yegor256 podcast

No matter what kind of enterprise you are working in, you won't like what's happening around you: chaos, lack of control, lack of logic, and so on. Don't expect them to improve. Instead, find a place for yourself and make changes there. Be the leader of the changes and earn yourself karma points. The video is here: https://youtu.be/SuAM9J2cTDo

Most managers are incompetent, lazy, and stupid. If you expect them to tell you what to do, you will have a lot of frustration. Because they don't know and they don't want to know. The solution is simple: start planning everything yourself and show them your plans. In most cases, they will be happy to leave you alone and let you do what you want. If it will be open-source, you will have a double w...

Having a good source code repo in GitHub is not enough if you want your users to trust you and use your product. They expect you to deploy it somewhere where you can't delete it. Maven Central is a good example of such storage. If your binary artifacts are not there, your users will have serious concerns about whether to use your libraries or not. The video is here: https://youtu.be/iFx2-U8fsrE

When they say that we are working for a big goal and that's why we don't use fine-grained metrics, be aware: you are dealing with an incompetent manager or an architect. Their job is to decompose larger tasks into smaller pieces, instead of feeding us stories about "Big Goals". The video is here: https://youtu.be/kPTKT3jOG7c

Do you still wonder what is the best license to use for your new open-source product? GPL, BSD, Apache? Stop thinking about this. It doesn't matter. Just use the most simple one: MIT. The video is here: https://youtu.be/vBOg8_nGDls

There are three strategies to get into open source when you are just starting. They didn't work for me. There is the fourth one, which I would suggest you try. I didn't try it myself, but I'm sure it's much more effective than the first three. The video is here: https://youtu.be/IeoYXstRvzw

Most of us think that the programmers' performance can't be measured. We can't, they say, put a number on a person. I believe, we can and must. Just like any other job, software development has to be measured. The question is which metrics to use in order to do this objectively and effectively. In one of my recent blog posts, I suggested a number of metrics, which can be used individually or all t...

GitHub is the place you should keep your code at, no matter how perfect or complete it is. Small scripts, short documentation pages, some notes, simple documents: they all may be there, they all may be interesting for your followers. Don't wait until you have a complete library to open source, start smaller. The video is here: https://youtu.be/xFXW5j2x7XI

We all work with some legacy and boring code. In most cases we can't decide what to work with, since this is what the business is paying for. Making small open source projects may become a great solution to deal with the boresome of the legacy: make them on your own and be the architect there, and have fun! The video is here: https://youtu.be/qJxDV1TrEGE

A static analyzer is not a "nice" tool generating fancy statistics, which you can show to your boss and get back to work. A static analyzer is supposed to be a punisher for you for the mistakes you make. The video is here: https://youtu.be/7rtQ4yQVAK0

If you have a good product to open source, don't do it in one go. Instead, take pieces out of it and open them slowly. This is how you buy your freedom from your organization and learn how to do open source, avoiding big mistakes. The video is here: https://youtu.be/VuJNBXPnRy8

Your main goal as a creator of an open-source project is to prepare it for the users and contributors who will come after you. You will not stay with your project forever. You may not even stay with is for a few years. You don't want the project to die, do you? Just make it look attractive for future users and it will live forever. The video is here: https://youtu.be/kV5j4Uysivo

The product you develop is very important. But the way you format and present your repository on GitHub is equally (or even more) important. This is how you attract contributors: by making your project look well-organized on GitHub. The video is here: https://youtu.be/elOkw1OYd_U

It is inevitable: open source is how we will be developing software in the future. Nobody will pay for software, but only for services around it. You have to join this new market as soon as possible. The video is here: https://youtu.be/JBdtSAJjFaU

Open source projects are the best places for training programmers and helping them grow their soft and tech skills. If you want to convince your management to allow you to work in an open-source, use this argument: your skills will only grow if your code is open. The video is here: https://youtu.be/D12gi1x6Cdw

Venkat Subramaniam is a famous software expert, a regular speaker at software conferences, a book writer, and a software architect/programmer. He shares his views about self-development.

When you see the code that needs improvements you, as a good programmer, fix it because you don't want the bad quality to stay in your project. However, this good intent only harms the project. When you work in a team, you are not allowed to do what is not approved by the project. Every time you see an opportunity for refactoring, make a ticket and let the project decide when and who will do it. T...

Very often, those who read about Zerocracy and watch my videos, ask me whether I believe that the management model we are promoting, is applicable to real projects. They sometimes call it utopian and unrealistic. I suggest you look at it as a picture of an ideal software world, which may become your world if you try to apply it to your work, piece by piece. Try harder! :) The video is here: https:...

Independent technical reviews, which you may get in Zerocracy, won't help you find bugs in your software, this is what testers are for. They will help you understand how far your code base from the industry standards applicable to your tech stack. Most teams tend to do things in their own special way, which is a huge threat to maintainability. Don't wait until it's too late, start now. The video i...

Most CTOs and project managers I'm talking to believe that their teams "are doing fine" and don't need any audits. This means only one thing: they are incompetent managers. Professional managers know that "doing fine" now doesn't mean that the team doesn't have hidden and currently invisible defects, which will cost a lot, in the future. The job of a professional manager is to regularly identify p...

There are many reasons why people are being active in social networks, like Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, or Telegram channels. Some of them even have their own blogs or YouTube channels, like me. Some of them are having fun, but my primary objective of doing this and publishing my ideas online is that this activity helps me structure my thinking and make it more logical. I have thousands of censo...

Most companies suffer from the legacy code they inherit from software teams that disband or programmers just quick. Companies have to do something with the software and they can't throw it away. Most of them hire full-timers to support the code, maintain, and hope that they will improve it. This won't happen. Full-timers are not interested in doing that and they won't. If you want your code base t...

Very often I hear managers saying that if you even try to punish programmers for their mistakes they will quit and you will have no team. This may only happen to junior or lazy programmers. Professional software engineers are interested in being challenged and rewards+punishment is what constitutes a challenge. And the challenge is what motivates us, technical people, to work. The video is here: h...

Our bosses what us to be productive, effective, and deliver results. However, the question is whether they can make us do it or not. When they hire us as full-timers and pay us for a full month of our time in the office, they can't do anything to force us to work. They can only rely on our desire to be "good soldiers." For some people, this may work, but true professionals are always smarter than...

Junior programmers usually don't know where to start in order to practice, learn how to code, and work with professionals. They can't find the right project to contribute to. I'm suggesting you find a project, which is ready to reject your mistakes, no matter what. We have such projects, which are owned and managed by our best programmers, in Zerocracy. Join our Telegram chat and ask, there will b...