Below is a hint of technologies I work with professionally,
followed by thoughts on good software and general principles that
I follow
React
TypeScript
Next.js
SvelteKit
Node
.NET Core
Go
Python
Elixir
LabVIEW
Terraform
AWS
Docker
Postgres
Kubernetes
NoSQL
FAQ
I take pride in being pragmatic and whilst I don't enforce my
world-view onto others, I do hold opinions about my craft. The
following should hopefully help you build a better picture about
me.
These days I default to the functional paradigm whenever
possible. Testing immutable and side-effect-free code is
refreshing. The declarative and composable nature helps me
write simpler, more elegant and robust components. I believe
OOP and SOLID concepts still have value and merit,
especially when the problem domain is well understood
beforehand.
Unix over Windows. It's one of very few things I'm strongly
opinionated about, although I'm yet to try WSL. Over last
few years I've adopted a VS Code + VIM bindings setup, which
I found makes me very productive. I default to CLI
interfaces for most other common dev tooling (git, zsh, fzf,
tmux, etc). Ultimately just because something works for me
subjectively, does not make it objectively superior.
Tests go first. During development, tests run in the
background for tight feedback loops. Tests should cover
behaviour, not implementation. The less you mock, the better
are your tests. Whilst I'm not dogmatic about coverage, in
practise I find that due to these principles alone, most of
production code I write will naturally end-up being
close-to-100% covered.
Irrelevant, as long as it's consistent. Agreed standards
should be enforced through automatic formatting and liting
rules (ideally through IDE/Editor, pre-commit hooks and CI).
I keep up-to-date with OWASP Top Ten every year and
generally try to follow common sense when developing (i.e.
never trust the client, principle of least privilege, etc).
Luckily, my better half is an Ethical Hacker, so she keeps
me fairly grounded when it comes to these things.
I find full-stack teams are harder to hire, but easier to
manage and work-in. I've been fortunate to have worked with
some truly talented full-stack engineers, with an eye for
design and a technical/analytical mindset. These people
exist, just not in abudance. I used to sway towards the
frontend and client-side development more, but recently
having designed scalable, performant and production-grade
systems on the backend I found it just as interesting.
Agile prescribes focusing on people over processes and
responding to change. From what I have seen, in practise
Kanban makes those principles easier to follow, but only if
the business can afford not having to project months in
advance. Scrum is naturally easier to plan with, which I've
seen being optimised for the wrong metrics. Saying that,
I've been fortunate to have seen Scrum done right and it can
certainly be a very productive framework.
Look like someone you would enjoy working with?
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