Networking
Not the meeting people kind of networking - the kind where you send messages over the internet. Although I suppose people meet each other that way too.
[Read More]
Kat’s Blog
I’m a software engineer that doesn’t really write software anymore. Find me at @katstevens@mastodon.social.
-
-
Onboarding self-reflection time
This week I was chatting with a colleague who’d recently moved team. As you’d expect they had a whole bunch of new stuff to learn and new people to meet, and the first week was pretty full-on. It’s easy to get overwhelmed and feel like you’re not contributing much, especially... [Read More] -
Firebreak
Our team are currently ‘on firebreak’. What on earth is that? [Read More] -
Giving difficult feedback
In my previous post on giving written feedback, I said that giving ‘difficult’ feedback deserved a blog post of its own. Here it is! But read the other post first if you haven’t already, for some context. [Read More] -
Confidence and privilege
I like to think of myself as a confident person, but this wasn’t always the case, at least in a professional context. [Read More] -
A Touch of Motivation
Since March, my preferred form of exercise (swimming) has been mostly unavailable. Between March and July, I sampled a different celebrity exercise video from Youtube, every Sunday. My rule was that the celebrity had to be famous for doing something other than exercise videos (so no Joe Wicks or Rosemary... [Read More] -
What’s in my bash profile?
This blog post feels like telling people how often I clean the bathroom*. Bash profiles are where hacks and bad habits live, right? [Read More] -
Writing a manual page from scratch
Good developers don’t have to be good writers. While writing docs, READMEs (and blogs!) comes fairly easily to me, I know a lot of devs struggle with it, especially when there’s a blank page just sitting there, waiting for some text. [Read More] -
My ideal manual
I’ve been thinking about developer docs for the past few weeks, and how they can be improved. To do that, we have to know ‘what good looks like’. Here’s my short definition of a good developer manual: [Read More] -
Happy 6th Birthday Digital Marketplace!
It’s been an interesting 12 months since Digital Marketplace’s last birthday, not least because I’ve since moved team to GOV.UK Pay. I intend to post more about my new team later this month, but after three years of procurement fun I should say a proper goodbye to DMP first. [Read More] -
Causing problems on purpose
Our household is fond of the Untitled Goose Game and its refreshing moral approach. The idea is to complete a number of tasks designed to annoy the townsfolk as much as possible. [Read More] -
Giving written feedback
It’s another November, and another NaBloPoMo attempt. This year I haven’t ordered any Pokemon games to arrive halfway through the month, but given it’s 3rd November already, evidentially I’m not going to do a post every day. Consider your expectations managed! [Read More] -
Learning Off The Clock
So as you’ve probably noticed, my NaBloPoWriMo posting has tailed off in the last couple of weeks. This is partly because I’ve been busy, and partly because my copy of Pokemon Shield arrived a fortnight ago. When I’ve had some downtime, the last thing I want to think or write... [Read More] -
Recursive Triangles
A kata is another name for a programming exercise. Usually they’re designed to help highlight or hone a particular programming technique such as pairing or tests. [Read More] -
Dijkstra's Shortest Path algorithm
Cast your mind back a couple of decades… [Read More] -
Python decorators
Let’s talk about Python decorators! [Read More] -
When to use a class
“When should you use a class in a script, and when should you just bash it out?” [Read More] -
Manual Spaniel
On an active project, technical documentation can go stale pretty quickly. Stuff gets iterated! Stuff gets upgraded! Throwaway chunks of code become key production features! Key production features get deleted once they are found to be not so key as originally thought! [Read More] -
Real-time Architecture Diagrams
Last week I drew a large diagram of the Digital Marketplace’s technical architecture on a whiteboard, for the benefit of some people outside the team (and some people relatively new to the team). It took me about 15 minutes to draw it, as we have a lot of components. At... [Read More] -
Reading vs Reviewing
Our team produces on average a dozen pull requests a day, sometimes more if one change needs to be replicated across many apps. I try and read all of them. Yes, all of them. [Read More] -
Meeting free afternoon
I didn’t write a blog post yesterday as I was busy celebrating the Digital Marketplace turning 5 with my team! I was quizmaster at our party, which meant I got to ask questions like “How many disco balls do I keep on my desk?“1 and see if everyone has been... [Read More] -
Coding vs Engineering
I mentioned yesterday that ‘a big part of my job is talking to people’. So far this week I have done zero programming in terms of writing code. But I have been doing quite a lot of software engineering, in just 2 days! [Read More] -
Music while coding
Despite working in an open plan office, I don’t tend to wear headphones at work much these days. This is partly because quite a big part of my job is talking to people, but mainly I am nosey and want to overhear conversations people are having around me. I especially... [Read More] -
Detective Pikachu
I don’t make it out to the cinema very often these days, but I try to make an exception for films where Jason Statham blows something up, or where the film is a loose adaptation of a Nintendo game. DETECTIVE PIKACHU (2019, dir. R. Letterman) is a cracking example of... [Read More] -
My Ideal Function
Us Python programmers are quite lucky, I think. We’re allowed to do pretty much whatever we like with our functions, as long as there’s a def at the top. But with great power comes great responsibility! I’ve seen some pretty rotten functions in my time, including ones I have written... [Read More] -
Percentage of Caring
It’s National Blog Post Month! Let’s see how many posts I can churn out in November… [Read More] -
Scaling in swimming pools
This week, our platform was dealing with about 17 times the amount of traffic it normally gets. We scaled up the number of apps powering the platform, and aside from the odd bumpy patch here and there, the site hung on and did its job. [Read More] -
A typical Thursday
The last month has been pretty busy for me - I’ve been on two teams, one of which has been launching a big project, and there’s been a lot to do. A few weeks ago I tried to capture my day (in bullet point form!) to give people an idea... [Read More]