If you struggle to read the code, how the hell are you meant to fix it #HoskWisdom

Code readability is an important quality of good code, it’s a subjective topic which varies between developers.

If code is easy to read, it will be easy to understand and easy to debug, maintain and extend. Writing complicated code is easy, writing simple code is harder and takes longer.

Learning to make code readable/understandable is difficult for inexperienced developers because it can be difficult to quantify the differences between readable code and un-readable code.

You can spot good code and bad code but when asked to explain why some code is good and other code is bad a lot of developers will shrug there shoulders and just say “Because it is”. Similar to when you know something isn’t right, it doesn’t feel right but you are not sure why. …

Focus on business, people, customers and then technology, in that order #HoskWisdom

when we focus on a delivering the project, we miss the goal of the project. Think beyond the project, focus on the helping the business be successful and use technology to help.

Project

Projects involve people, time and expense, they take time and effort. The measurement of success becomes delivering the project and this becomes the focus of the project. Everyone focuses on delivering the project, forgetting the real goal of a project. …

Ninety-nine percent of the time it’s not urgent, and to create a culture where you are constantly plugged in and expected to be always-on is to create a culture of burnout. Arianna Huffington

If you try to do everything yourself, you will end up doing 2 or 3 jobs and having working all day and all night. Eventually you stop and ask, why am I working so hard, all it gets me is more work.

Deadlines create stress or having more work than you can do. The common solution is to out work the problem, to keep up with the increased workload. This is a temporary solution which treats the symptoms but not the root cause. …

Sometimes it’s those who don’t ask for help, who need it most #HoskWisdom

The difference between someone in water waving and drowning is small, but the difference could lead to life and death. How many times do you see people and teams complaining, but are they waving or drowning?

Conflicting teams

IT projects are stressful, delivered to tight deadlines. Teams need to get their work done, but depend on other teams to complete the project. Teams need to focus on their own work to ensure it’s done correctly, on time and to a high level. The dilemma to individual teams is if the other teams don’t finish their work, the complete solution won’t work. …

Requirements create estimates, estimates create plans, plans create projects, projects create problems because the requirements, estimates, plans and projects were wrong #HoskCodeWisdom

IT projects go wrong, you can’t avoid it but you can prepare for mistakes, get feedback helps you learn, improve and create a solution suited to the customer needs. You can’t get all the requirements up front, for a technical team to design and estimate a solution correctly and then deliver it without any significant problems is crazy.

The requirements and solution develop the more you investigate and build. The solution delivered at the end is never like the solution specified at the beginning. …

All I want to know is how this project will fail, so I can avoid doing that #HoskWisdom

Project plans have goals, milestones and deliverables. They have optimistic paths into the future and run into trouble when the inevitable problems jump up and smash you in the face.

Predict your potential problems and you can resolve them before they become problems. Focus on what might go wrong and you can create plans to prepare for it. Do your thinking before the event when you have time and you will have the answers ready for when you have to act.

Mike Tyson warns of the danger of project…

Life is balancing short-term needs and long-term goals #HoskWisdom

Short-term goals are getting your project work done and long-term goals move your career forward. You need to make time for both and minimise the conflict between them to progress your career.

Short-term goals are doing the tasks you need to do for your job, you need to do them and do them well.

We need to step into the short-term goals, understand the details, and get the work done immediately.

Projects

Working on IT projects, there are priorities and short-term goals that we need to hit the project deadlines. Projects will always have more work to do, there will always be something else to do. …

“We see people not as they are, but as they appear to us. And these appearances are usually misleading.” ― Robert Greene

This post is the notes I made from chapter 1 — Master your emotions from the The Laws of Human Nature by Robert Greene. It’s a mixture of quotes from the chapter and my notes on the chapter

Emotions dominate your actions, if you don’t control them. Controls your emotions or they will control you.

Your emotions make you react to situations.

Instead you should strategically observe, think and respond to the situation.

“You are largely unaware of how deeply your emotions dominate you. They make you veer towards ideas that soothe your ego. They make you look for evidence that confirms what you already believe” Robert…