/Career Advice

Escaping Creative Downturns

- David Heinemeier Hansson tl;dr: "But as I've grown older, I've come to terms with the fact that it can't be eternal sunshine in the productive mind. You need to let weather pass. The grey, wet days of today soak the soil for the sun of tomorrow.”

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Best Career Advice

- Mike Fisher tl;dr: "I try to speak with a former colleague or acquaintance at least once per week... The benefit of this for me is the social aspect of catching up with an old friend and sharing some memories and some laughs. It is also a big benefit to me to hear what is happening in their industry or field. In this way I learn about emerging trends, hot topics, areas of concern, and opportunities." Mike discusses how this has helped his career. 

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Back Of The Envelope

tl;dr: “The back of the envelope calculation is commonly used to evaluate different architectural designs. Although the optimal design depends on the system requirements, the back of the envelope calculation provides an opportunity to compare different architectural designs without prototyping.”

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Rules Of Thumb For Software Development Estimations

- Vadim Kravcenko tl;dr: “Who am I to tell you how to estimate projects? I can only give you some pointers and describe some things that worked well for me over the years. So that’s exactly what I will do — give you some rules of thumb to make your life easier.”

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Using ChatGPT As A Technical Writing Assistant

- Mike Mason tl;dr: An experienced technical author explores using ChatGPT to assist with a number of writing projects. He finds ChatGPT can provide time-savings through drafts and prompting for additional content, but lacks accuracy and depth - as well as suffering from bubbly optimism. Overall it is useful if you work iteratively, asking for small chunks with well-crafted prompts.

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Sources Of Complexity: Constraints

- Hillel Wayne tl;dr: “While people like coming up with grand theories of complexity, there’s very little info out there on the nitty-gritty specific sources of complexity… I think a lot about the different sources of complexity. This article is about one particular source.”

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Is Critical Thinking The Most Important Skill For Software Engineers?

- Gergely Orosz tl;dr: “If someone cannot explain a concept without jargon, I now doubt they truly understand what they are talking about. The true test of properly understanding a given topic is whether you can teach it to someone else. Explaining your thoughts without the use of jargon - or gradually introducing jargon - is a form of teaching, as you need to adopt to someone who has less domain knowledge.” Gergely provides us with 4 tips on how to improve our critical thinking skills.

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Rescuing A Project In Progress

- Jason Fried tl;dr: “This isn't about calling in reinforcements or adding more resources. This is about stopping, slowing down, eliminating the spread of attention, honing in, and driving to completion.” Jason discusses the importance of establishing "completion discipline" in projects.

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The Silent Killer Of Your Operating Practice: Fear

- Amanda Schwartz Ramirez tl;dr: Amanda creates example scenarios and ways of mitigating 5 common fears: (1) Fear of failure. (2) Fear of losing control. (3) Fear of conflict. (4) Fear of losing credibility. (5) Fear of missing something.

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90% Of My Skills Are Now Worth $0

- Kent Beck tl;dr: “In fact, I believe that our skills as software developers are more valuable than ever before. While AI tools like ChatGPT can certainly automate routine tasks and help us be more efficient, they can never replace the human creativity and expertise that is essential to delivering high-quality software products.” Kent expands on this.

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