A Reading Club For Software Developers

One Way Smart Developers Make Bad Strategic Decisions

- Adam Gordon Bell

#Management
#Antipattern

tl;dr: "Tim is a very senior technical lead, and he’s good at his job. The problem put to him is: how do we make sure this doesn’t happen again?" Adam describes the problem - from a technical and organizational perspective - as well as what leads Tim to the common solution that doesn't actually solve the problem.

featured in #298

Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Phone Numbers

#Antipattern

tl;dr: 26 falsehoods including: (1) All individuals have a phone number. (2) You can call any phone number. (3) An individual has only one phone number. (4) A phone number uniquely identifies an individual. (5) Phone numbers cannot be re-used, and more.

featured in #243

Why Johnny Won't Upgrade

- Jacques Mattheij

#Antipattern

tl;dr: Why are users so reluctant to update software? Jacques believes "software vendors collectively royally messed it up," and has a list of specific reasons why software should be updated.

featured in #202

Five Code Review Antipatterns

- Trisha Gee

#Antipattern
#CodeReview

tl;dr: (1) Nit-picking (2) inconsistent feedback (3) last-minute design changes (4) ping-pong reviews (5) ghost reviewer.

featured in #182

50 years of RFCs

- Darius Kazemi

#Antipattern

tl;dr: The author is reading and analyzing a RFC each day for 365 days. RFC stands for Request for Comments and is "intended to invite conversation rather than stand as a record of authoritative ideas". RFCs were traditionally typewritten with hand-drawn diagrams, and sent via the postal service. ✉️📮

featured in #136

Performance Anti-Patterns: Base64 Encoding

- Doug Sillars