QOTD

From william wu forum:

While we are postponing, life speeds by -Anon

On Improving Technical Leadership Skills

This article does a nice job in explaining what makes a technical leader effective. First, it highlights the attributes of a technical lead:

Knowledge: At all level of details of the system one is working on. Doing code reviews, reading design documents, and writing code is how one can keep their knowledge levels up to date.
Speed: To respond quickly, to make decisions swiftly etc. Keep things connected to achieve the same.
Awareness: Know what is happening in the project.

Then comes a set of activities which will be enabled by the attributes mentioned above:

Block: block things that you think are wrong (preferably with another right solution)
Unblock: If somebody is blocked for something, do whatever it takes (including asking other members etc.) to unblock
Redirect: Be a human 302, an effective one.
Decide: Make decisions
Show: Lead by example

There are some important actions mentioned as well:

Host effective engineering team meetings
Make sure meetings are brief and to the point as necessary
Help create project priorities
Say no to unnecessary features
Define and follow best practices
Maintain cross functional relationships
Stay updated on useful tools
Coach other engineers
Review code in detail and provide feedback
Always be coding
Shield engineers from management
Define, identify and explain technical debt
Explain why decisions are made
Fight for right decisions
Load balance work among members
Have some understanding about project or product’s value and its importance to the company and customer
Evaluate architectural decisions and their implications
Ensure test cases are being written
Improve debuggability of problems
Generate new ideas and solutions
Escalate blocking issues

On Real Skills That Are Needed Today

From her e(emphasis mine):

I do most of that work with a tool called Ruby on Rails. Ruby on Rails does for web developers what a toilet-installing robot would do for plumbers. (Web development is more like plumbing than any of us, perched in front of two slick monitors, would care to admit.) It makes tasks that used to take months take hours. And the important thing to understand is that I am merely a user of this thing. I didn’t make it. I just read the instruction manual. In fact, I’m especially coveted in the job market because I read the instruction manual particularly carefully. Because I’m assiduous and patient with instruction manuals in general. But that’s all there is to it.

What I Learned From edX

Been studying “Introduction to Computer Science and Programming with Python” on edX. Reached through midterm. Learned/Realized the following:

Been very bad at testing, in writing extensive unit test cases
is very lazy in writing tests, thinking about tests