Detailed Notes
🎉 Thank You for 900 Episodes! 🎉 We’re excited to celebrate our 900th episode of Building Better Developers — and it’s all thanks to you, our listeners and viewers, who’ve supported us along the way.
In this milestone episode, Rob Broadhead and Michael Meloche revisit “Building a Strong Developer Toolkit – Enhancing Skills and Productivity” with fresh insights into enhancing developer productivity in today’s AI-driven world.
💡 What you’ll discover in this episode: • The core technical tools every developer should master (Git, IDEs, debugging tools, linters). • How code quality and security checks boost productivity. • Why problem-solving and documentation separate coders from developers. • The role of soft skills like emotional intelligence and mentorship. • How continuous learning and AI tools can accelerate growth.
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đź“Ś YouTube Chapters
00:00 – Pre-show banter & setup 03:00 – Rob’s new assessment tool 07:20 – Episode intro: Building a Strong Developer Toolkit 09:00 – Good Thing / Bad Thing (Rob & Michael) 12:40 – Why the developer toolkit matters 13:00 – Core tools: Git, IDEs, debuggers, linters 18:30 – Beyond code: problem-solving & documentation 23:00 – Soft skills: teamwork, saying no, mentorship 30:00 – Continuous learning & using AI effectively 34:50 – Wrap-up & bonus tips
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✅ Don’t forget to like, subscribe, and share if you’ve enjoyed the journey with us so far! 👉 Explore more resources at https://develpreneur.com/enhancing-developer-productivity/
Transcript Text
Well, hello. This is Rob, one of the founders of the developer. Michael's going to have his little piece to say in a second, but I just want to say thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much as this is episode 900. That's 900. There are dozens and hundreds and probably thousands, even millions of podcasts that don't even get close to this. Thank you so much for your time, for your patience, for putting up with us, for seeing us evolve from episode one to episode 900, season essentially zero to now we're in season 25. And we're not done yet. But I do want to just celebrate for a second this this achievement and say thank you because you guys have been hanging out and made it possible. Hey everyone, this is Michael. Hey, again, like Rob said, this is episode 900. We are so grateful for all of you that have been following us all these years and listening to us rant and rave about all things developer, developers, you know, how to help you become a better developer, better entrepreneur. We can't express how grateful we are. And again, please continue to follow us. We're not going anywhere. And enjoy this episode. [Music] But there we go because we have to hit record. So there we virtually hit record. And now let's see. We offer ideas for a podcast episode for developer [Music] um aka Dann, but I know somebody that was recently doing some chat chieft posts or discussions and dramatically misspelled or meaningfully misspelled a word and chat GPT actually called them on it and it was like I think you mean this and then totally went like totally corrected and was like okay here's where we need to go with the conversation I was like damn that's pretty good so it's like okay for a podcast episode with this as the title and we're going to do building a strong developer toolkit enhancing skills and productivity. Let's see see come back with the here's some engaging episode structure and content ideas. Let's see if this is going to give me what I sort of want. Yeah, it's funny how it goes. Yeah, it goes back and forth. Sometimes it gives me like a 10point thing. This one is giving me like a looks like a sixpoint thing. So, let me turn it into the slack here. Gosh, that's a good little thing. I got to figure out a meaning for that. What? Slackable. >> Slackable. I just made that word up. I'm like, dang, I should like copyright it and find out a meaning for it. Okay, so let's see. Am I good? Uh, let me try a little more white just in case. >> What? >> Why can I start it? What' you do? Did you register? Why did it not go the first time? Interesting. Uh, scroll down all the way down. Uh, get us uh retake assessment. There you go. So, that's assess. Huh. So, >> that you registered H. All right. I got Look at that. >> Well, since we caught some of that on the pre-show, you want to uh talk about some of your exciting news there? >> Yeah, I think since we got that, let me check that real quick while I'm doing this and see if I can reproduce that. So, we have had I've been working on this for a bit. Um, and it's going to be you can catch it by the time this comes out because I will probably have reset it and then do it again. Um, you can let me make sure I've got an email address that makes sense. Uh, as I'm doing this, this would be Rob Tester. Um, I've got an assessment tool that I have built. Oh, shoot. I've used that one before. Um, and it's basically it's an interview kind of process that is built off of some of the stuff that we talk about all the time here and then throughout. Uh, I've talked about a lot through developer articles over the years, but we've also done it through um, Harvey Consulting posts, log LinkedIn posts, you know, stuff like that. And so, um, let me see if I can do this. Oh, interesting. It does not like Huh. Okay. Gotta fix that. So, it's going to come down, but it's going to be back up at some point. Um, I'm not shutting it down for a while. Don't worry. Um, so the thing is, you go through and you got some interview, it goes through a bunch of interview questions. Some of it's a lot of it stuff that we're going to typically ask in an assessment when we go through things. And then it kicks out there's like five or six I forget the I think it's six different end points you can get to basically that sort of says well here's roughly where you are because what we tried to do is say like let's take some commonalities as far as where people are and the direction they're going to want to go after an assessment. So there's things like, you know, it may be that it's like completely green sky, blue green fields, blue sky, you know, starting from scratch or something like that, however you want to list it, where you have, it's wide open. It's like, all right, well, it's, you know, you're not tied to anything. You're not bogged down. We can build whatever needs to be built to support your company, uh, to make your business as successful as possible. Or it may be something on the other end where you're like you've got huge investment in people, in systems, in software, and you want to do better because that's the reason you're doing this, but you're limited essentially in what you can do because you've already gone pretty far down the road. And so there it's like, all right, well then what do we do? And this goes back to the whole idea of simplification and integration and automation and innovation and where do those fit in and where are they most likely to fit in? And then we have some steps of like, okay, if you're here, here's some things you should do. And of course, we include that like feel free to talk to us because we'd be more than happy to like walk you through these things in detail. But if you just want to spend a few minutes and like, you know, and it is it's probably, I don't know, five minutes, maybe 10 minutes depending on how you do it. You can go through this. You get a nice little report back and we'll tell you sort of like, hey, here's some, you know, some next steps and things like that. Happy for all you guys to check it out because we are, you know, launching it as of today, I guess. Actually, today plus one probably because I got to go fix a couple things on it apparently. But other than that, um, then we're going to be uh we're going to get this launched and, you know, get that out there so we can just get more people looking at what they've got. Even if you don't want to spend the time with somebody else or bring in a consultant, at least you can do this and hopefully help you build your road map better. And this is version, you know, alpha version or beta version. So, we will be adding more information. Uh, there'll probably be I think the next step that will be coming will be like PDFs of some sort that's sort of like, hey, here's a nice little one or two pager of this is some of the things you need to do. This is some of the places you can reach out for more information, things of that nature. So, uh, this ad brought to you by RP Consulting, of which you may know I happen to be the founder. Um, so I have been completely sidetracked by one of my staff. Very important member of my staff, but nevertheless, one of my staff. So, let's get back to doing this podcast. So, we're going to dive right into it. I've got your stuff. I threw that in, too. So, you should be able to see it in Slack. So, you can follow along and you can play along at home. I have no idea what I'm going to cover today. I've got to think about like good thing, bad thing. So this will be totally improvised in my world famous now th dos uno hola and welcome back to building better developers developing our podcast we are here continuing our season where we are doing it with AI got a couple seasons back we had a whole lot of information around developers and how you become a better developer some of the things you're going to run into and now we're taking the same topics and we're putting it into AI and then whatever it kicks back out. We're talking about its suggestions and so far there's been a lot of really good ones that's allowed us to have some really good conversations. Before we get to that, let me introduce myself. My name is Rob Broadhead. I'm one of the founders of Developer, also the founder of RB Consulting, where we are what is known as a boutique consulting company, also sometime know sometimes known as a fractional CTO or CIO. What we do is we sit down with you, talk about your business, help you understand your processes, define those processes, improve those processes through simplification, integration, automation, innovation. Basically, we find ways to help you leverage technology to do your business better. We help you whether it's it's just guiding you and saying, "Hey, here's a a road map. Go execute it." Or on the other end, if it's something where you're just like, "I don't even know how to get started." We'll walk you through the road map. will help you find the right people, the right tools, or help you build the things that you need to to get it done. Our goal is to just help you find better ways to make the most out of that most impressive and large investment that you have, which is always going to be in technology. Like a lot of times it feels like it's right behind your investment in people. Good thing, bad thing. Uh let's see. This is a tough one because as I was saying right beforehand, I'm trying to think of what's going on. It's been a very busy time. So that um is in itself a good thing and a bad thing. This is an interesting. So I'm going to take the bad side of it. The bad side is is that the um the the working in my business has like petered down a little bit. So instead of having to spend insane amount of hours get all these projects done and doing all this work, the actual overall need has lowered. Uh but as part of that now that is like this is the time that I you got to strike while the iron's hot is this is where I have to work on my business and so it feels like when I'm working on my business I even work more hours when I'm working in my business because when you're working on your business there's like a budget and some things like that when you're working on your business you go until you collapse. So the good thing is I'm able to do that. It's something that's been wearing on me for a long time. We talk about doing that and too much of that. I can't get it done in 15 minutes a day. So, uh, you know, now I'm I'm paying the price for that a little bit and trying to catch up, but I'm feeling good that it is getting caught up. You can check out our updated RB website, rb-sns.com. Check that out. Uh, we've got updates and things like there playing around with that. Uh, making that a little more appealing and bringing it into the uh, this century. It's really this decade because we had, you know, it started to age a little bit and that's like we mention all the time, check your stuff out, do some periodic updates and we just happen to go through uh something else you should check out and do a periodic update on is my co-host who's going to go ahead and introduce himself. Hey everyone, my name is Michael Malash. I'm one of the co-founders of Building Better Developers, also known as Developer Nerd. I'm also the owner and founder of a company called Envision QA where we help startups and growing businesses build software that works the way it's supposed to work and from day one. You've probably heard stories about software projects going over budget, launching late, or breaking once users get their hand on it. That's where we come in. At Envision QA, we make sure your products are tested, stable, and ready for your customers. We handle all the behind-the-scenes quality assurance checks and support development so that you can launch faster, avoid costly mistakes and protect your reputation. In short, we help you build software that doesn't break your business. You can learn more at envisionqa.com. You know, check out the website. We have a contact us page where you can schedule a free 30inut uh consultation. So, check it out. Don't have anything to lose, but you know, fast faster, better, and more improved software. Good thing, bad thing. Uh, I'll start with the bad thing. Um, I don't know what I did, but the last day or two, I am limping now. My right knee is absolutely killing me. I thought I had tweaked it, but now I'm thinking I walked into something somewhere and don't remember getting old. Uh, and now it's like just the remnants of, hey, you hit a tendon in your knee. It's going to be a pain to walk for a few days. Uh, good thing maybe. Uh we're hopefully at the end of this heat wave and we're supposed to get some normal temperatures again and possibly some rain tonight. So we've had some blistering temperatures, heat index over 105 and it's just been miserable. >> I'll pass that. >> We have we have also had that and I am looking forward to the uh the fall and some of the rain to bring our temperatures down here a little bit. That is just uh it's a little too hot for my tastes. So this episode we are doing the building a strong developer toolkit enhancing skills and productivity title originally and it kicks back and it says hey uh it doesn't even it like just dives right into it episode hook/intro start with a story imagine a carpenter showing up without their hammer. Developers often make the same mistake when they ignore the importance of their toolkit. Define what a developer toolkit really means. It's not just ideas and frameworks but also habits, mindset and learning strategies. uh which is interesting because I think we did cover a lot of that in our original one core segments. So the first one, the essentials of a developer toolkit, version control, git, github, gitlab, why it's non-negotiable, ids and text editors, discuss uh visual studio code, intelligj, vim, and how to choose package managers, npm, pip, composer, yada yada yada. Uh debugging tools and liners, postman, browser, dev tools, eslint, py. So starting with that, um I hope this is one of those I don't know why it triggered me. I hope that you are on git of some sort whether it's uh source uh what was it source tree uh which was Bitbucket uh GitHub something like that if you're still working on like SPN or RCS or uh source safe or some of those things or the old school just move it get your stuff off of that and get into a modern version control tool um I've walked I've definitely dealt with more than a couple customers in recent years that are still on these very, you know, old version control tools. Yes, they work, but there are ways to migrate those and even with the history in a lot of cases into get something that is much more friendly to all of the modern tools out there. Even if you're using some ancient technology, unless their ID hasn't been touched in, you know, 15 years, you're probably going to get better integrations with uh with a Git tool. particularly. I I've just I hate it feels like a commercial for it, but GitHub is just too easy. It's just really the way it's been set up. It's way too easy to use. Um it's got all the things you need. Yes, you got to watch out if like, you know, you can start costing you money depending on how you configure your GitHub stuff, but uh definitely worth a look into. IDs and text editors, find the one that works for you. We've talked about this more than a few times is find something. The tools that work for you are the ones that are going to work the best. the ones that you use are the ones that are going to work the best. So, you know, sometimes, yes, you're going to be in a corporation company where you're you're basically dictated what you need to do, but for your own projects, play around. Check this different stuff out. You can avoid VI, Vim, Emacs, you know, you can avoid those things. Um, but the modern IDs, uh, definitely there's a lot of good and bad in all of them and find the ones you can do. I will always say I think what because it talks about debugging tools and liners. The first thing you need to be able to do in your IDE is play around with your debugger whatever it is that it provides. If it doesn't provide one, move on to something else because if you can't walk through your code and do some good debugging, then you're going to find yourself, you know, behind the eightball basically as far as productivity is concerned. I push this for everybody on my team. I talk about this in all of the projects that we always do. And we ever whenever I bring anything new, if we're bringing up a new project or bringing in a new project, the first thing is we want to be able to compile it, build it, deploy it, and put a debugger on it. Those are the things that find are like very key tools. If you ain't got that, then you're in trouble. Uh where do you want to go on this one? So there's a couple other things that we didn't really touch on um with this list so far, but you know things like sonar Q where you can have tools that will actually like check out your code and check the quality of your code. Winters are super important because especially if you're using like s version control and you have multiple people on a team compiling and writing code and pushing it up to GitHub, the llinters will help you all stay on the same page. So you don't have one person committing code one way, next person formats it in their environment another way and then you one line of code change looks like they changed the whole file. uh is one of the biggest pet peeves I have when people commit code if they don't follow you know your coding standards within your organization because the llinter it can be a very simple hey I made one word change to hey I made a whole file change what why did you make a file change um so be respectful of your peers and use ler tools that they are there for a reason and most of them are free u I did mention sonar q sonar q is great for code quality it uh basically it's a sanity check. Uh there are other ones out there, but Sonar is kind of like the I guess the most well-known. It's very good at uh scanning your code once you commit it to tell you that hey, you got defects. Uh you know, maybe there's some security warnings and things you need to be uh cautious about within the language you're working on. some other things uh like speaking of security. So like if you're dealing with um HIPPA or sortly uh there are other tools and things out there that you can't like OASP uh basically they are security checks of your software again some of them are paid some of them are free run your run them against your software have them analyze your code and a lot of times they'll check like your packages and your dependencies and say hey uh this has a vulnerability check you might want to see if there's a newer version or hey here's some ways on how to fix that. Uh those are just some of the additional things I'd like to throw into this category here. >> Yeah, I think static llinters in or sorry static code analysis in general is uh huge. That's going to help you quite a bit and it will help you learn the language better particularly if you've got which is most modern languages whether you're uh doing like react apps or Python or Java or C. Um there's so many things that are going on in these languages that having those static code analysis tools that will help you stay a breast of whatever is the uh the the recommended approach with your language version is going to help you quite a bit. It's actually it's really good also if you're bouncing in languages if you're going from like a a modern version but you got to now also do another project that's a couple version back. uh it will help catch like where you're doing something that's now been deprecated or uh where you're doing you know you did something in the old way but there's a newer better way a lot of times static code analysis will pick those up uh beyond code skills that boost productivity problem solving frameworks breaking down requirements communication and documentation skills writing better commit messages and docs time management and focus techniques pomodoro task batching flow state um this is where I this is one of the things where I see a difference between a coder versus a developer is I think that once we start moving away from it's all about the code basically and it's actually more about problem solving and it's about problem solving in a fast efficient and high quality way then that's where you're starting to become really getting into that we'll call it that developer mindset and that's a lot of what we talked about here we definitely have mentioned pomodoro many many times is like finding ways to be able to focus finding ways to get that time where you're not trying to, you know, multitask, but you're able to single focus, get that laser-like focus, get the problem solved and and move forward instead of getting distracted. Uh, which is also goes into things like comments and documentation, things like that because as we talk about sometimes your distraction is that you put that project down and you don't come back for three months and you look at it, you go, "What the heck is this? Where is this coming from? I don't remember what I was doing." And if you're documenting and putting code commits, particularly if you get messages that are solid in your code commits, that should help you rebuild the the thought process or another developer when they pick that up. So I think those are some some core um skills that are, you know, beyond just writing code to get you started. What are some that you'd like to throw out there? Yeah, since we kind of talked about GitHub in the first one, with this one here, as you're I totally agree about the problem solving uh frameworks and be as you become a better problem solver, you know, you kind of leave that coder mindset behind, you move into that developer mindset. Interestingly enough, as you build these skills, as you get better at writing your software, you want to document use cases, uh, user scenarios, test-driven development, writing unit tests are also better are very good ways for you to build up that documentation. If you can figure out how to write user stories, uh, that is great for communication because you can communicate that back to the business. this is how the software is going to work from the use case, from the user's perspective. Uh documentation isn't just about comments. You can even write markdown languages or readme files within your code set so that you can tell the yourself or even developers later, hey, this is how the code works. This is how you compile it. This is how you run it. You know, things that you take for granted now are going to be critical 6 months, a year from now or 15 years from now when you have to touch the code again. The other thing too is there are tools that are out there that can actually take that markdown language or those comments that are in your code and generate nice wiks around that. Uh API docs is a good one that comes to mind. Uh you can write in markdown and it generates a nice kind of webpage uh format for your documentation. uh you know a lot of languages have their own variations of like Java docs or some type of docs that will generate their documentation a lot of them are proprietary look for something that's generic that you can use for anything again markdown is pretty standard across uh this play and time management techniques I love that uh pomodoro task batching flow of estate don't forget your trusty little note cards you know make your lists uh make sure you follow them and stay on task. >> So then the next one it goes into is expanding the toolkit with soft skills. So uh three bullet points here, emotional intelligence when working on a team, negotiating requirements and saying no politely, mentorship and knowledge sharing as a productivity booster. So all three of these are again these are like your your next step up and definitely what you grow you into being a developer more than just a coder. Um, we've talked a lot about the team dynamics and a lot of it does go back to we were all creatives in a way. I don't think a lot of us think of that, but if you're a developer, you're a creative and then that means that as all creatives do, they have a tie to the things they created. It's like, you know, it's your baby and you don't like it, you know, you don't like people throwing shade on your baby. You also, you know, like to protect it and all that kind of stuff. But that's not really what it needs to be. is that you you want to grow into this being a team effort and everybody being a part of it. So, you know, blametorming and some of those things that typically are part of uh organizations and things like that and all the stress is involved. The more you can uh avoid that, reduce it, uh diffuse it, the better the team's going to work. People don't need to be stressed out. They don't need to be kicked off or anything like that. Are you going to be? Yes. Is it suck when you're in the middle of a death march or something like that? Yes. But whatever you can do to um to ease the that stress and such things will help your team out. Um I saying no politely I think is goes back to a couple of episodes back where we talked about scope creep. I think it is very it's it's more than polite. It's just saying no in general because I think way too often we get into something we want to impress our boss or we're scared that if we say no to the customer they're just going to like pull the plug on the project or things like that is that it's not just saying it politely. It's just having a reason for saying no. It's like if there's and it sort of is sometimes going to be counter to it. They need to have a reason for saying yes. If they say hey we want this feature then they should have a reason for it. And it doesn't mean that you like, you know, beat them up and try to place devil's advocate everywhere, but you just want them to have a good reason. Say, okay, that sounds like a good enough reason. We can go forward. If they don't, then that's where you also need to be able to say, you know what, I don't know that we need this and here's the reason why is, you know, it's like we're over budget already or that's going to take a lot of time or it's going to take cost or it's going to disrupt all the test flow or or whatever the reason is that needs to be part of. So, it's not just being polite in your nose and even your yeses, but it's like being measured in doing so so that your customer can, you know, builds their trust in you. That's like, hey, they're not just shooting from the hip. Um, if you're going to shoot from the hip, say, hey, that shot needs to be, hey, I'm not really clear on that. I'll come I'll get back to you later. And I I tell you that is probably one of the best things that uh I learned early on in consulting was that you can just there are times where yes, it's nice to be able to give them an answer, but it's also much more effective sometimes to say, you know what, I'm going to take a look at that. We're going to research it. We're going to get back to you. It just makes them feel that much better. Um the last one I'm going to throw out just real quick is mentorship and knowledge sharing is you will learn stuff so much more if you're teaching somebody else than if you just learn it for yourself. That's just one of the things I found. So it is definitely a gift that keeps on giving as it were. Uh your thoughts on those bullet points. >> Yeah. So I'm gonna talk a little bit about you know the emotional intelligence and you know negotiating requirements and saying no. All three of these bullet points kind of work well together. Um emotional intelligence when working on a team. It's always good to try and take a pulse check of not just yourself but of your team. um how are meetings going? How is the project going? You know, are you on a deadline? Is everyone crunched? Is someone having a bad day or are things going on outside of the office? Sometimes, especially uh for those more senior or even managers, you need to understand what's going on with your team. How are they interacting? How are the players moving? Because if one person is down unintentionally, they could bring everyone else down because either they're not able to complete their work on time and that works falling to other people to get done. Uh but sometimes it's not a fault of their own. It's just circumstances are what they are and they get stuck. You know, we all hit walls or we hit blockers and sometimes we have to walk away or do something else before we can come back to it. Negotiating requirements and saying no politely. Uh I think it was like Tim Ferrris uh 4-hour work week years ago was basically like just say no to everything. If you are not good at saying no, schedule a day or two and just say no to everything like no to meetings, no to calls, just do it politely, but get do a day or two of that and just say no to everything and see how people react. Figure out how to curtail it. uh the more you can politely say no or kind of handle uh negative situations and say, "Hey, we need to stop. Time out." You know, let's take a break. That's a very good negotiating skill, especially when dealing with requirements. And lastly, the mentorship and knowledge sharing. Think like geek drinks, um coffee breaks, even in a virtual world. Uh you can have coffee breaks, mentorship, um knowledge sharing through video chats. You could take 15 minutes a day and say, "Hey, throw the team on there. Hey, anyone have a good idea? You know, anyone learn anything new today?" If you have larger topics, schedule like geek drinks like an hour uh later in the day. Maybe you have uh coffee again or hey, maybe you have a beverage of your choice. Or if it is a more formal training like hey let's go into a demo. Let's go through and like look at how to use this product or something new that would benefit the whole team. Schedule like a one or two hour lunch and learn and have everyone in. If you're remote, hey managers, you know, get like a um what is it? um GrubHub card or something, send it out to your team, you know, like what we used to have pizza Fridays and whatnot. You know, everyone gets their food, you sit down, you kind of have good times and everyone kind of shares in the knowledge and learn something new. >> Uh we'll go quick to this last one just on for time considerations. Uh continuous learning and this is why I want to make sure we get this in there. the ultimate tool uh curating a learning pipeline, blogs, podcasts, newsletters, courses, using AI tools like chat GPT co-pilot effectively without becoming dependent uh building personal projects or contributing to open source as a practice. Um I'm going to dive in because I've I've been I have been in different sides of the AI discussion for quite a while early on. Uh, and I do definitely see it in many cases where it is a crutch and I think that's your biggest danger is that you get into some of these AI tools, co-pilot and such that basically just let it write your code and you just sort of figure it out, you know, from there as opposed to being very intentional on where you pick it up. So, a lot of times I find the best things to do, the best use of those kinds of things, uh, the AI tools is where you know what the solution is. You could do it, it's just it's going to take you time. And so when you do that, you can do the uh direction of AI to a level that's going to help you out, that's going to be able to give you a solution that's pretty solid. Um, yeah, sometimes you're going to have to do a little, you know, a little reigning it in and things like that. But I think that I found that is definitely the best way. If I don't know what I, you know, if I really not sure where I'm going with this thing and I try to have AI help me, it's probably not going to help me very much. It's actually probably going to cost me more time than it's not. Um, but if I've got something very focused where I'm like, "Okay, this is what I know I'm going to do. Here's the steps and I can lay it out much like anything else. If you can really tighten down your requirements and tell somebody, here's what I need," they're more likely to give you a, you know, a good response. And AI is just like that. And if you don't understand what you're doing, if you don't understand the problem you're solving, you're going to end up solving a completely different problem. You're going to have a great solution that is absolutely useless because it's not doing what it should have done. uh your thoughts on this one? >> Yeah. So, I'm going to take this one. You know, learning pipelines. Hey, developer, but also look for things like mentorships. Look for people that can teach you. If you have a friend or someone at work that knows a particular skill or technology that you want to learn and they're open to sharing it with you, hey, schedule some time with them. Take them out to eat. You know, it's really good to pair up with someone and even maybe get a mentor to help you learn something new. And with that, you know, I beat this horse dead all the time. Um, building a personal project. Kitchen sync apps are the number one way that developers can build a Swiss Army knife in any language that they want to learn because you can build basically you write your code for all the little things you want. You build your utilities and then you can apply them to all the projects that are out there. You basically have a tried and true solution on how this works. Like if you're using like CFKA, some message Q, Reddus, you write one little app that actually does the work and then you can integrate that in. You just take your code. Hey, I've done this. Oh, okay. I need this in this project. You take it from here, put it in there. You already have your code com. Hopefully, you commented it and then you just plug it in, plug and play and go. Um, it's kind of like AI, but you took the time to learn it yourself. So, you already have something you can go to to kind of pull out and apply elsewhere. >> Yeah, your own personal code repository we didn't really talk about. That's like we've talked about in other cases. Uh, that is something that's very valuable to have. And it is it's much like AI. It just happens to be your AI, your eye, as opposed to somebody, you know, some artificial version of it. Uh, and it can be much faster than even doing the searches and other stuff because it's your code. Uh, so you know it better, you know, hopefully better than anybody else and you can plug that right in wherever you need to do. So, uh, one of the things you can also do is you can shoot us an email [email protected] and let us know where are some of the things that you the tools that you use. How do you get better? Uh, what are some of the other places like the alerting pipelines that you have and things like that because we're always looking for ways to uh to improve that. Um, we've got obviously we've got tons of that stuff out on developer.com. We've got over a thousand articles out there. When you look at all the stuff out there, uh, YouTube, we've got, I don't know, we're probably approaching 500 different things out there on the in the YouTube channel across all the different areas. I was just looking the other day because I was trying to build out a couple little links and we've got some really cool stuff there. Um, we've got some long series. I'd forgotten how much content had gone into a couple of the series, the training series that we've got, particularly in the world of uh SQL and Python and Django. Got a whole bunch of stuff there that we've done. All of that is free right now until we decide that we want to somehow put that behind a payw wall. So, grab it while you can basically leave us comments at any of those places. We'd love to hear if you have any questions. We would love to help you out with it as well because our goal is to help you become better developers. Allah the title of this that being said it's time for us to wrap this up. So go out there and have yourself a great day a great week and we will talk to you next time bonus material. I'm going to say that I already gave my bonus my sales speech or whatever is my bonus material so we don't go too long on this. >> Yeah. I'll just throw an additional one out along with the kitchen sink app. You know look at we've we've talked about automation before. You know, a great way to build your skills is look at what you're doing. Look at your general tasks. Find ways to automate that. Find ways to write scripts or just change up your processes. Constantly do that. And heck, if you again figure out how to automate something, put it into that kitchen sink app and you now have the example for something else that you run into similar in the future. >> I will I will add to that because I lied. I'm I do have a little bit more. Um just because that triggered some thoughts on that automation is such a key to your side hustle is I I don't know how often and it is it's like your kitchen sink s your proof of concepts your those kinds of your MVPs those things that you build is amazing how much how often those things are going to come back up is there are tools that I've written now dozens of time I've written and rewritten and advanced and done all this stuff with them because they started with like just some simple thing that I needed to automate and Next thing I know, I was able to use that in another application and then I was able to expand on that and I was able to enhance it. And then, you know, you can you can grow some of these things into entire cornerstone products. And there are plenty of those out there that were, you know, somebody just started with something small, they kept building, kept building, kept building, and next thing you know, that's a product that everybody wants a hold of. So, highly recommend that. I also highly recommend that you go out there and enjoy your day. We appreciate all the time that you've given for us and now we're going to give you some time back. But we are not done. We'll come back next episode. We are going to continue doing fun stuff with AI and uh the you know the hits will continue. The hilarity ensues as always. Have a great one. We appreciate you so much and talk to you next time. [Music]
Transcript Segments
Well, hello. This is Rob, one of the
founders of the developer. Michael's
going to have his little piece to say in
a second, but I just want to say thank
you. Thank you. Thank you so much as
this is episode 900.
That's 900.
There are dozens and hundreds and
probably thousands, even millions of
podcasts that don't even get close to
this. Thank you so much for your time,
for your patience, for putting up with
us, for seeing us evolve from episode
one to episode 900, season essentially
zero to now we're in season 25. And
we're not done yet. But I do want to
just celebrate for a second this this
achievement and say thank you because
you guys have been hanging out and made
it possible.
Hey everyone, this is Michael. Hey,
again, like Rob said, this is episode
900. We are so grateful for all of you
that have been following us all these
years and listening to us rant and rave
about all things developer, developers,
you know, how to help you become a
better developer, better entrepreneur.
We can't express how grateful we are.
And again, please continue to follow us.
We're not going anywhere. And
enjoy this episode.
[Music]
But
there we go because we have to hit
record. So there we virtually hit
record. And now let's see. We offer
ideas for a podcast
episode for developer
[Music]
um aka Dann,
but I know somebody that was recently
doing some chat chieft posts or
discussions and dramatically misspelled
or meaningfully misspelled a word and
chat GPT actually called them on it and
it was like I think you mean this and
then totally went like totally corrected
and was like okay here's where we need
to go with the conversation I was like
damn that's pretty good so it's like
okay for a podcast episode with this as
the title
and we're going to do building a strong
developer toolkit enhancing skills and
productivity. Let's see see come back
with the
here's some engaging episode structure
and content ideas. Let's see if this is
going to give me what I sort of want.
Yeah, it's funny how it goes. Yeah, it
goes back and forth. Sometimes it gives
me like a 10point thing. This one is
giving me like a looks like a sixpoint
thing. So, let me
turn it into the slack
here. Gosh, that's a good little thing.
I got to figure out a meaning for that.
What? Slackable.
>> Slackable. I just made that word up. I'm
like, dang, I should like
copyright it and find out a meaning for
it.
Okay, so let's see. Am I good? Uh, let
me try a little more white just in case.
>> What?
>> Why can I start it?
What' you do? Did you register?
Why did it not go the first time?
Interesting.
Uh, scroll down
all the way down. Uh, get us uh retake
assessment.
There you go. So, that's assess. Huh.
So,
>> that you registered
H. All right. I got Look at that.
>> Well, since we caught some of that on
the pre-show, you want to uh talk about
some of your exciting news there?
>> Yeah, I think since we got that, let me
check that real quick while I'm doing
this and see if I can reproduce that.
So, we have had I've been working on
this for a bit. Um,
and it's going to be you can catch it by
the time this comes out because I will
probably have reset it and then do it
again. Um, you can let me make sure I've
got an email address that makes sense.
Uh, as I'm doing this, this would be Rob
Tester.
Um,
I've got an assessment tool that I have
built. Oh, shoot. I've used that one
before. Um, and it's basically it's an
interview kind of process that is built
off of some of the stuff that we talk
about all the time here and then
throughout. Uh, I've talked about a lot
through developer articles over the
years, but we've also done it through
um,
Harvey Consulting posts, log LinkedIn
posts, you know, stuff like that. And
so, um, let me see if I can do this.
Oh, interesting. It does not like
Huh. Okay. Gotta fix that. So, it's
going to come down, but it's going to be
back up at some point. Um,
I'm not shutting it down for a while.
Don't worry. Um,
so the thing is, you go through and you
got some interview, it goes through a
bunch of interview questions. Some of
it's a lot of it stuff that we're going
to typically ask in an assessment when
we go through things.
And then it kicks out there's like five
or six I forget the I think it's six
different end points you can get to
basically that sort of says well here's
roughly where you are because what we
tried to do is say like let's take some
commonalities as far as where people are
and the direction they're going to want
to go after an assessment. So there's
things like, you know, it may be that
it's like completely green sky, blue
green fields, blue sky, you know,
starting from scratch or something like
that, however you want to list it, where
you have, it's wide open. It's like, all
right, well, it's, you know, you're not
tied to anything. You're not bogged
down. We can build whatever needs to be
built to support your company, uh, to
make your business as successful as
possible. Or it may be something on the
other end where you're like you've got
huge investment in people, in systems,
in software, and you want to do better
because that's the reason you're doing
this, but you're limited essentially in
what you can do because you've already
gone pretty far down the road. And so
there it's like, all right, well then
what do we do? And this goes back to the
whole idea of simplification and
integration and automation and
innovation and where do those fit in and
where are they most likely to fit in?
And then we have some steps of like,
okay, if you're here, here's some things
you should do. And of course, we include
that like feel free to talk to us
because we'd be more than happy to like
walk you through these things in detail.
But if you just want to spend a few
minutes and like, you know, and it is
it's probably, I don't know, five
minutes, maybe 10 minutes depending on
how you do it. You can go through this.
You get a nice little report back and
we'll tell you sort of like, hey, here's
some, you know, some next steps and
things like that. Happy for all you guys
to check it out because we are, you
know, launching it as of today, I guess.
Actually, today plus one probably
because I got to go fix a couple things
on it apparently. But other than that,
um,
then we're going to be uh we're going to
get this launched and, you know, get
that out there so we can just get more
people looking at what they've got. Even
if you don't want to spend the time with
somebody else or bring in a consultant,
at least you can do this and hopefully
help you build your road map better. And
this is version, you know, alpha version
or beta version. So, we will be adding
more information. Uh, there'll probably
be I think the next step that will be
coming will be like PDFs of some sort
that's sort of like, hey, here's a nice
little one or two pager of this is some
of the things you need to do. This is
some of the places you can reach out for
more information, things of that nature.
So, uh, this ad brought to you by RP
Consulting, of which you may know I
happen to be the founder. Um, so
I have been completely sidetracked by
one of my staff. Very important member
of my staff, but nevertheless, one of my
staff. So, let's get back to doing
this podcast. So, we're going to dive
right into it. I've got your stuff. I
threw that in, too. So, you should be
able to see it in Slack. So, you can
follow along and you can play along at
home. I have no idea what I'm going to
cover today. I've got to think about
like good thing, bad thing. So this will
be totally improvised in my world famous
now th dos uno
hola and welcome back to building better
developers developing our podcast we are
here continuing our season where we are
doing it with AI got a couple seasons
back we had a whole lot of information
around developers and how you become a
better developer some of the things
you're going to run into and now we're
taking the same topics and we're putting
it into AI and then whatever it kicks
back out. We're talking about its
suggestions and so far there's been a
lot of really good ones that's allowed
us to have some really good
conversations. Before we get to that,
let me introduce myself. My name is Rob
Broadhead. I'm one of the founders of
Developer, also the founder of RB
Consulting, where we are what is known
as a boutique consulting company, also
sometime know sometimes known as a
fractional CTO or CIO. What we do is we
sit down with you, talk about your
business, help you understand your
processes, define those processes,
improve those processes through
simplification, integration, automation,
innovation. Basically, we find ways to
help you leverage technology to do your
business better. We help you whether
it's it's just guiding you and saying,
"Hey, here's a a road map. Go execute
it." Or on the other end, if it's
something where you're just like, "I
don't even know how to get started."
We'll walk you through the road map.
will help you find the right people, the
right tools, or help you build the
things that you need to to get it done.
Our goal is to just help you find better
ways to make the most out of that most
impressive and large investment that you
have, which is always going to be in
technology. Like a lot of times it feels
like it's right behind your investment
in people. Good thing, bad thing. Uh
let's see. This is a tough one because
as I was saying right beforehand, I'm
trying to think of what's going on. It's
been a very busy time. So that um is in
itself a good thing and a bad thing.
This is an interesting. So I'm going to
take the bad side of it. The bad side is
is that the um the the working in my
business has like petered down a little
bit. So instead of having to spend
insane amount of hours get all these
projects done and doing all this work,
the actual overall need has lowered. Uh
but as part of that now that is like
this is the time that I you got to
strike while the iron's hot is this is
where I have to work on my business and
so it feels like when I'm working on my
business I even work more hours when I'm
working in my business because when
you're working on your business there's
like a budget and some things like that
when you're working on your business you
go until you collapse. So the good thing
is I'm able to do that. It's something
that's been wearing on me for a long
time. We talk about doing that and
too much of that. I can't get it done in
15 minutes a day. So, uh, you know, now
I'm I'm paying the price for that a
little bit and trying to catch up, but
I'm feeling good that it is getting
caught up. You can check out our updated
RB website, rb-sns.com.
Check that out. Uh, we've got updates
and things like there playing around
with that. Uh, making that a little more
appealing and bringing it into the uh,
this century. It's really this decade
because we had, you know, it started to
age a little bit and that's like we
mention all the time, check your stuff
out, do some periodic updates and we
just happen to go through uh something
else you should check out and do a
periodic update on is my co-host who's
going to go ahead and introduce himself.
Hey everyone, my name is Michael Malash.
I'm one of the co-founders of Building
Better Developers, also known as
Developer Nerd. I'm also the owner and
founder of a company called Envision QA
where we help startups and growing
businesses build software that works the
way it's supposed to work and from day
one. You've probably heard stories about
software projects going over budget,
launching late, or breaking once users
get their hand on it. That's where we
come in. At Envision QA, we make sure
your products are tested, stable, and
ready for your customers. We handle all
the behind-the-scenes quality assurance
checks and support development so that
you can launch faster, avoid costly
mistakes and protect your reputation. In
short, we help you build software that
doesn't break your business. You can
learn more at envisionqa.com.
You know, check out the website. We have
a contact us page where you can schedule
a free 30inut uh consultation. So, check
it out. Don't have anything to lose, but
you know, fast faster, better, and more
improved software. Good thing, bad
thing. Uh, I'll start with the bad
thing. Um, I don't know what I did, but
the last day or two, I am limping now.
My right knee is absolutely killing me.
I thought I had tweaked it, but now I'm
thinking I walked into something
somewhere and don't remember getting
old. Uh, and now it's like just the
remnants of, hey, you hit a tendon in
your knee. It's going to be a pain to
walk for a few days. Uh, good thing
maybe. Uh we're hopefully at the end of
this heat wave and we're supposed to get
some normal temperatures again and
possibly some rain tonight. So we've had
some blistering temperatures, heat index
over 105 and it's just been miserable.
>> I'll pass that.
>> We have we have also had that and I am
looking forward to the uh the fall and
some of the rain to bring our
temperatures down here a little bit.
That is just uh it's a little too hot
for my tastes. So this episode we are
doing the building a strong developer
toolkit enhancing skills and
productivity title originally and it
kicks back and it says hey uh it doesn't
even it like just dives right into it
episode hook/intro start with a story
imagine a carpenter showing up without
their hammer. Developers often make the
same mistake when they ignore the
importance of their toolkit. Define what
a developer toolkit really means. It's
not just ideas and frameworks but also
habits, mindset and learning strategies.
uh which is interesting because I think
we did cover a lot of that in our
original one core segments. So the first
one, the essentials of a developer
toolkit, version control, git, github,
gitlab, why it's non-negotiable, ids and
text editors, discuss uh visual studio
code, intelligj, vim, and how to choose
package managers, npm, pip, composer,
yada yada yada. Uh debugging tools and
liners, postman, browser, dev tools,
eslint, py. So starting with that, um
I hope this is one of those I don't know
why it triggered me. I hope that you are
on git of some sort whether it's uh
source uh what was it source tree uh
which was Bitbucket uh GitHub something
like that if you're still working on
like SPN or RCS or uh source safe or
some of those things or the old school
just move it get your stuff off of that
and get into a modern version control
tool um I've walked I've definitely
dealt with more than a couple customers
in recent years that are still on these
very, you know, old version control
tools. Yes, they work, but there are
ways to migrate those and even with the
history in a lot of cases into get
something that is much more friendly to
all of the modern tools out there. Even
if you're using some ancient technology,
unless their ID hasn't been touched in,
you know, 15 years, you're probably
going to get better integrations with uh
with a Git tool. particularly.
I I've just I hate it feels like a
commercial for it, but GitHub is just
too easy. It's just really the way it's
been set up. It's way too easy to use.
Um it's got all the things you need.
Yes, you got to watch out if like, you
know, you can start costing you money
depending on how you configure your
GitHub stuff, but uh definitely worth a
look into. IDs and text editors, find
the one that works for you. We've talked
about this more than a few times is find
something. The tools that work for you
are the ones that are going to work the
best. the ones that you use are the ones
that are going to work the best. So, you
know, sometimes, yes, you're going to be
in a corporation company where you're
you're basically dictated what you need
to do, but for your own projects, play
around. Check this different stuff out.
You can avoid VI, Vim, Emacs, you know,
you can avoid those things. Um, but the
modern IDs, uh, definitely there's a lot
of good and bad in all of them and find
the ones you can do. I will always say I
think what because it talks about
debugging tools and liners. The first
thing you need to be able to do in your
IDE is play around with your debugger
whatever it is that it provides. If it
doesn't provide one, move on to
something else because if you can't walk
through your code and do some good
debugging, then you're going to find
yourself, you know, behind the eightball
basically as far as productivity is
concerned. I push this for everybody on
my team. I talk about this in all of the
projects that we always do. And we ever
whenever I bring anything new, if we're
bringing up a new project or bringing in
a new project, the first thing is we
want to be able to compile it, build it,
deploy it, and put a debugger on it.
Those are the things that find are like
very key tools. If you ain't got that,
then you're in trouble. Uh where do you
want to go on this one?
So there's a couple other things that we
didn't really touch on um with this list
so far, but you know things like sonar Q
where you can have tools that will
actually like check out your code and
check the quality of your code. Winters
are super important because especially
if you're using like s version control
and you have multiple people on a team
compiling and writing code and pushing
it up to GitHub, the llinters will help
you all stay on the same page. So you
don't have one person committing code
one way, next person formats it in their
environment another way and then you one
line of code change looks like they
changed the whole file. uh is one of the
biggest pet peeves I have when people
commit code if they don't follow you
know your coding standards within your
organization because the llinter it can
be a very simple hey I made one word
change to hey I made a whole file change
what why did you make a file change um
so be respectful of your peers and use
ler tools that they are there for a
reason and most of them are free u I did
mention sonar q sonar q is great for
code quality it uh basically it's a
sanity check. Uh there are other ones
out there, but Sonar is kind of like the
I guess the most well-known. It's very
good at uh scanning your code once you
commit it to tell you that hey, you got
defects. Uh you know, maybe there's some
security warnings and things you need to
be uh cautious about within the language
you're working on. some other things uh
like speaking of security. So like if
you're dealing with um HIPPA or sortly
uh there are other tools and things out
there that you can't like OASP uh
basically they are security checks of
your software again some of them are
paid some of them are free run your run
them against your software have them
analyze your code and a lot of times
they'll check like your packages and
your dependencies and say hey uh this
has a vulnerability check you might want
to see if there's a newer version or hey
here's some ways on how to fix that. Uh
those are just some of the additional
things I'd like to throw into this
category here.
>> Yeah, I think static llinters in or
sorry static code analysis in general is
uh huge. That's going to help you quite
a bit and it will help you learn the
language better particularly if you've
got which is most modern languages
whether you're uh doing like react apps
or Python or Java or C. Um there's so
many things that are going on in these
languages that having those static code
analysis tools that will help you stay a
breast of whatever is the uh the the
recommended approach with your language
version is going to help you quite a
bit. It's actually it's really good also
if you're bouncing in languages if
you're going from like a a modern
version but you got to now also do
another project that's a couple version
back. uh it will help catch like where
you're doing something that's now been
deprecated or uh where you're doing you
know you did something in the old way
but there's a newer better way a lot of
times static code analysis will pick
those up uh beyond code skills that
boost productivity problem solving
frameworks breaking down requirements
communication and documentation skills
writing better commit messages and docs
time management and focus techniques
pomodoro task batching flow state
um
this is where I this is one of the
things where I see a difference between
a coder versus a developer is I think
that once we start moving away from it's
all about the code basically and it's
actually more about problem solving and
it's about problem solving in a fast
efficient and high quality way then
that's where you're starting to become
really getting into that we'll call it
that developer mindset and that's a lot
of what we talked about here we
definitely have mentioned pomodoro
many many times is like finding ways to
be able to focus
finding ways to get that time where
you're not trying to, you know,
multitask, but you're able to single
focus, get that laser-like focus, get
the problem solved and and move forward
instead of getting distracted. Uh, which
is also goes into things like comments
and documentation, things like that
because as we talk about sometimes your
distraction is that you put that project
down and you don't come back for three
months and you look at it, you go, "What
the heck is this? Where is this coming
from? I don't remember what I was
doing." And if you're documenting and
putting code commits, particularly if
you get messages that are solid in your
code commits, that should help you
rebuild the the thought process or
another developer when they pick that
up. So I think those are some some core
um skills that are, you know, beyond
just writing code to get you started.
What are some that you'd like to throw
out there? Yeah, since we kind of talked
about GitHub in the first one, with this
one here, as you're I totally agree
about the problem solving uh frameworks
and be as you become a better problem
solver, you know, you kind of leave that
coder mindset behind, you move into that
developer mindset.
Interestingly enough, as you build these
skills, as you get better at writing
your software, you want to document use
cases, uh, user scenarios, test-driven
development, writing unit tests are also
better are very good ways for you to
build up that documentation. If you can
figure out how to write user stories,
uh, that is great for communication
because you can communicate that back to
the business. this is how the software
is going to work from the use case, from
the user's perspective. Uh documentation
isn't just about comments. You can even
write markdown languages or readme files
within your code set so that you can
tell the yourself or even developers
later, hey, this is how the code works.
This is how you compile it. This is how
you run it. You know, things that you
take for granted now are going to be
critical 6 months, a year from now or 15
years from now when you have to touch
the code again. The other thing too is
there are tools that are out there that
can actually take that markdown language
or those comments that are in your code
and generate nice wiks around that. Uh
API docs is a good one that comes to
mind. Uh you can write in markdown and
it generates a nice kind of webpage uh
format for your documentation. uh you
know a lot of languages have their own
variations of like Java docs or some
type of docs that will generate their
documentation a lot of them are
proprietary look for something that's
generic that you can use for anything
again markdown is pretty standard across
uh this play and time management
techniques I love that uh pomodoro task
batching flow of estate don't forget
your trusty little note cards you know
make your lists uh make sure you follow
them and stay on task.
>> So then the next one it goes into is
expanding the toolkit with soft skills.
So uh three bullet points here,
emotional intelligence when working on a
team, negotiating requirements and
saying no politely, mentorship and
knowledge sharing as a productivity
booster. So all three of these are again
these are like your your next step up
and definitely what you grow you into
being a developer more than just a
coder. Um, we've talked a lot about the
team dynamics and a lot of it does go
back to we were all creatives in a way.
I don't think a lot of us think of that,
but if you're a developer, you're a
creative and then that means that as all
creatives do, they have a tie to the
things they created. It's like, you
know, it's your baby and you don't like
it, you know, you don't like people
throwing shade on your baby. You also,
you know, like to protect it and all
that kind of stuff. But that's not
really what it needs to be. is that you
you want to grow into this being a team
effort and everybody being a part of it.
So, you know, blametorming and some of
those things that typically are part of
uh organizations and things like that
and all the stress is involved. The more
you can uh avoid that, reduce it, uh
diffuse it, the better the team's going
to work. People don't need to be
stressed out. They don't need to be
kicked off or anything like that. Are
you going to be? Yes. Is it suck when
you're in the middle of a death march or
something like that? Yes. But whatever
you can do to um to ease the that stress
and such things will help your team out.
Um I saying no politely I think is goes
back to a couple of episodes back where
we talked about scope creep. I think it
is very it's it's more than polite. It's
just saying no in general because I
think way too often we get into
something we want to impress our boss or
we're scared that if we say no to the
customer they're just going to like pull
the plug on the project or things like
that is that it's not just saying it
politely. It's just having a reason for
saying no. It's like if there's and it
sort of is sometimes going to be counter
to it. They need to have a reason for
saying yes. If they say hey we want this
feature then they should have a reason
for it. And it doesn't mean that you
like, you know, beat them up and try to
place devil's advocate everywhere, but
you just want them to have a good
reason. Say, okay, that sounds like a
good enough reason. We can go forward.
If they don't, then that's where you
also need to be able to say, you know
what, I don't know that we need this and
here's the reason why is, you know, it's
like we're over budget already or that's
going to take a lot of time or it's
going to take cost or it's going to
disrupt all the test flow or or whatever
the reason is
that needs to be part of. So, it's not
just being polite in your nose and even
your yeses, but it's like being measured
in doing so so that your customer can,
you know, builds their trust in you.
That's like, hey, they're not just
shooting from the hip. Um, if you're
going to shoot from the hip, say, hey,
that shot needs to be, hey, I'm not
really clear on that. I'll come I'll get
back to you later. And I I tell you that
is probably one of the best things that
uh I learned early on in consulting was
that you can just there are times where
yes, it's nice to be able to give them
an answer, but it's also much more
effective sometimes to say, you know
what, I'm going to take a look at that.
We're going to research it. We're going
to get back to you. It just makes them
feel that much better. Um the last one
I'm going to throw out just real quick
is mentorship and knowledge sharing is
you will learn
stuff so much more if you're teaching
somebody else than if you just learn it
for yourself. That's just one of the
things I found. So it is definitely a
gift that keeps on giving as it were. Uh
your thoughts on those bullet points.
>> Yeah. So I'm gonna talk a little bit
about you know the emotional
intelligence and you know negotiating
requirements and saying no. All three of
these bullet points kind of work well
together. Um emotional intelligence when
working on a team.
It's always good to try and take a pulse
check of not just yourself but of your
team. um how are meetings going? How is
the project going? You know, are you on
a deadline? Is everyone crunched? Is
someone having a bad day or are things
going on outside of the office?
Sometimes, especially uh for those more
senior or even managers, you need to
understand what's going on with your
team. How are they interacting? How are
the players moving? Because if one
person is down
unintentionally, they could bring
everyone else down because either
they're not able to complete their work
on time and that works falling to other
people to get done. Uh but sometimes
it's not a fault of their own. It's just
circumstances are what they are and they
get stuck. You know, we all hit walls or
we hit blockers and sometimes we have to
walk away or do something else before we
can come back to it. Negotiating
requirements and saying no politely. Uh
I think it was like Tim Ferrris uh
4-hour work week years ago was basically
like just say no to everything. If you
are not good at saying no, schedule a
day or two and just say no to everything
like no to meetings, no to calls, just
do it politely, but get do a day or two
of that and just say no to everything
and see how people react. Figure out how
to curtail it. uh the more you can
politely say no or kind of handle uh
negative situations and say, "Hey, we
need to stop. Time out." You know, let's
take a break. That's a very good
negotiating skill, especially when
dealing with requirements. And lastly,
the mentorship and knowledge sharing.
Think like geek drinks, um coffee
breaks, even in a virtual world. Uh you
can have coffee breaks, mentorship, um
knowledge sharing through video chats.
You could take 15 minutes a day and say,
"Hey,
throw the team on there. Hey, anyone
have a good idea? You know, anyone learn
anything new today?" If you have larger
topics, schedule like geek drinks like
an hour uh later in the day. Maybe you
have uh coffee again or hey, maybe you
have a beverage of your choice. Or if it
is a more formal training like hey let's
go into a demo. Let's go through and
like look at how to use this product or
something new that would benefit the
whole team. Schedule like a one or two
hour lunch and learn and have everyone
in. If you're remote, hey managers, you
know, get like a um what is it? um
GrubHub card or something, send it out
to your team, you know, like what we
used to have pizza Fridays and whatnot.
You know, everyone gets their food, you
sit down, you kind of have good times
and everyone kind of shares in the
knowledge and learn something new.
>> Uh we'll go quick to this last one just
on for time considerations. Uh
continuous learning and this is why I
want to make sure we get this in there.
the ultimate tool uh curating a learning
pipeline, blogs, podcasts, newsletters,
courses, using AI tools like chat GPT
co-pilot effectively without becoming
dependent uh building personal projects
or contributing to open source as a
practice. Um I'm going to dive in
because I've I've been
I have been in different sides of the AI
discussion for quite a while early on.
Uh, and I do definitely see it in many
cases where it is a crutch and I think
that's your biggest danger is that you
get into some of these AI tools,
co-pilot and such that basically just
let it write your code and you just sort
of figure it out, you know, from there
as opposed to
being very intentional on where you pick
it up. So, a lot of times I find the
best things to do, the best use of those
kinds of things, uh, the AI tools is
where you know what the solution is. You
could do it, it's just it's going to
take you time. And so
when you do that, you can do the uh
direction of AI to a level that's going
to help you out, that's going to be able
to give you a solution that's pretty
solid. Um, yeah, sometimes you're going
to have to do a little, you know, a
little reigning it in and things like
that. But I think that I found that is
definitely the best way. If I don't know
what I, you know, if I really not sure
where I'm going with this thing and I
try to have AI help me, it's probably
not going to help me very much. It's
actually probably going to cost me more
time than it's not. Um, but if I've got
something very focused where I'm like,
"Okay, this is what I know I'm going to
do. Here's the steps and I can lay it
out much like anything else. If you can
really tighten down your requirements
and tell somebody, here's what I need,"
they're more likely to give you a, you
know, a good response. And AI is just
like that. And if you don't understand
what you're doing, if you don't
understand the problem you're solving,
you're going to end up solving a
completely different problem. You're
going to have a great solution that is
absolutely useless because it's not
doing what it should have done. uh your
thoughts on this one?
>> Yeah. So, I'm going to take this one.
You know, learning pipelines. Hey,
developer, but also look for things like
mentorships. Look for people that can
teach you. If you have a friend or
someone at work that knows a particular
skill or technology that you want to
learn and they're open to sharing it
with you, hey, schedule some time with
them. Take them out to eat. You know,
it's really good to pair up with someone
and even maybe get a mentor to help you
learn something new. And with that, you
know, I beat this horse dead all the
time. Um, building a personal project.
Kitchen sync apps are the number one way
that developers can build a Swiss Army
knife in any language that they want to
learn because you can build basically
you write your code for all the little
things you want. You build your
utilities and then you can apply them to
all the projects that are out there. You
basically have a tried and true solution
on how this works. Like if you're using
like CFKA, some message Q, Reddus, you
write one little app that actually does
the work and then you can integrate that
in. You just take your code. Hey, I've
done this. Oh, okay. I need this in this
project. You take it from here, put it
in there. You already have your code
com. Hopefully, you commented it and
then you just plug it in, plug and play
and go. Um, it's kind of like AI, but
you took the time to learn it yourself.
So, you already have something you can
go to to kind of pull out and apply
elsewhere.
>> Yeah, your own personal code repository
we didn't really talk about. That's like
we've talked about in other cases. Uh,
that is something that's very valuable
to have. And it is it's much like AI. It
just happens to be your AI, your eye, as
opposed to somebody, you know, some
artificial version of it. Uh, and it can
be much faster than even doing the
searches and other stuff because it's
your code. Uh, so you know it better,
you know, hopefully better than anybody
else and you can plug that right in
wherever you need to do. So, uh, one of
the things you can also do is you can
shoot us an email [email protected] and
let us know where are some of the things
that you the tools that you use. How do
you get better? Uh, what are some of the
other places like the alerting pipelines
that you have and things like that
because we're always looking for ways to
uh to improve that. Um, we've got
obviously we've got tons of that stuff
out on developer.com. We've got over a
thousand articles out there. When you
look at all the stuff out there, uh,
YouTube, we've got, I don't know, we're
probably approaching 500 different
things out there on the in the YouTube
channel across all the different areas.
I was just looking the other day because
I was trying to build out a couple
little links and we've got some really
cool stuff there. Um, we've got some
long series. I'd forgotten how much
content had gone into a couple of the
series, the training series that we've
got, particularly in the world of uh SQL
and Python and Django. Got a whole bunch
of stuff there that we've done. All of
that is free right now until we decide
that we want to somehow put that behind
a payw wall. So, grab it while you can
basically leave us comments at any of
those places. We'd love to hear if you
have any questions. We would love to
help you out with it as well because our
goal is to help you become better
developers. Allah the title of this that
being said it's time for us to wrap this
up. So go out there and have yourself a
great day a great week and we will talk
to you next time
bonus material. I'm going to say that I
already gave my bonus my sales speech or
whatever is my bonus material so we
don't go too long on this.
>> Yeah. I'll just throw an additional one
out along with the kitchen sink app. You
know look at we've we've talked about
automation before. You know, a great way
to build your skills is look at what
you're doing. Look at your general
tasks. Find ways to automate that. Find
ways to write scripts or just change up
your processes.
Constantly do that. And heck, if you
again figure out how to automate
something, put it into that kitchen sink
app and you now have the example for
something else that you run into similar
in the future.
>> I will I will add to that because I
lied. I'm I do have a little bit more.
Um just because that triggered some
thoughts on that automation is such a
key to your side hustle is I I don't
know how often and it is it's like your
kitchen sink s your proof of concepts
your those kinds of your MVPs those
things that you build is amazing how
much how often those things are going to
come back up is there are tools that
I've written now dozens of time I've
written and rewritten and advanced and
done all this stuff with them because
they started with like just some simple
thing that I needed to automate and Next
thing I know, I was able to use that in
another application and then I was able
to expand on that and I was able to
enhance it. And then, you know, you can
you can grow some of these things into
entire cornerstone products. And there
are plenty of those out there that were,
you know, somebody just started with
something small, they kept building,
kept building, kept building, and next
thing you know, that's a product that
everybody wants a hold of. So, highly
recommend that. I also highly recommend
that you go out there and enjoy your
day. We appreciate all the time that
you've given for us and now we're going
to give you some time back. But we are
not done. We'll come back next episode.
We are going to continue doing fun stuff
with AI and uh the you know the hits
will continue. The hilarity ensues as
always. Have a great one. We appreciate
you so much and talk to you next time.
[Music]