Accidentally in Code

Category: Programming

  • All the Leaves are Brown and the Sky is Gray

    All the Leaves are Brown and the Sky is Gray

    It’s a weird thing to reflect on my career and realize that very little of the code I wrote is still in production – because very few of the things I worked on are still in production. Most of the products I have worked on have failed. We build with bits not bricks. Architects and…

  • Android: Testing an Intent Service

    Android: Testing an Intent Service

    There’s a handy thing in Espresso called the ServiceTestRule, which is for testing Services. Yay. I thought it was just what I needed until I read this bit of the documentation… OK, first up – refactoring my IntentService. This class already did very little, poking something else depending on the kind of Intent it received, and…

  • Creative Coding Podcast

    Creative Coding Podcast

    I was on another podcast! This time, creative coding with @seb_ly [listen]. We talked about managing coders, color theory, side projects, lasers, being homeless, interviewing (and applied humaning). It was really fun (but cold!) to record, and I hope you enjoy it.

  • 4 Situations Where Managers Write Code

    4 Situations Where Managers Write Code

    The two hardest things about becoming a manager have been: 1) the emotional exhaustion, and 2) letting go of the part of my identity that was tied up in writing code. I accepted that writing code wasn’t the best thing I could do reasonably quickly, but it took longer to finally stop saying I was…

  • Testing Intents on Android: Like Stabbing Yourself in the Eye With A Blunt Implement

    Testing Intents on Android: Like Stabbing Yourself in the Eye With A Blunt Implement

    The picture above shows what am I testing: the home screen of my app. There is a camera button, a gallery button and an inspire button. All of these launch intents, but the camera and gallery buttons launch intents that are expected to return something – an image – either from the camera or the…

  • I Wrote a Book Chapter and Finally, You Can Read It

    I Wrote a Book Chapter and Finally, You Can Read It

    My 2014 side project was a technical book chapter on image processing for the Architecture of Open Source 500 Lines or Less Project. It was my bête noire, that consumed various evenings and weekends either by actual work, or by guilt. 2015 was mainly guilt, and some editing. Recently the final copy edits came back,…

  • Thankless Emotional Labour as Management Training

    Thankless Emotional Labour as Management Training

    My first month as a manager I barely had time to think about how I didn’t really know what I was doing, because there was so much that clearly needed to be done. So I accepted that stuff was not writing code, and got on with it. Month two opened, and I kept getting on…

  • Interview Prep Tips

    Interview Prep Tips

    I have done a lot of technical interviews. And mainly I think that interviewers have to change, but I do have some suggestions for interviewees. Ages ago I wrote up my prep list for interviewing at The Conglomerate, which is comprehensive, and frankly excessive. This is the short version with the benefit of spending more…

  • Bad Interviews are a Company Problem, not a Candidate Problem

    Bad Interviews are a Company Problem, not a Candidate Problem

    We know technical interviewing is a problem but rather than asking interviewers to do better, a lot of suggested solutions push that problem off onto people we interview rather than those who are doing the interviewing. This comes up a lot because the hiring process is the second most popular place to improve “diversity” after…