DjangoGuys

The Purpose of Formatting

In general programmes are pretty smart people. Smart people sometimes like to show off their smarts by demonstrating their mental juggling abilities. After all, if you can reliably remember that r is the lower-cased version of url with the host and scheme removed, then you must clearly be very smart.  One difference between a smart programmer and a professional programmer is that the professional understands that clarity is king. Professionals use their powers for good and write code that others can understand.

Clean code always looks like it was written by someone who cares

If you don’t understand prototypes, you don’t understand JavaScript.

What sucks, now, about web development? How will we fix it? Can we fix it with Python?

Go see if your weaknesses are hindering you at your job. Ie. I wasn’t great at planning or product management at this time. Fix them or move to another position. Also, constantly ask yourself how can I make the company more valuable. You do that and you will never get fired*. *unless you do something really stupid or the company goes out of business

The BEST way to get famous is make amazing stuff. That’s it. Not blogging, networking, etc.

What is unit tests?

Be humble. Always first presume that you’re wrong. While developers do make mistakes, and as a new hire you should certainly assist others in catching and correcting mistakes, you should try to ensure that you’re certain of your observation before proudly declaring your find. It is enormously damaging to your credibility when you cry wolf. Be discreet with constructive criticism. A developer is much more likely to be accept casual suggestions and quiet leading questions than they are if the same is emailed to the entire group. Widening the audience is more likely to yield defensiveness and retribution. The team is always considering what your motives are, and you will be called on it and exiled if you degrade the work of others for self-promotion. The best way to earn credibility and respect is through hard work and real results. Cheap, superficial substitutes — like best practice emails sent to all, or passing comments about how great it would be to implement some silver bullet — won’t yield the same effect, and are more easily neutralized. Actions speak louder than words. Simply talking about implementing a team blog, or a wiki, or a new source control mechanism, or a new technology, is cheap. Everyone knows that you’re just trying to claim ownership of the idea when someone eventually actually does the hard work of doing it, and they’ll detest you for it. If you want to propose something, put some elbow grease behind it. For instance, demonstrate the foundations of a team blog, including preliminary usage guidelines, and a demonstration of all of the supporting technologies. This doesn’t guarantee that the initiative will fly, and the effort might be for naught, but the team will identify that it’s actual motivation and effort behind it, rather than an attempt at some easy points. There is no one-size-fits-all advice. Not every application is a high-volume e-commerce site. Just because that’s the most common best-practices subject doesn’t mean that it’s even remotely the best design philosophies for the group you’re joining.