In this article, I’ll briefly summarize the traditional arguments around certification, and then talk about why I think that’s the wrong conversation to be having about these things.
Soft Skills
An Open Letter to Our Bootcamp Grads
This is an open letter to Cohort 11 of Tech Elevator’s Columbus Campus. Tech Elevator is a 14 week programming bootcamp teaching .NET or Java, SQL, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and Vue.js. This particular cohort was the first class I was privileged to teach software development to.
Podcast: Weekly Dev Tips – Software Quality Defense in Depth
I had the opportunity to record a podcast appearance with Steve Smith back in January where I discuss the concept of defense in depth as it applies to software quality. That went live recently on WeeklyDevTips and I encourage you to give it a listen.
How to Start Your New Job Strong
Starting a new job can be exciting, intimidating, and frustrating. The first few weeks can set the tone for how you are perceived in the organization as well as your opportunities to succeed in your new role. Here are my thoughts on how to start strong at your new job.
Video: .NET Unit Testing Libraries
I’ve uploaded a technical talk on unit testing .NET code and some strategies and libraries that can be helpful when working with .NET and .NET Core code.
Learning Guide for Remote Work
This week with more and more people trending to remote work as a preference and now, with COVID-19, out of necessity / responsibility, I partnered with Pluralsight to author a short guide on learning while remote. I can’t host it here, but if you’re curious, check it out for some tips I’ve found helpful throughout the years.
Changing Careers
Career changes are huge, but you don’t have to go into them blind. In this article I’ll discuss some strategies I’ve used recently to evaluate a change in careers, figure out if you might like the change, find ways to safely practice and grow the skills you’d need, and then finally potentially make that leap in changing your career.
Upcoming Talk: Technical Debt Must Die @ Stir Trek
I am pleased to announce that I have been accepted as a speaker at Stir Trek 2020. This will be an expanded and revised version of the talk I gave this year at CodeMash 2020, which is currently live on Pluralsight. If you’ll be in Columbus on May 1st, please come and check it out and say hi afterwards.
The Myth of the T-Shaped Developer
In this article I’ll explore the pros of cons of generalizing, specializing, being a so-called T-shaped developer, as well as introducing the term “comb-shaped” which I believe is a more accurate picture of a developer career.
Laptop Performance Matters
Let’s cut to the chase: the performance of developer machines matters a lot more than many people think it does.