Disclaimer: All opinions are my own Understanding your own code is hard enough, understanding someone else’s code is even harder. Obligatory XKCD. Fixing Problems xkcd.com is best viewed with Netscape Navigator 4.0 or below on a Pentium 3±1 emulated in Javascript on an Apple IIGS…xkcd.com If understanding code is hard, talking about code is even more difficult. It can be easy to fall into the trap of communicating with too much confidence when…

Disclaimer: All opinions are my own Having large amounts of work in progress is bad for software teams. I imagine this is true for plenty of disciplines, but it’s uniquely bad for software teams. Changes pile up Most meaningful features require several code changes and working through those changes, iterations of feedback from…

It matters what you can explain — Disclaimer: All opinions are my own I’ve worked with at least one “Wizard in the Corner” at every job I’ve had. You know who I’m talking about — the most senior, smartest, most experienced person on the team. They can answer every question, they can solve every problem, and they’re…

Disclaimer: All opinions are my own If you’ve worked in software for any amount of time you’ve heard the phrase, “We’ll have to rewrite it.” Or perhaps, “This is going to be a major rewrite.” Or, “I think we should rewrite this from the ground up.” …

Disclaimer: All opinions are my own I’ve seen this quite a bit lately in Kotlin code: And a year into writing Kotlin consistently, this looks like absolute black magic to me. The first time I saw this in a code review I criticized it was told it was idiomatic.

Disclaimer: All opinions are my own The appeal of cryptic puzzles I’m playing through Zelda: Breath of the Wild for the second time. I first played it when it came out before I had children and it took me a year to get through. Now I have children and less time to play video games…

Disclaimer: All opinions are my own I recently wrote about my process of learning about Bluetooth and some of the resources I’ve been using to get up to speed. Today I want to walk through another resource that I’ve found useful when learning about BLE advertisements and GATT — nRF…

Disclaimer: All opinions are my own As a complete aside, it seems like a missed opportunity that I haven’t been calling these long “complaints about Kotlin” posts, “Krabby Kotlin.” It’s clearly too late to change. So what can you do with a ?: in Kotlin? There’s the obvious stuff like…

Disclaimer: All opinions are my own This probably seems like obvious advice — after all, answering questions is why you’re in an interview. Let me tell a story to illustrate. A few years ago, I was interviewing for a new software engineering role. I’d done tons and tons of prep…