11 minutes ago
The Learning Rhythm
1 day ago
The Backup Drive Habit
2 days ago
Two Approaches to Blisters
3 days ago
The Fear of Growth
4 days ago
Footwork and Repetition
5 days ago
Making Up Answers
6 days ago
Don’t Feel Guilty about Design
6 days ago
Now I understand High School
1 week ago
The AI Cut and Paste Dilemma
1 week ago
The Era of “I think this is the problem.”
11 minutes ago
When you slip into the learning rhythm, it feels like time has stopped. You’re in the zone, and nothing is impossible. Instead of it being an arduous task, it’s the direction to your future career laid out right in front of you. It’s not easy getting into the rhythm, because it takes humbling and failing – more than we care to admit – but when it works, then we’re on fire, and the rhythm goes from being here and there to being a constant part of your life that everything leaps from. Want more? Check out my book Code Your …
1 day ago
The Backup Drive Habit
Greg Thomas
Yes, I still use Backup Drives for files. Not regularly, but every now and then, I get a random thought – “Oh, I should back that up”. Setting up a new computer, I back up to the cloud, but also to a local drive… because hey… local drives have never failed, right (they have)? Someone younger than me who never used external drives probably doesn’t use them, but for my generation, going from 1.44 MB to 1 TB in your hand was power incarnate and always gave you that security blanket of – “if something goes wrong I still have …
2 days ago
Two Approaches to Blisters
Greg Thomas
You can bandage them up and keep going; yes, they will irritate and eventually pop. You can wait for them to go away, however long that takes. One is pragmatic and pushes you back at the worry of further injury, one pushes the envelope, lets the skin heal over and harden. Whatever approach you take is up to you, but clearly, you need new shoes to prevent it from happening again. Want more? Check out my book Code Your Way Up – available as an eBook or Paperback on Amazon (CAN and US). I’m also the co-host of the Remotely …
1 week ago
The Era of “I think this is the problem.”
We are exiting the era of someone knowing the answer and entering the era where everyone around the room can say – “I think it’s this”. During a call, everyone can bring up their AI tool du jour, copy and paste an error message in, and come back with a “I think it is this”. It’s not the answer; there is no analysis, there is no surety in what we are trying to solve. Having more information is great, but if it’s not directed to the solution at hand, it’s just more noise. Whereas we used to have people who …
Counting Token Shock
Counting Lines of Code became… Counting Number of Unit Tests Generated became… Generating the number of class files became… Ensuring we had everything commented, which became… An unlimited number of TODOs in our code. And now we are counting Tokens of usage and surprise, surprise – we are gamifying and overusing them so that our metrics look inflated. I AM SHOCKED!!!! Yes, your team should be using AI. But if you’re measuring your team by their token consumption, it’s a lazy, easy metric. Instead, why not look at; As with development metrics of the past, the first metric identified is …
2 weeks ago
Up at 5 am for Saturday Morning Cartoons
If you can recreate that magic, where kids would wake up in the morning, with or without cereal, and watch your show for 2 – 3 hours, to catch the best cartoons, the ones they loved the most, then you have something. If you can recreate the need for someone to show up, you’ve built something. If they rush into the kitchen to make something while trying not to miss the previews, then you have something. Take it, build up on it, don’t stop making it better. But that’s the level of magic you’re trying to create – that’s the …