Brent Clark

Dusting off an old JS project to reuse old logic to build supporting tools for the new JS project. It made me realize, at least from an abstraction perspective, the tool I built in JS ten years ago was probably similar to how Canvas was implemented to standard. Anyhow, it's just a demonstration of how monotone binary bitmaps work in 8-bit and 16-bit. Link below since LI gonna LI.

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Developer downtime: don’t overwork your devs. It’s memorial weekend and I’m lazily sitting on my porch. My kids keep coming in and out of the house, but get stuck because the sliding door keeps coming off the rails and won’t open. Well, since I’ve got nothing else scheduled for the afternoon I investigate the issue. Turns out sliding doors have a bunch of adjustment screws. I adjust them till the door slides smooth. Left in the broken state my kids learned to hit top left side of the door before opening it. Bringing this back to work, I know customer success teams that have a cheat sheet of these maneuvers. Give devs space to observe, we naturally fix these issues.

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Another thing I do is track my time, religiously. Every single bit of "work" time I spend is tracked by client (which is sometimes my own company), project, and task. This makes it easy for me to see what I was doing, when, who it was for, and how long it actually took. I can also generate reports to see how much time I spent on certain types of tasks, including mundane things like "Processing" (which includes email, Slack, etc.)

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Made2Manage Tip of the Day: If you are still running version 7.03 or lower, keep an eye on the file utuser.fpt. If it gets over 2 GB, M2M will stop functioning properly until fixed. The file is on your M2M server, in the system path, util folder. Run CheckUtilSQL to fix it! Check in with the CSS team if you need any help. Made2Manage® is a trademark of Aptean, Inc., and is a product created, developed, published and supplied by Aptean, Inc. Cincinnati Software Solutions is not owned, controlled, sponsored, acknowledged or in any way associated with Aptean, Inc.

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This article provides a good explanation of why we should use ref as a last resort. https://lnkd.in/g-a3beQE

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4 Things You Should Put in Your Daily Dev Log To harvest meaningful patterns from your dev log, you’ll need to capture the same things daily. I’ve been engineering software for 25 years, and I’ll share what I’ve routinely kept in mine. Your context is different, so your list will be also. Just make sure you capture the same things daily. Use this list as a skeleton to start from. It’s easier when you aren’t starting from a blank page! Pull Requests I keep track of every PR I submit, approve, or merge. Almost any work product I deliver or review flows through Git. My lists of PRs serve as a personal task-level kanban board of work in progress that I am connected to. These help me easily reconstruct a story of what I’ve done throughout the week. Personal Interactions I make note of every personal interaction I have, scheduled or otherwise. In addition to these notes, I keep a page for each person, and I link to that page from my daily notes. As I note patterns of interaction with a person, I’ll describe those patterns on their page. Over time I build a library of every person I’ve collaborated with and what we worked on together. Project Actions I keep a running narrative of the things I’m working on. I keep a section for each thing I’m working on. These might be at the product or story level - it just depends. Each time I hit a stopping point or interruption, I make a note of what I’ve been doing and what I plan to do next. Guess what I use to inform my daily standup updates? Perplexing Puzzles I make a note of everything that surprises me. These could be strange program behaviors, blockers, production issues - anything unexpected. As I review these periodically, I ask myself how I can use what I’ve learned to improve my mental models. Hopefully this list helps you get past the starting line. Do this faithfully for several months and see where it takes you!

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If celebrating software maintenance is something you want to do, you should check out the Legacy Code Rocks conference MenderCon on May 16th! I’ll be giving the opening keynote: “Community Is Just as Important as Code” Registration link is in the comments.

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I think it comes down to two things (1) it’s not enough to make businesses go faster, but rather make them move in the right direction (fast is nice too). (2) there is no evidence that Improving developer experience is necessary or sufficient to do (1) in a large fraction of cases. I don’t think this is a positioning problem - it’s more like a category error. #devex #flow #valuestreammanagement

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There’s something for everyone in web development in here:

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See ThatDeveloperDad. See ThatDeveloperDad make a base class. See ThatDeveloperDad make an interface. See ThatDeveloperDad combine them. See ThatDeveloperDad realize he’s chasing his tail and can smell carrots. I’m working on defining the Abstractions for typical TTRPG Rules, implementing those Abstractions into a Concrete set of Rule Data for the 5e System Reference Document, as well as trying to abstract and define how the rest of the application is supposed to ACCESS those Rules. I’m failing at doing a BUNCH of complicated thinking all at the same time, and need to step back to look at CORE CONCEPTS in isolation from each other. Imma install some nutrients, think through what I’m ACTUALLY DOING, and come back to this at 1:00 eastern. Link to the video, and my stream channel are in the comments. #thatDeveloperDad #liveCoding #cSharp #dotNet #dependencies #abstraction 

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Are you struggling with manual IT management processes? Automating IT workflows frees your team to work on higher-value tasks that drive growth. Talk to our engineering team about how we strategize, deploy, and maintain automated tools to help support your technology. #ohio #technology

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A user doesn’t think about where state is stored. They think “I’m gonna bookmark this” and expect to see the same thing later. They think “I’m gonna share this link” and expect someone else to see the same thing. If this doesn’t work, it’s confusing and frustrating. The solution: Store non-sensitive state in the URL. Examples: Active filters Current search Active tab Scroll position Current page number in paginated results Current record

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Hey! If anyone is going to be in Milwaukee this week for WHMA/IPC's EWPTE, come find me! Let's talk process optimization, ERP/QMS/IMS integrations, and how to lower the barrier to running a manufacturing business in today's world. (and besides, as an engineer, it's one of my few chances to get out from behind the screen)

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The horror messages I get from #DevRel practitioners and other leaders still blow my mind. Biz leaders telling them to do this, wait, let’s do that. Oh now let’s cancel that and do something else. Developers require time investment. You can’t launch a program today and dump it in a few weeks or a few months because you don’t think it’s working. It’s working, it just needs TIME. Devs need time to decide if you’re trustworthy. Plus, their leaders are clearly throwing darts at a blank wall. I much prefer to throw darts at a dartboard with a clear center target 🎯

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Ever experienced false starts with developers? 🧑‍💻You're not alone. We're currently working on projects where we're the second, even the fourth developer hired. All are on track and in budget. Stay tuned this week for a blog post on how to choose the best dev for your business. Not all dev shops are the same. Take the time to choose the best one for your unique needs. What questions/concerns do you have when hiring a mobile app or custom software development agency? #Development #ChooseWisely #SoftwareDevelopment

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These are great tips for an junior dev. Especially the suggestion to become the "go-to person" in a particular topic. It's a great way to become an elevated contributor on a team. https://lnkd.in/gqUZSn39

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