video

IDE tips to save you from disaster

5 Features to save you from Disaster

I'm working on creating a training course for IntelliJ IDEA (I've been working on it for a while now, I don't really want to talk to much about it because I'm not sure when I'll actually deliver it). Anyway, as I was thinking through Features You Really Need To Know, I realised that it's not really about code completion and code generation, it's about those features that will get you out of a big, deep hole that you've dug yourself into.

So, I put together my top five features that have saved my bacon, and recorded a video for the Continuous Delivery channel. I have asked around and these features should work for all JetBrains IDEs, not just IntelliJ IDEA.

As usual, I have included the transcript below so you can skim it and skip to the bits that interest you.

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Staying Relevant in the Tech Industry

Thumbnail image for the video "Staying Relevant in Tech"

My latest video for the Continuous Delivery YouTube channel is about staying up to date in tech. For the last couple of years, all anyone can talk about is AI, and it can make you feel like you're becoming irrelevant if you're not learning or using AI. Don't worry, this is a feeling that is pretty much constant in tech, and is not specifically related to the hype around AI. So I dusted off an old talk, which was based on an older blog post, about how to stay up to date in technology, and condensed it to a twelve-minute YouTube video (transcript below, if you prefer to read). Enjoy.

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Reading Code Is Hard, and tips to improve

We spend more time reading code than writing it

This week's video for Dave Farley's Continuous Delivery YouTube channel is me ranting about why reading code sucks, and offering some advice on how to improve.

"Every programmer occasionally, when nobody’s home, turns off the lights, pours a glass of scotch, puts on some light German electronica, and opens up a file on their computer. They read over the lines, and weep at their beauty…."

https://www.stilldrinking.org/programming-sucks

The original idea for this video is from my presentation Reading Code Is Harder Than Writing It, and from my blog post Reading Code is a Skill, an older post which has only become more relevant in the modern age of AI.

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Are Developer Productivity and Developer Joy opposites?

A few glasses of fizzy were consumed during the JetBrains party at Devoxx Belgium last year:

Holly: You do presentations about productivity, and about developer happiness, and I do presentations about developer joy. We should do a presentation together!

Me: Yes! What a fantastic idea! Two titans of the London Java Community co-presenting on a topic that excites us both!

This is the story of how that went

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Flaky tests are poisoning your productivity

Picture of Trisha's face frowning and the title "Flaky Tests"

I freaking HATE flaky tests.

The first time I worked in an environment that had real Continuous Integration with Actual Automated Tests that Actually Ran, it was like... freedom. We literally got the green light that our new code was working as expected, and that any changes we made hadn't broken anything. And refactoring... before then, I don't think I had ever really refactored anything. Even a simple rename was fraught with danger, you never knew if reflection or some sort of odd log-file parsing was dependent upon specific class or method names. With a comprehensive suite of unit, acceptance and performance tests, we had this blissful safety net that would tell us "Everything Is OK" after we'd done simple or extensive refactoring.

Except.

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What do you mean, Backwards Compatibility? (YOW 2013)

YOW recorded me, yet again, talking about the adventure that is the design of the new Java Driver for MongoDB. This is the same talk I gave at GeeCON and DevoxxUK, with some updates based on our Journey So Far. In it, I cover the architecture of the new driver and some of our current thoughts around where we want the API to go.

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