The online whiteboard of Kristofer Palmvik
One of the first systems our engineers built in AWS is called the Chaos Monkey. The Chaos Monkey’s job is to randomly kill instances and services within our architecture. If we aren’t constantly testing our ability to succeed despite failure, then it isn’t likely to work when it matters most – in the event of an unexpected outage.
Deep down inside every software developer, there’s a budding graphic designer waiting to get out. And if you let that happen, you’re in trouble.
Chrome’s version number has been changing so rapidly lately that every time someone opens a Chrome bug on a Stack Exchange site, I have to check my version against theirs just to make sure we’re still talking about the same software. And once – I swear I am not making this up – the version incremented while I was checking the version.
Ted, among other things, famously coined the phrase "Object-Relational mapping is the Vietnam of our industry" in late 2004. It’s a scary analogy, but an apt one. (via Coding Horror: Object-Relational Mapping is the Vietnam of Computer Science)
I am continually amazed how much better my code becomes after I’ve had a peer look at it. I don’t mean a formal review in a meeting room, or making my code open to anonymous public scrutiny on the internet, or some kind of onerous pair programming regime. Just one brief attempt at explaining and showing my code to a fellow programmer – that’s usually all it takes.
If you’re serious about programming, you should demand to work with your peers.