The Next Level

Curated Content February 2023

Britton Broderick -

Articles

Write code that's easy to delete, and easy to debug too

Write code that’s easy to delete, and easy to debug too.
Debuggable code is code that doesn’t outsmart you. Some code is a little to harder to debug than others: code with hidden behaviour, poor error handling, ambiguity, too little or too much structure,...
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While not a directly actionable blog post, this was a great article in the spirit of how you ought to focus on writing code.

Internal Software as a Competitive Advantage

Internal Software as a Competitive Advantage
Plus! Copying; Performance; Un-IPO; Back to the Office; Why Private Equity?; Diff Jobs
The DiffByrne Hobart

An interesting article about the way companies can build internal tools for competitive advantage, that is something I think many companies neglect in a major way.

Choose Boring Technology

Choose Boring Technology
Dan McKinley :: Math, Programming, and Minority Reports

At almost 8 years old this one probably won't be new to many folks, but this one is a great reminder of the tradeoffs you make with picking shiny new technologies.

Some are very worthwhile and enable your startup to succeed, but some are going to slow you down.

Theory-building and why employee churn is lethal to software companies

Theory-building and why employee churn is lethal to software companies
(What follows is an extract from Out of the Software Crisis) Programming as theory-building The building of the program is the same as the building of the theory of it by and in the team of programmers.
Baldur Bjarnason

A great simple reminder of the fact that for software organizations, or really any knowledge work organizations, churn makes it harder for organization to survive long term.

Books

Empowered - Marty Cagan

EMPOWERED: Ordinary People, Extraordinary Products | Silicon Valley Product Group
A partnership dedicated to teaching best practices to product teams and product leaders
Silicon Valley Product Group

A great read for those that are trying to build amazing organizations, about the interaction between Product, Design, and Engineering, and how all of them need to interact with customers in order to sucessfully build the business.

Conference Talks

None this month.

Podcasts

None this month.

Tweets

Two tweets this month, without comment.