This week Robby chats with Karolina Szczur about what people get wrong about technical debt, best practices for documentation for remote developers, and more. Helpful Links: Book: Radical Candor Subscribe to Maintainable on: Apple Podcasts Overcast Or search "Maintainable" wherever you stream your podcasts. Join the discussion in the Maintainable Discord Community Loving Maintainable? Leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts to help grow our reach. Brought to you by the team at Planet Argon ....
Aug 12, 2019•36 min•Ep. 18
This week Robby chats with Liran Haimovitch, co-founder of Rookout. Liran discusses things like how the term "technical debt" is misused, as well as how to overcome it. Helpful Links: Contact Liran Rookout Book: The Phoenix Project Subscribe to Maintainable on: Apple Podcasts Overcast Or search "Maintainable" wherever you stream your podcasts. Join the discussion in the Maintainable Discord Community Loving Maintainable? Leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts to help grow our reach. Brought...
Aug 05, 2019•24 min•Ep. 17
Robby speaks to Robert Meaney, Head of Testing & Test Coach at Poppulo. Robert explains the difference between technical debt and testing debt, the importance of observability, and more! Helpful Links: Follow Robert on Twitter Robert on LinkedIn Testability Book Follow Testability Book on Twitter 3X with Kent Beck Agile Testing: A Practical Guide for Testers and Agile Teams Subscribe to Maintainable on: Apple Podcasts Overcast Or search "Maintainable" wherever you stream your podcasts. Join ...
Jul 29, 2019•45 min•Ep. 16
Robby speaks with Melissa Eaden, Tech Lead in Quality at Unity 3D. She shares her experience working with legacy code as it relates to testing. Helpful Links: Follow Melissa on Twitter Melissa's blog Melissa on LinkedIn A Vigilante for Quality [Book] Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High Unity Subscribe to Maintainable on: Apple Podcasts Overcast Or search "Maintainable" wherever you stream your podcasts. Join the discussion in the Maintainable Discord Community Loving Ma...
Jul 22, 2019•48 min•Ep. 15
Robby speaks with Steve Poling, Senior Technical Consultant at Excelon Development and long-time Software Developer. Steve describes whether he's team rewrite or team refactor, shares his definition of technical debt, and why uniformity of code matters. Helpful Links: Steve Poling on LinkedIn Excelon Development [Book] Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software Reduce Technical Debt by Using Unit Tests as Documentation Subscribe to Maintainable on: Apple Podcasts Overcast Or ...
Jul 15, 2019•33 min•Ep. 14
Robby speaks with Matt Weagle, Engineering Manager at Lyft. Matt discusses how his engineering teams have handled technical debt in small iterations vs. a major rewrite, why a whiteboard is the best tool for architectural challenges, and the most common mistakes he sees when engineers approach legacy code bases. Helpful Links: Follow Matt on Twitter Matt on LinkedIn Some Thoughts on Security After 10 Years of Gmail A Taxonomy of Yak Shaving [Book] The Manager's Path by Camille Fournier [Book] Re...
Jul 08, 2019•28 min•Ep. 13
Robby speaks with Mariah Howard, Senior Product Manager at Thinkful, to discuss technical debt from a product management perspective. Mariah touches on Google's metrics framework, leading vs. lagging indicators, and technical debt in products outside of the world of code. You'll also learn more about Thinkful's mission and methodology as an online school for engineers. Helpful Links: Thinkful Mariah on LinkedIn Google HEART framework [Book] Design Thinking [Book] The Principles of Product Develo...
Jul 01, 2019•30 min•Ep. 12
Robby speaks with Anne Marie Kirby, CEO & Co-Founder of CoreHealth Global. She shares questions to ask before a software rewrite, evolving 10+ year old code, and proving a business case when pitching software improvements as a developer. Helpful Links: Core Health Follow Anne Marie on Twitter Anne Marie in Forbes Subscribe to Maintainable on: Apple Podcasts Overcast Or search "Maintainable" wherever you stream your podcasts. Join the discussion in the Maintainable Discord Community Loving Ma...
Jun 24, 2019•23 min•Ep. 11
Robby speaks with Marco "Ocramius" Pivetta, a software consultant specializing in PHP. Marco gives his input on different types of technical debt he's seen, working with less experienced developers as a senior, and getting "kicked in the teeth" as a developer. He also shares what great senior devs should spend more time on (hint: It's not writing code). Helpful Links Follow Marco on Twitter Marco on Github [Book] Effective Java by Joshua Bloch [Book] Learn You a Haskell for Great Good!: A Beginn...
Jun 17, 2019•47 min•Ep. 10
Robby speaks with Lisa Crispin, co-author of Agile Testing and Testing Advocate at Mabl. Lisa speaks about "thinking skills" for developers, why testing professionals should be integrated into dev teams, testing and development cycles, and how to start building automated tests on a legacy application. Helpful Links Follow Lisa Crispin on Twitter Agile Testing Fellow Agile Testing with Lisa Crispin DevTestOps Community The Nightmare Headline Game by Elisabeth Hendrickson [Book] Agile Testing: A P...
Jun 10, 2019•39 min•Ep. 9
Robby speaks with Pim Elshoff, Software Developer at Procurios. Pim explains why developers should improve their communication skills when speaking with management, recalls his biggest mistake as a developer, and gives tips on explaining your side of an argument and how to listen to empathize. Helpful Links Follow Pim on Twitter Procurios Domain-Driven Design: Tackling Complexity in the Heart of Software by Eric Evans The Developer's Model for Talking to Managers at WebCamp Zagreb 2018 Subscribe...
Jun 03, 2019•41 min•Ep. 8
Robby speaks with Morgan Senkal, Software Architect at Metal Toad. Morgan recalls a challenging 15-year-old legacy project that was reminiscent of a Stephen King story and explains what to think about when considering a software rewrite. Morgan and Robby keep a running analogy of technical debt and automotive repairs. Helpful links Metal Toad Seven Languages in Seven Weeks: A Pragmatic Guide to Learning Programming Languages by Bruce Tate Black House by Stephen King Subscribe to Maintainable on:...
May 27, 2019•25 min•Ep. 7
Robby speaks with Eileen M. Uchitelle, Senior Software Engineer at Github and member of the Rails Core Team. You'll hear about Eileen's work upgrading Github from Rails 3.2 to 5.2, how Github prioritized the upgrade, and why teams should get ahead and upgrade to Rails 6. Helpful links Follow Eileen on Twitter Upgrading GitHub from Rails 3.2 to 5.2 Eileen's blog The Success of Open Source by Steven Weber Subscribe to Maintainable on: Apple Podcasts Overcast Or search "Maintainable" wherever you s...
May 20, 2019•34 min•Ep. 6
Robby speaks with Charity Majors, CTO of Honeycomb about her work as an Infrastructure Engineer, how Honeycomb was created, all about working and testing in production, and why software engineers should be "on call" for their code. Helpful links Follow Charity on Twitter Honeycomb The Honeycomb blog Charity's blog Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind Database Reliability Engineering Subscribe to Maintainable on: Apple Podcasts Overcast Or search "Maintainable" wherever you stream your podcasts....
May 13, 2019•34 min•Ep. 5
Robby speaks with Sahil Lavingia, Founder and CEO of Gumroad. Sahil has been transparent about the challenges of building a company – speaking on VC investments, layoffs, and more. Sahil talks about why he built Gumroad, adjusting development processes when your staff shrinks, working with VCs, and the future of Gumroad, including the pros and cons of potentially open sourcing the product. Helpful Links Follow Sahil on Twitter Gumroad Reflecting on My Failure to Build a Billion Dollar Company Hi...
May 06, 2019•45 min•Ep. 4
Robby speaks with Coraline Ada Ehmke, Principal Engineer at Stitch Fix and author of The Compassionate Coder. Coraline speaks about the social side of coding and empathy in open source and legacy projects. Robby and Coraline also walk through some possible scenarios on development teams and how to handle them with empathy. Helpful links: Follow Coraline on Twitter Coraline's website The Compassionate Coder by Coraline Ada Ehmke and Naomi Freeman Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture by...
Apr 29, 2019•30 min•Ep. 3
Robby sits down with James Smith, Co-Founder and CEO at Bugsnag, to discuss how to look at technical debt as a business cost, engineering processes in a startup vs. a stable company, and how the Bugsnag engineering team gets things done as a team with offices on two continents. Helpful Links: Bugsnag James Smith on Twitter Pre-Suasion by Robert Cialdini Subscribe to Maintainable on: Apple Podcasts Overcast Or search "Maintainable" wherever you stream your podcasts. Join the discussion in the Mai...
Apr 22, 2019•37 min•Ep. 2
Robby speaks with Anna Filina, a software consultant at Zenika Montreal who specializes in legacy code. They discuss why engineers don't have to ask permission to write tests, why convincing people to get on board with your technical plans matters, and what a "software archaeologist" really does. Helpful links: Working Effectively with Legacy Code by Michael Feathers Zenika Montreal Anna Filina on Twitter Anna Filina on Youtube Subscribe to Maintainable on: Apple Podcasts Overcast Or search "Mai...
Apr 15, 2019•36 min•Ep. 1
