Developers should help developers avoid burnout — Developer overworking is the plague of software development Developer burnout is growing and I see little being done to reduce this. The amount of software being created is growing by a growing a number of developers. The number of developers burning out will continue to grow. Developers overworking for free…

Do humble developers exist? — We must be very careful when we give advice to younger people: sometimes they follow it! — Edsger W. Dijkstra I would love to shake a humble developer by the hand. I have spent 20 years looking and only found cowboy developers, angry developers, developers who are never wrong and…

The danger of decisions you don’t have to make — “The average person spends two weeks over their lifetime waiting for the traffic light to change.” ~ Tom Waits It’s a mistake for developers to accept responsibility for other peoples decisions. When you decide, you become responsible for the consequences. This is a no-win situation. …

Avoiding stupid development mistakes is easier than creating great software — Life is hard. It’s harder when you’re stupid. John Wayne The irony of software development is it's not by stupid people, it’s made by clever, intelligent and experienced professionals in various roles. Being intelligent or clever is not a reliable defence against making stupid decisions and doing stupid things. Some…

Knowing what to do isn’t the same as being able to do it — Good code solves more problems than it creates Software development world is full of noise. Articles about new technology, new features, new tools, changes. There are videos, tutorials, how to guides. What developers should consider is knowledge can be useful but it's not as valuable as learning by doing. Lots…

Software development hell is fun because it's hard — Go to software heaven for the coffee, Software hell for the company Software development dreams of heaven, whilst leaving in hell. To create software you have to fight your way through hell on the way to the promised the land. The promised land of the software being used in production…

“It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near one.” — J.R.R. Tolkien Software projects are full of people, activities and meetings that don’t help the software team create software. Reports, plans, meetings and other activities slow down development, stopping developers doing…

Quiet developers who make the team better — There is a bias in software development, to believe the loudest developers are the best developers It's common to view software development as a technical process with the output of developers measured in story points, code and software created. Development harmonisers are the developers who make other developers work better…

The slow death of trying to overwork your problems — The indiscipline of overwork is the falsest of economies — John Steinbeck The developer who doesn't value their time will run out of it. Time is the key limitation in creating software. The more time spent on non-development tasks, the less time you have to create software. Good development teams…