarret soon would be there.The server team were nestled writing their code,
While visions of a platform began to decode.
And Mike out in Vancouver, and I with my cap,
Had just received a deadline that was due in a snap.When up in the Danger Room I could hear quite the clatter,
I sprang from my office to see what was the matter.
Up to the Danger Room to see what was adrift
But it was just Pascal playing a great riff!With a little PSD file, all layered and in black and white,
I knew in a moment I was in for a late night.
The master of delegation was on his game,
And I Skyped, emailed, and paged them by name.Now Brian, now Bill, now Peter, Martin and Robb!
On Pat, on Matt, on Ingrid, Daniel, Dayna, Don and Chris.
To your laptop, to Visual Studio
Code away, code away, code away all!And then, in a twinkling, I saw Braden get on a chair,
Singing something about putting his arms up in the air.
A bundle of toys that he was about to reveal
All packed up nice – like it was a Happy Meal.I sprang to my keyboard where I always do strive
And away I coded in HTML5.
But before I take flight,
Good luck to you all, and to all I’ll build you a great web site! -
Slowing Down Before You Speed Up
No this isn’t a typo, nor is it an oxymoron – I consider this a fact. If you find yourself feeling like you have to much to do and not enough time to do it, you’ll probably be really stressed.
When you’re this stressed it’s most likely that your mind won’t actually let you focus on the task at hand. Instead, the only thing your mind will be focusing on is how you have to get “this” done now while not thinking about how you are going to get it done.
Circle back to the title of this article and this is where slowing down comes into place.
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Should I Leave My Job?
This is a question I recently had to ask myself. It’s not an easy decision. As a father of three and the sole provider, it places a lot pressure on me. Changing jobs is never an easy decision and this makes it even harder.
At the end of the day, to answer this question I had to ask myself one question in turn:
Will I or will my current employer be able to fix the issues I’m currently facing on a daily basis?
If the answer is no, then the choice becomes much simpler. When the answer is yes, then you need to place the focus on the new company you are thinking about.
It’s important to not fool yourself thinking that the grass is greener on the other side. Every company will probably have “some issues”. It’s all about whether you can deal with those issues on a daily basis.
Also, while the grass may not be greener, fresh sod is always greener for a short while unlike dead grass!
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Why the Repository Pattern
After the incredible reaction to a recent blog post, Entity Framework Beginner’s Guide Done Right, I feel like before writing some more code to further the basic example, I’ll take a step back and explain my beliefs in the repository pattern.
I was really overwhelmed with the reaction; what started with a simple 30 minute blogging effort has turned into something absolutely incredible. The original post was really a starting point about not placing direct querying and saving to the database mingled with the core code.
Please note, these are my thoughts on the pattern based on current and previous pain points that I’ve/am experiencing and I’d love to hear others input in making things better.