yegor256 podcast

Райгородский Андрей Михайлович - российский математик, автор более 200 научных статей, лауреат премии Президента России 2011 года для молодых учёных, директор Физтех-школы прикладной математики и информатики МФТИ.

The video is here: https://youtu.be/_o-5-QGD8Lw

Видео здесь: https://youtu.be/sSGD6D92JL0

Видео здесь: https://youtu.be/SdBLL56rZGA

Video is here: https://youtu.be/W4lcWiIa9QY

Coding without unit tests similar to building a house without a safety net: you can do this, but your productivity will be extremely low. You will mostly be driven by fear. Can you afford this? Video is here: https://youtu.be/Y0Zx_sdVG48

Video is here: https://youtu.be/OWUnLpeAcyA

Video is here: https://youtu.be/5FckPa6aOok

Video is here: https://youtu.be/SNAULZ4KRak

Video is here: https://youtu.be/JilDO5zqcuc

When you interview each new candidate, your opinion will most likely be pretty subjective. I suggest you try to find a way to structure it with some generic approach, which you will apply to all interviews. This will help you not miss important information and always have a good explanation for your decisions. The video is here: https://youtu.be/o_S1aSLoh14

The best bug report is the one that represents the simplest possible scenario where the bug shows up. Most bug reports are not like that. I suggest rejecting them and letting their authors simplify them. Blog post: https://www.yegor256.com/2022/03/29/bugs-occam-razor.html The video is here: https://youtu.be/UXu_Uejo0f0

When you report a bug, try to make it as simple as it's possible. When you accept a bug, ask the reporter to make it as simple as possible. Somebody has to do this work of minimization of a bug. I suggest this work is done by reporters. Video is here: https://youtu.be/jiEJnLBowHc

When you write an academic paper or a patent together with your co-workers, who of them becomes your co-authors? All of them? Some of them? Who decides? In this video I'm asking for your help in defining the formula. The video is here: https://youtu.be/TF8MKOfo3gI

Video is here: https://youtu.be/6RYinocrR0E

AlphaCode recently announced that its ML model can write code as good as an average programmer. I don't think it's writing and I don't believe in this approach we will ever be able to get anything meaningful aside from pure marketing speculations.

Adam is a creator of CodeScene.com, a cloud service where you can check the quality of your code and spot places where your technical debt is the largest. He's also the author of "Your Code as a Crime Scene" book. Adam's personal website: https://www.adamtornhill.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/adamtornhill?lang=en The book: https://amzn.to/3AXCPxz

Two months ago I bought a new MacBook Pro. After a month of waiting, I received it. My frustration was huge. I returned it to Apple and got the money back. Here is why. The video is here: https://youtu.be/JYW25iNTqUE

Aino Corry is an expert in Agile and specifically in retrospectives: these are special type of meetings a team must conduct by the end of a sprint, a phase, or the entire project. Aino's twitter is here: https://twitter.com/apaipi?lang=en Aino's website: https://metadeveloper.com And the book is here: https://amzn.to/3fREDOQ The video is here: https://youtu.be/ByatpkT2-tI

The video is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqfH1ABgx9o

Michael Kay is the editor of the W3C XSLT 2.0 and 3.0 language specifications for performing XML transformations and the developer of the Saxon XSLT and XQuery processing software. The video is here: https://youtu.be/2Zt9oJtFKGw

"How do I become a software architect with a six-figure salary?" is the question I'm being asked very often. I can't say I know the answer but here is the strategy I would recommend to pursue: make sure your profile differs from all others somehow. The video is here: https://youtu.be/mJb-H-8npFk

Andy Hunt is a writer of books on software development, co-author of "The Pragmatic Programmer," one of the 17 original authors of the Agile Manifesto, and a founder of "The Pragmatic Bookshelf" publishing agency. The video is here: https://youtu.be/zebqDkVfY-g

Chief Technical Officer (CTO) is usually the highest technical position, where usually is a person who doesn't really remember how to write software code. A better setup would be with a CTO who codes every day and delegates management to Project Managers. Video is here: https://youtu.be/b_w85hL2o04

Developing a software product and maintaining it are two different activities, even though both are very important. Developers and maintainers are people of different types and if you want to keep your best developers in the project, don't allow them to become maintainers. The video is here: https://youtu.be/_BbgpugwpEI

Some of us think that the functionality of a product comes first, while the build pipeline (testing, coverage control, static analysis, style checking, deployment) goes next. Moreover, some of us believe that functionality is the foundation of a house, while the build is more like a decoration. I strongly disagree. Video is here: https://youtu.be/TcD6jJKaLcg

Video is here: https://youtu.be/NLNVkvnrr3Q

When you are young and hungry for attention, you make open source products. They give you appreciation and recognition faster than anything else. When you grow up and become known for the products you created earlier, you lose interest in open source and give space to next-generation attention seekers. Thus, let's appreciate their work to keep new products coming. The video is here: https://youtu.be/eyx69afklkY

What do you do with those who don't deliver almost anything except promises? Do you try to motivate them, discipline, organize, find better tasks for them? I suggest a better strategy: just ignore them. This is how you will save your time and energy for those who deserve your attention. This is how you help your team achieve better results. The video is here: https://youtu.be/KvwEKA4Owuc

Many programmers love to use pre-commit hooks to run the build and test the code before it gets to the repository. I believe it's a bad idea for two reasons.

Most of us believe that it's impossible to measure the productivity of programmers, researchers, software experts, and other "talents". I believe it's possible. Here is a simple framework, which has experimentally proven its effectiveness. Try it out in your team. The blog post is here: https://www.yegor256.com/2021/10/12/calibrated-achievement-points.html The video is here: https://youtu.be/Qii3yrQJdHs

The video is here: https://youtu.be/9bRCNcMox4g

Proper management is not something any team can afford. Here is a simplified framework, which gives you enough control over project affairs and at the same time doesn't bother the team too much. I called it SIMBA since it's a Simplified Management By Artifacts. The blog post is here: https://www.yegor256.com/2021/09/09/simba.html The video is here: https://youtu.be/939ntzufGB0

Using auto-formatters to make your code look nice is a bad idea. Mostly because they won't teach you anything about code quality. Instead, always format your code manually. This is how you learn a lot about quality and good programming practices. The video is here: https://youtu.be/NoBE-WNIVVs

The video is here: https://youtu.be/JER03qMCmIk

Видео здесь: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=weriC7HBuJo

Very often, as far as I can tell, programmers are not willing to participate in digital discussions (tickets, chats, boards) because they are afraid of bullying: their decisions may and will be criticized without any predefined rules. The solution is simple: make sure your team has a structured process of decision making, with explicit roles and permissions.

Jeff Atwood is an American software developer, author, blogger, and entrepreneur. He writes the computer programming blog Coding Horror. He co-founded the computer programming question-and-answer website Stack Overflow and co-founded Stack Exchange, which extends Stack Overflow's question-and-answer model to subjects other than programming. Jeff's blog: https://www.codinghorror.com

Say you are an architect, and your customer or a product owner asks you to explain your technical decisions, you may immediately jump into explanations. Don't do that. There must be a clearly drawn line between your territory of responsibility and authority and theirs. They define requirements for the product you develop, you make technical decisions according to the requirements. You don't need to explain anything. The video is here: https://youtu.be/WapJducA2NY

Your personal goals must be much more important for you than your project and your team's ones. Of course, the team will try to make you sell your soul to them, but you must not forget about your long-term objectives. The video is here: https://youtu.be/rR4UFPvAulI

The video is here: https://youtu.be/XFGqqTSWE_E

The video is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ae6nFZn3auQ

"Where do you find inspiration for coding," I hear very often. The trick is simple: I try not to stay for too long with the same code base. I try to extract sub-module, libraries, or frameworks from the products I work with and make them standalone products. This is fun: making new products. The video is here: https://youtu.be/ygoWsvgXe1c

Very often our managers don't know exactly what we have to do. They don't have specific requirements, they don't know how to specify tasks for us. Is it bad? Many people complain and quit. I suggest the opposite strategy: you say and do what you think is important. Make your own requirements. The video is here: https://youtu.be/a_UEkcV9laA

This year we organize a competition for student researchers. If you are a student (MSc, BSc, PhD), you most certainly do some diploma work. When finished, publish your results at ACM/IEEE conference and send us a link. We may give you a reward. The video is here: https://youtu.be/53DCw1QyDRc

We all know how annoying are the recruiters who spam us instead of finding the right methods of approaching us carefully. Here is a quick summary of the advice I would give them all. Video is here: https://youtu.be/dlPk1AE2aQk

Every time I start a new book, an article, or a new software project, I spend a lot of time making sure it visually looks nice. Sometimes this process even takes longer than the writing itself. I'm kidding about this, but it's not so far from the truth. Visual representation of data/text is very important. The video is here: https://youtu.be/l4PhrB4AytY

The video is here: https://youtu.be/hEB4_8TfIu8

Computer science is not so hard to do. If you are a professional software engineer, you can present your results in an academic way and publish them at one of those computer science conferences. You will get yourself a status of a researcher. This will only help you in your career. The video is here: https://youtu.be/ARwiHvTA4dc

When you deal with a weak and incompetent manager, who is not capable of finding a way to measure people's results objectively, you have to behave like an imposter. If you don't, somebody else will and the manager will think that this guy is the best guy in the team, no matter what are the actual achievements. Read the blog post: https://www.yegor256.com/2021/03/03/imposters-to-win.html The video is here: https://youtu.be/ulrMXmIcC4w

You can acquire a new team member by making a better offer. I mean money. But you can't keep them with money. To keep someone in the team, especially if this is a top performer, you need two things: 1) challenging tasks, and 2) objective appraisal. Both of them are only available to good and strong managers. Video is here: https://youtu.be/bRXaMOJMJYk