Practices
What Was Your First Programming Language?
These 24 open source technologists share their programming origin stories. We asked our contributors What was your first programming language? but the question goes much deeper than that. There are stories to tell about who suggested it or what prompted you to learn it. If you were paid to do so, and what happened next. Then there’s a lot …
How Different Programming Languages Read And Write Data
Every programming language has a unique way of accomplishing a task; that’s why there are so many languages to choose from. In his article How different programming languages do the same thing, Jim Hall demonstrates how 13 different languages accomplish the same exact task with different syntax. The lesson is that programming languages tend to have …
How To Avoid Waste When Writing Code
“The more we can reduce waste in software development, the better off everyone will be.” The long road toward quality is filled with diversions, false starts, and detours. The enemy of quality is waste, because waste is never desirable. No one pays anyone to deliver waste. We sometimes tolerate waste as part of the process …
A DevOps Guide To Documentation
Bring your documentation writing into the DevOps lifecycle. DevOps is challenging technical documentation norms like at no other time in IT history. From automation to increased delivery velocity to dismantling the waterfall software development lifecycle model, these all spell the need for making dramatic changes to business and the philosophy of technical documentation. Here are …
What Traits Distinguish An Awesome Programmer
What distinguishes great programmers from good ones? It’s a question I’ve been wrestling with since I began learning to program. I’ve written previously about the skills and knowledge great programmers have. Now I’m looking at the traits they possess. They seem to do things differently than the rest, and the results show. This blog post focuses on two …
Start Programming In Racket By Writing A “Guess The Number” Game
Racket is a great way to learn a language from the Scheme and Lisp families. I am a big advocate of learning multiple programming languages. That’s mostly because I tend to get bored with the languages I use the most. It also teaches me new and interesting ways to approach programming. Writing the same program …
DevOps On Google Cloud: Tools To Speed Up Software Development Velocity
Editor’s note: Today we hear from ForgeRock, a multinational identity and access management software company with more than 1,100 enterprise customers, including a major public broadcaster. In total, customers use the ForgeRock Identity Platform to authenticate and log in over 45 million users daily, helping them manage identity, governance, and access management across all platforms, including on-premises and …
How I Recognize And Prevent Burnout In Open Source
Stress and burnout can affect open source communities, but we can all help. I’ve attended many open source conferences over the years, and I usually find at least one session that discusses burnout, stress, or work-life balance. I’ve found many of these sessions helpful—not just personally, but I’ve also learned some important lessons for managing …
6 Examples Of Open Source Best Practices In Knowledge-Sharing Projects
Compare how six different knowledge-sharing communities approach gathering, maintaining, and distributing their best practices. As someone who has watched my fair share of projects and initiatives come and go, I value the follow-on effects of good knowledge sharing. Even knowledge from bygone projects is available to learn from the past; such is the benefit and …
How to Find The Stinky Parts Of Your Code (Part X)
More code smells. No joke. We see several symptoms and situations that make us doubt the quality of our development. Let’s look at some possible solutions. Most of these smells are just hints of something that might be wrong. They are not rigid rules. This is part V. Part I can be found here, Part II here, Part III is here, Part …