Detailed Notes
In the ever-evolving world of software development, the tools you use can either streamline your workflow or slow you down. Mastering the right developer tools isn’t just about efficiency—it’s about transforming how you approach challenges and fostering habits that drive smarter, more effective development. The Building Better Developers podcast dives deep into this topic, exploring how thoughtful tool selection and intentional habits can lead to meaningful growth and productivity. Let’s explore how developer tools can be a catalyst for transformation in your work.
Read more... https://develpreneur.com/developer-tools-that-transform-habits-for-smarter-development/
*Challenge for Developers*
The podcast ends with a challenge: spend seven days exploring a new category of tools. Here’s how to get started:
* Day 1: Research tools in a specific category (e.g., bug tracking or time management). * Days 2-6: Spend 10-15 minutes each day testing different tools. * Day 7: Evaluate your findings and pick the one that fits best.
This simple exercise sharpens your evaluation skills and helps you discover tools that genuinely improve your workflow.
*Additional Resources*
* Updating Developer Tools: Keeping Your Tools Sharp and Efficient (https://develpreneur.com/updating-developer-tools-keeping-your-tools-sharp-and-efficient/) * Tools to Separate Developers from Coders (https://develpreneur.com/tools-to-separate-developers-from-coders/) * Building a Strong Developer Toolkit: Enhancing Skills and Productivity (https://develpreneur.com/building-a-strong-developer-toolkit-enhancing-skills-and-productivity/) * Developer Tools That Transform: Habits for Smarter Development (https://develpreneur.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/DP825_S23E16-Developer-Tools-That-Transform-Habits-for-Smarter-Development.jpeg)
*Follow-us on:*
* https://develpreneur.com/ * https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZOuFN_LhczvGyT2KSItH_g/featured * https://facebook.com/Develpreneur * https://twitter.com/develpreneur * http://linkedin.com/develpreneur
Transcript Text
[Music] and everybody we are back and I'm going to hit a light a little more lit up a little more lit as the kids like to say and after a cough to clear my voice what do we want to cover this time did we have something from last time we have a couple of good looking for the list uh let's see nothing there [Music] up the other list see good habits habits habits habits and a challenge [Laughter] prepared nobody needs it we don't need no stinking being prepared uh that made me want to go watch uh oh what was the movie Blazing Saddles I haven't seen Blazing Saddles in a long time I need to do that again I haven't watched that in like 10 years I need to let's see last time we did uh cultivating developer Le leadership habits and um what was it uh requirements gather or not requirements um shoot where's my [Music] notes uh coding standards was the other one we did last time that's right um I'm still working on that one uh that was what was the first one we did was um leadership habits lead Mentor teach for Success habits what was I I just had a brief thought as I was looking at stuff um tools um I think one would be one of them would be fun I think is sort of like a How We Do habits of like figuring out what's out there and getting to use it and things like that we've talked a little bit I can't I think if we're going to do this we have to ban the term kitchen sink from your vocabulary because we've we've like had several things that have swung back into that but it's really not a um I'm really thinking not necessarily coding tools but actually like apps and stuff like that that we have to use is get a little bit some of those kinds of things because there's definitely a lot of that when you think of particularly of like the Nuggets that we used to do all the time in the mentoring sessions before I think that would be a good one and I can easily think of a challenge um yeah like B tools CU that's like um well I mean the easy ones are of course you know the email the pass tools um you know the time locker tools things like that um even stuff like Jiran Confluence that we use all the time but there's a billion other like you know bug trackers Mo bugzilla all that kind of crap that's out there and it's like what do you you know what do you use or how do you use it or how do you go find out what's out there um kind tools for the trade yeah I think just tools and it it's it's for us and then also that can help our customers so to sort of like a tools and research um what's another good one to do that's a good question um as I'm staring around at like my stuff oh we can talk cloud cloud services in particular like AWS Azure gcp all that stuff yeah uh well not even just well H that made me think of VMS you want to do that one separately or include VMS how would you do what do you mean by VMS uh like parallels virtual box uh running containers locally um well I think we've talked about containers I don't know what we would do that would be like a habit related to VMS cuz think we sort of touched on that a little bit and we probably will a little bit on this as well um I think start with the broad cloud and then we may that may be something that may spin off into a something we come back around and talk about like yeah VMS and containers yeah okay I just want to make sure I didn't bleed into something off topic Oh by all means bleed because we still have episodes so we'll never know you know like that may speed us up next time we're like oh yeah we have a list of six things we're going to talk about but now we're only going to have three two hello and welcome back we are continuing our season when we are getting our mic out of the way for those that are watching this and we are building better habits building better developers this is develop andur podcast I am Rob Broadhead I am one of the founders of develop andur not like Mike who's just toasting us on the other side well you can't see this this is all this is all audio but you could check us out on the video side slight tangent okay so I am also a founder of RB Consulting where we help you manage technology we help you'd get the most out of it you know this is something like things like you know your big purchases of Life are things like a house and a car maybe a boat and a big Software System because if you're a business that's a lot of where your stuff goes a lot of where your money and resources and time and you sort of bet on those things so we help you through integration simplification automation we find ways to take what you have craft it into a you know custom unique solution for you so you can get the most out of it and do the most for your customers on our as we're continuing our challenges I I know it's a like broken record but those pomodoros just like throwing a couple in there and making sure that you use those on a regular basis has been huge for me it's really been something that's allowed me to like just really focus on stuff another one that I'm finding that's it was a little bit more challenging to get into because I had a lot of other things going on is the branding thing I think doing just a little bit of you know self-branding stuff 10 15 minutes a day even of like a little blog post reviewing a site something like that you may see some of the fruits of this because I actually went back out and dug up some stuff for the developing or site some of the things that we were that had been on my list I think literally for two or three years it's like oh yeah I'll get to it so I got to it those kinds of things are are really helpful to just like keep you thinking about your business and not get too stuck working in your business instead of on your business good thing bad thing is uh this is like a very micro microcosm of stuff but working out yesterday playing handball great time did great awesome winning and then the bad that was a good thing it was a great day good workout all that kind of stuff the bad thing is at one point my partner and I were not on the same page and I ended up basically punching one finger into his fist and he's not a small guy and uh there was a you know long story short it hurt a lot I don't know if you can see here but there's like a there's a whoops there well I got to get my like there's like a nice little like discolored here and swollen and all that kind of good stuff see this is why you should watch listen to and watch our YouTube channel but also that will be an opportunity for you to get to see Michael laughing at all the stupid stuff I do Mike go ahead and introduce yourself hey everyone my name is Michael malash one of the co-founders of develop preneur also the founder of Envision QA where we offer a plethora of services be it from quality assurance software development quality controls we are essentially your go-to when you are struggling with your software projects either it's a new project you want to get off the ground and not sure where to begin or if you're struggling to get your software to a state where your customers are happy where you're not crashing every day we will help you analyze your software build the testing tools you need to make sure that your software runs smoothly and your customers are happy let's see goals uh pomodora doing pretty good with that um still about two three of those a day uh running into the habits still bad habits still of um not taking a break in between like I'm doing 25 25 25 I need to shorten it up just a little bit working on that um However unfortunately when you're working on software you can kind of go heads down and you get like once you get on a roll you're kind of stuck on a roll and it's not really prudent to take a break so good and bad on that uh so kind of good and bad uh good had a wonderful day project kicked off things are going smooth bad side today I just kind of had one of those days of everything melted down it's like I nothing seemed to be going right and uh reset doing a little bit better now but it just was kind of a roller coaster kind of day uh so hey you know hopefully everybody's else's roller coaster will be going on the upswing now as they're listening to us and what we want to talk about this time is sort of a to me this is an upswing kind of uh opportunity of a topic we going talk about tools and one of the habits that I think are very valuable to developers and that I think we don't we really underestimate them I don't think we value them to the level that we do is how we can bring our expertise into recommending tools and utilizing tools that are not technology so you know yes we everybody would say yeah if I need to know about what's the right IDE I'm going to talk to my developer pal and stuff like that and they're going to talk like that in a very deep voice but then there's all these other countless like just even if you just talk of the industries there's countless industries of tools that are out there when you think of things like there's there's customer relationship management stuff and Enterprise management and uh just bug tracking ticket tracking issue tracking lists productivity tools connection tools email to blah blah blah blah blah just tons of them and it is very valuable for us to spend some time thinking through these evaluating these now some it is very much a resume enhancer or can be for you for example if you spend some time and you understand how to let's say you're a just a a we'll call a general purpose developer like maybe you do Java you do C or python or PHP or something like that then it is very valuable for you to also know enough to for example integrate with Salesforce or Nets Suite or the database size sides maybe like you know uh Oracle financials or Microsoft Dynamics and some of those kinds of things but also even smaller tool well call them smaller tools no offense to like your mail chimps and HubSpot and QuickBooks uh QuickBooks Online you know those kinds of things it is very useful for us to understand and spend some time in these tools there is a whole industry we interviewed a guy not too long ago okay a couple years ago now that his whole business was based on customizing assana and there's things like that that there are these niches that are out there that are sometimes based or surrounding you know work around a specific tool or set of tools it's very helpful for us to spend some time keeping up with the Joneses we'll say but keeping up with what's out there now as building a habit one of the things that I found that's useful is this is not so much a a daily task although we're going to turn it into one because that's part of the challenge it's not so much a daily task but to me it is more well I feel I think it's best described as seasonal there will be times that there will be a certain flavor of products that I'm going to be interested in that I'm going to do some research on and spend some time with usually yes it's related to a customer or something that they need or potentially maybe it's a project that I'm trying to win and I know I need to know a little bit more about this world or this area of projects or these areas of applications or we're even if we're building something custom because I want to go see what's out there because it's not we're not going to use the word steal but we'll say um repeat with prejudice or something like some of their skill some of the features and functions that are out there because it's and it's not about the function per say or exact precisely as much as like what does this type of project this type of application this type of product generally need to provide so we have you know it's a little bit of a sanity check to make sure that our requirements make sense and it's also a little bit of a where can we get some you know some germs of ideas that we can build something that's going to be better for our customers I give you something to work with before I pass it on to Michael and let him go all the places he's going to go one of the things I like to do with these projects with the is just like learning anything else and this is probably because I'm very much a a Hands-On I want to like do something with it I want to I want to apply that knowledge and that helps it you know sink into my my head so a lot of times I'm going to do is I'm going to take particularly if I'm looking at multiple applications now maybe I just need one but I'm going to have a a need so for example let's say well we can go back let's say that in the revamping of the development or stuff I want to spend some time looking at marketing tools how can we better what's are there tools out there that we don't use that we can you know we could adopt and that will help us with our marketing efforts now thinking through these kinds of things in themselves is a useful exercise because it's like okay what the heck would that tool even give me what does it provide to me and so part of this is building out sort of your little list of like this is my requirements for this kind of tool and I use this quite often where I've got sort of like a core requirements that fit me my business my situation and I can take those and with a lot of different applications I can find ways to apply those so I could go out in this art marketing thing and say okay well I want something where I'm going to be able to have a mail list I want to be able to track customers I want to be able to track their uh their open rate you know and and maybe have some sort of automated send to my list or maybe multiple lists cool got a list of stuff now what I want to do is I hate to say it but a lot of time I start with like a Google Search and actually one of the best things is pick like what you know or the product that you have or the the one name you know and then go Google products like X or alternatives to X that will almost always pop up one of the comparison sites it'll give you like the best 20 you know males list software Solutions of 2022 or whatever they and you find one for this year or close enough to it and start walking through it because usually those are a great way to get started with just a highlevel point of view of like what is out in this market what should I be able to talk to my customers about if I'm building something in this in this realm what are some things like name dropping I should do to be able to say well it's sort of like this or sort of like that now that's the first step the second step is now I need to go look at those so when I say it's sort of like this I actually know what the heck I'm talking about and it's not just I'm dropping a name but it's like I've spent a little time on it now this goes back to those requirements what I usually will do is depending on my time frame and stuff like that is take my requirements and say to myself or to the round room in general what is it that I could do to to prove that I can support you know meet some of these requirements in a short period of time short period of time maybe an hour maybe a day maybe two or three days but then my goal is to go get you know step on one of th get one of those applications usually you can download a fully functioning version for some period of time there's some sort of demo or something that will allow you to get used to it to play around with it as we say and even if it's one that like hey it's seven days free and then they're going to charge you $4 billion at the end just make darn sure you cancel that by day four or five and if they don't allow you if it's really painful to cancel it at least you're protecting your customers from being you know hit by the same kind of stuff but it it is a it is a challenging thing to do because I have to usually be very focused on like I have a small period of time I've got a demo I've got a lot of products that I want to compare so I want to like go through this and repeat this process and I want it to be something that is by Nature it's going to be a throwaway even though there have been more than a few times that I've gotten into it and enjoyed working on the product so much that I've been like I'm going to buy that product or I'm G to you know I'm going to start using this so that is like a really short list of just start with some requirements go for a search just find sort of a the world of those kind of things and then say all right I'm going to build a short list which a lot of times my short list is if they don't have a demo if they don't have a free demo then it's it's out of the list and so you bring it on down and get down to something that's you know even if it's like three to five that now has allowed you to expand your world of knowledge and if you're comparing something that you've done before then maybe one or two of those are things that you've used in the past and you want to see how they've updated them and then the others are going to be some new ones now you can compare what I've said to the new guy on the other side of the internet there what are your thoughts on this one Mike and maybe your approaches to it sure so you threw out a whole bunch of different apps and ideas and I wanted start with a simple concept so if you're going to use tools or apps or anything to try to improve your life or improve your apps make sure that you first see if there's a demo play around with it try it out you know kick the tires you don't want to just say hey I'm going with this tool and you find out three months down the road that you spent $300 and the thing doesn't work also once you find a tool that you like stick with it don't once you find something that works for you stop you know if it works it's cheap you don't need to waste any more time trying to kick the wheels and try something else and finally avoid tools that add work so one of the things I found is when you go out and start looking for tools you start using apps make sure the app improves your life not make your life more difficult uh one of the best examples I can throw out there is QuickBooks QuickBooks d top version awesome QuickBooks Online total floar it is so much additional work to do something in QuickBooks Online versus QuickBooks desktop it's it's one of those where it's like okay I'm going back to this or going to something like wave apps which is free for most of the functionality and we'll get you 90% there so as you're looking at tools make sure it does the job you want make sure it's easy to use and make sure it doesn't make your life more difficult now as developers we tend to make our lives difficult because when we see a problem we typically are like oh I can write a solution to do that 90% of what we do as developers have probably already been done before in some frame or fashion so like if you need to like a calendar application well you have Outlook you have Google Calendar there are things out there that may already do what you're trying to accomplish so do some Googling search do some research and see if there's something out there that already does it maybe there's a free API you can use some examples you can pull in or an app you can just plug into like Rob said like MailChimp or srid or something else out there you can use what's already there the best example of this is something we looked at years ago uh early on when we were doing another project we looked at things like mly and there were some other social media apps out there for pushing out your notifications to social media so when you're doing blogs we you you always have to do that marketing you have to push it out you have to bring in your customers well initially we tried to write our own we tried to use the apis for Facebook LinkedIn all those fun places and the problem we ran into a lot was those applications constantly get updated apis changed things break and we're spending so much more time just trying to push our software out than it would be to just literally go to those social media outlets and just post the material ourselves then we ran across a couple different apps that gave us the ability to do that some were good some were bad so when you're looking for these tools again make sure that it makes your life easier not harder and make sure that if you start having problems with it see if there something else you should use or is there something you maybe this is not working at all maybe it's something you need to do yourself wow there's a couple good little follow-up pieces of wisdom there and the first one is is yes once you find it stick with it um this is part of what we actually this is part of what we talk to with our customers on a regular basis is let's see what you have and how you use it because sometimes you're using it just fine and you may think there's something better and maybe there is but the cost of transitioning is more than it's worth and particularly if you know what you're doing if you're comfortable with the tool there's going to be that level of discomfort As you move to a new tool I do want to just BEC and this is off topic a little bit but because you mentioned this as a developer I'm going to use an example I from years ago uh if you know probably a lot of you people have run into the atlassian series of tools like jira Confluence and stuff like that well I don't know if I don't think it's actually still there it may still be for some of their products but it used to be that for $10 for up to like up to 10 users you could download jira Confluence and a couple of the other tools for life it was a lifelong subscription 10 bucks never have to pay money again host it yourself do whatever you want now you do have to I think pay for some upgrades eventually and some stuff like that but if you want to stick to one version orever awesome I just like I'm like cool I'm going to do that I'm going to throw it on a server the problem is is that means I'm administering it and about once a quarter I would like need to go get a you know go get an update and go install it and stuff like that and I would probably spend I don't know two or three hours like migrating doing all this kind of stuff for $10 a month you could get a hosted version same number of users their server their problem it just works didn't work necessarily quite as fast as what I could set up on mine but it still worked it took me very little time to calculate what it was going to C what it cost me to maintain my server for for free software free after I'd spent the 10 bucks so now that's like that's in the past so you know year two year three year four zero money on the software but the administrative side was well over the 120 bucks it cost to do 10 months 12 months at $10 or1 months at $12 if you wanted to go that right so moral of that story is think about the value of your time now there are other things there are other factors in there maybe that you want to learn how to administer that you want to spend some time on that you want to learn that tool or something like that okay but if it's just raw hey I can do that so I'm going to that's where you should be like yeah you can do it but should you now with the tools I want to I I really do want to like sort of wrapping this up is go back to the the point there I just brought about Michael saying like stick with it once you find one stick with it because for us yes you may eventually need to stick with something new because it may you know just not be very good it may fall behind it maybe there's another good product out or something like that but you don't want to do this very regularly you want to find something and stick with it and if you're like me and like Michael I happen to know I'm going to like call him out on this because we both do this when you see six different applications you're going to see features of each of those that you want and you're going to be tempted to use two or three of them at a time and this is not a developer problem I have been in a lot of customers that have no development experience whatsoever and they want to use and they do use three or four different things that basically do the thing the applications do basically the same thing we have to watch out for that because it's really easy for us to do stuff like you know bounce around and do you know have 18 windows open at a time and we think that we're doing more this goes back to another favorite is are you being prod productive or are you being busy so just because you have 14,000 windows up does not mean you're being productive find your tool find a way to make it yours use it that's if you're doing it for yourself now on a general sense you can just like when you're just learning about it cut it off like have a have a l time box it spike it whatever you however you want to look at it is basically say okay I'm going to spend two days on this or three days on this or a week on this and then I'm going to move on to the other one and and stick with that because now sometimes you know if it if it sucks and you want to bail on day one awesome but if it's doing pretty good there's going to be a limit unless you're on the last one and you're like I love it this is it fine but anything else you got to limit yourself otherwise it's really easy to get lost in rabbit holes and you're going down all these little rabbit trails and you're you're spending way too much time playing around with the like the neat little features of the app as opposed to like getting that holistic kind of knowledge that we want to now before the challenge I'm GNA throw it back to you one more time M because I think you had a couple looks like you had a couple things to say yeah you touched on you know look at your time and the cost of time on like a time it takes to do something even if you find an app that is wonderful it does everything you want if you are spending more time doing that task than you were before the app that app's not worth it you got to be careful about the tools that you use that they are not just beneficial but they're also they fit within that time box for your time versus money so you want to make sure that the effort involved makes sense so be careful because I've run into this trap quite a bit where as Rob through out I liked using mult apps I'm always checking out the app stores seeing what's out there because it's always changing but the trick is the whole 8020 rules is kind of flip for applications the apps that are out there is probably more 20% are more valuable to you for your time versus the rest so spend a little bit of time a little bit of effort and make sure you're not wasting time yeah that's that's where I say this where we get in that challenge of being better developers being more prod productive with our time as opposed to just being busy and cranking stuff out that may not be the most productive route now for the challenge for this one is to spend the next seven days and start with the first day pick this one we're not going to do like the full evaluation the apps to start this is just this week get a list and then each day spend five or 10 minutes going out to the site of one of them and just get to know a little bit about it is it something that has a demo what's up with the demo what's the value of it things like that because then I think at the end of the week it'd be really cool for you to even at the end of the week now you've spent a little bit of time so you know these tools a little bit get to the end and maybe craft yourself a little plan how am I going to go deeper for these plans for these projects or these applications or whatever they are or another thing you can do is just say okay now I'm going to go to a different type of tool and just do that for you know if you get a week then there's one line of business one type of application that you're going to know more about preferably one that's in your at least uh job adjacent or something like that if not something specifically for your employers if you want some very easy ones to do anything that's a Wiki related kind of site anything that is a bug or task related kind of site uh anything is a Time tracking kind of site and then probably anything that is a uh like a a Vio type tool or things like that those are just everybody and a male client male clients everybody use them those kind male clients is a fun one because you're going to find a bunch that you've never heard of and you might find one that you actually like there's some pretty cool things out there specifically now as we're getting into the world of AI there's some neat stuff so that's your challenge when you get done with it I would love to hear what's your top three products in whatever your area is that you decide to check out you know send us an email info develop and.com leave us a comment whether you're watching us on YouTube whether you're listening to the podcast you can send us uh we have a contact us form on developer.com you can check it out there you can check out the the quote new developer.com that was really just a couple minor changes but it's what do you expect with 10 to 15 minutes come on and I think I spent more than that because I got bit by Google AdSense and some of its kind of stuff and setting it up in our site which had to catch up a couple of things to get to that point that being said go out there and have yourself a great day a great week and we will talk to you next time bonus material we gave some already so now you gota we got to kick it up a notch on our bonuses we did um one of the things we didn't touch on at all was don't forget to use AI as an option to look for these tools AI is still very powerful use the search engines heck if you want even use or look at different AI apps for the different tools or apps that are out there the other thing to mention is if you are trying different things especially if you're doing AWS or some of the other cloud-based applications make sure you're very careful if you sign up for a free trial that you cancel that trial at the end schedule it on your calendar hey this will expire in 14 days or uh what is it rocket not rocket app um oh into it bought it but there was a very good app out there that's being advertised oh yeah like rocket money or something like that yeah something like that yeah actually like scan your accounts and find the things that will like the memberships that you forget that you subscribe to hey there's a bonus look for something like that if you don't know what you're wasting money on but be careful when you do sign up for things that you are conscious if there is a trial period and you're going to be charged for it one little tip with that go get a pre paid Visa card or a gift card use that for all your sites it's a valid card as long as it isn't expired you can stick it out there if there's no money on it when they go to try to charge you it's going to kick back as whoops we can't charge you and your account's canceled anyway that is a nice that's a that's a good little bonus to that I would also say uh some bonus stuff is look at the if you're looking at anything that is a software as a service look at the tiers because and look at the fine print there's a lot of times there's a free option that is actually not listed anywhere in the pricing but you can like find that it does exist and I have found more than a few times that the free version of whatever it is is perfectly good and that 8020 rule it really like is mostly most little companies are perfectly fine in the Free World they don't need to pay any money to it they don't have to they can just U ize that now a lot of these software companies eventually figure that out and they don't have a free tier anymore or they limit it but you can get them early on sometimes you can save quite a bit of money that includes your Cloud providers there are all kinds of introductory free tier offers that whether you're with Azure whether you're with Amazon whe AWS whether you're with gcp whatever it is those there are some really good introductory type things in there that may allow you Beyond just like a 7-Day or 20-day trial period but maybe something that's useful budget-wise for a whole year or so or or months and months so check that stuff out that being said our stuff is always free I mean unless you want to donate then hey but it's still free that was on you you chose to donate so you can check us out you can anywhere develop andur is got tons and tons of stuff every time I go out there and start doing work on the site I'm reminded that we've got tons and tons of content out there so if you want to look something up if you want to learn how to do something we probably have it somewhere we got literally over a thousand articles out there of varying sorts we got audio we got video we got written most of those we have written plus audio or video you can check out just the YouTube site I think is now like I think we're over 200 things there there's a lot of stuff out there more than happy to share it if you have questions about any of us you know how to contact us info developer.com leave us comments on whatever it is uh any kind of feedback we'll be happy to even if it was from 10 years ago we'll be happy to do our best to like you know dust that off and get back to it and figure out how to you know to get it updated or to help you out with any questions you have thanks as always for spending some time with us and investing your your time in becoming a better developer because sooner or later we'll cross paths and we'll be so happy that you did all of these great things we've talked about so we'll say gosh your code is awesome easy to maintain smells good all that kind of goodness got there have yourself a great day and we will talk to you next time [Music]
Transcript Segments
[Music]
and everybody we are back
and I'm going to hit a
light a little more lit up a little more
lit as the kids like to say
and after a cough to clear my voice what
do we want to cover this
time did we have something from last
time we have a couple of good looking
for the
list uh let's
see nothing there
[Music]
up the other list see good habits habits
habits
habits and a challenge
[Laughter]
prepared nobody needs it we don't need
no stinking being
prepared
uh that made me want to go watch uh oh
what was the
movie Blazing
Saddles I haven't seen Blazing Saddles
in a long time I need to do that again I
haven't watched that in like 10 years I
need
to let's see last time we did
uh cultivating developer Le leadership
habits and
um what was it uh requirements gather or
not requirements
um shoot where's my
[Music]
notes uh coding standards was the other
one we did last time that's right um
I'm still working on that one
uh that was what was the first one we
did
was um leadership habits lead Mentor
teach for Success habits what was I I
just had a brief thought as I was
looking at stuff um
tools um I think one would
be one of them would be fun I think is
sort of like a How We Do habits of like
figuring out what's out there and
getting to use it and things like that
we've talked a little bit I can't I
think if we're going to do this we have
to ban the term kitchen sink from your
vocabulary because we've we've like had
several things that have swung back into
that but it's really not a um I'm really
thinking not
necessarily coding tools but actually
like apps and stuff like that that we
have to use is get a little bit some of
those kinds of things because there's
definitely a lot of that when you think
of particularly of like the Nuggets that
we used to do all the time in the
mentoring sessions before I think that
would be a good
one and I can easily think of a
challenge um yeah like B tools CU that's
like um well I mean the easy ones are of
course you know the email the pass tools
um you know the time locker tools things
like that um even stuff like Jiran
Confluence that we use all the time but
there's a billion other like you know
bug trackers Mo bugzilla all that kind
of crap that's out there and it's like
what do you you know what do you use or
how do you use it or how do you go find
out what's out there um kind tools for
the trade
yeah I think just tools and it it's it's
for us and then also that can help our
customers so to sort of like a tools and
research
um what's another good one to do that's
a good
question
um as I'm staring around at like my
stuff oh we can talk
cloud cloud services in particular
like AWS Azure gcp all that stuff yeah
uh well not even just well H that made
me think of
VMS you want to do that one separately
or include VMS how would you do what do
you mean by VMS uh like parallels
virtual box uh running containers
locally um well I think we've talked
about containers I don't know what we
would do that would be like a habit
related to VMS cuz think we sort of
touched on that a little bit and we
probably will a little bit on this as
well
um I think start with the broad cloud
and then we may that may be something
that may spin off into a something we
come back around and talk about like
yeah VMS and containers yeah okay I just
want to make sure I didn't bleed into
something off topic Oh by all means
bleed because we still have episodes so
we'll never know you know like that may
speed us up next time we're like oh yeah
we have a list of six things we're going
to talk about but now we're only going
to have three two hello and welcome back
we are continuing our season when we are
getting our mic out of the way for those
that are watching this and we are
building better habits building better
developers this is develop andur podcast
I am Rob Broadhead I am one of the
founders of develop andur not like Mike
who's just toasting us on the other side
well you can't see this this is all this
is all audio but you could check us out
on the video side
slight tangent okay so I am also a
founder of RB Consulting where we help
you manage technology we help you'd get
the most out of it you know this is
something like things like you know your
big purchases of Life are things like a
house and a car maybe a boat and a big
Software System because if you're a
business that's a lot of where your
stuff goes a lot of where your money and
resources and time and you sort of bet
on those things so we help you through
integration simplification automation we
find ways to take what you have craft it
into a you know custom unique solution
for you so you can get the most out of
it and do the most for your
customers on our as we're continuing our
challenges I I know it's a like broken
record but those pomodoros just like
throwing a couple in there and making
sure that you use those on a regular
basis has been huge for me it's really
been something that's allowed me to like
just really focus on stuff another one
that I'm finding that's it was a little
bit more challenging to get into because
I had a lot of other things going on is
the branding thing I think doing just a
little bit of you know self-branding
stuff 10 15 minutes a day even of like a
little blog post reviewing a site
something like that you may see some of
the fruits of this because I actually
went back out and dug up some stuff for
the developing or site some of the
things that we were that had been on my
list I think literally for two or three
years it's like oh yeah I'll get to it
so I got to it those kinds of things are
are really helpful to just like keep you
thinking about your business and not get
too stuck working in your business
instead of on your business good thing
bad thing is uh this is like a very
micro microcosm of stuff but working out
yesterday playing handball great time
did great awesome winning and then the
bad that was a good thing it was a great
day good workout all that kind of stuff
the bad thing is at one point my partner
and I were not on the same page and I
ended up basically punching one finger
into his fist and he's not a small guy
and uh there was a you know long story
short it hurt a lot I don't know if you
can see here but there's like a there's
a whoops there well I got to get my like
there's like a nice little like
discolored here and swollen and all that
kind of good stuff see this is why you
should watch listen to and watch our
YouTube channel but also that will be an
opportunity for you to get to see
Michael laughing at all the stupid stuff
I do Mike go ahead and introduce
yourself hey everyone my name is Michael
malash one of the co-founders of develop
preneur also the founder of Envision QA
where we offer a plethora of services be
it from quality assurance software
development quality controls we are
essentially your go-to when you are
struggling with your software projects
either it's a new project you want to
get off the ground and not sure where to
begin or if you're struggling to get
your software to a state where your
customers are happy where you're not
crashing every day we will help you
analyze your software build the testing
tools you need to make sure that your
software runs smoothly and your
customers are
happy let's see goals uh pomodora doing
pretty good with that um still about two
three of those a day uh running into the
habits still bad habits still of um not
taking a break in between like I'm doing
25 25 25 I need to shorten it up just a
little bit working on that um However
unfortunately when you're working on
software you can kind of go heads down
and you get like once you get on a roll
you're kind of stuck on a roll and it's
not really prudent to take a break so
good and bad on that uh so kind of good
and bad uh good had a wonderful day
project kicked off things are going
smooth bad side today I just kind of had
one of those days of everything melted
down it's like I nothing seemed to be
going right and uh reset doing a little
bit better now but it just was kind of a
roller coaster kind of day uh so hey you
know hopefully everybody's else's roller
coaster will be going on the upswing now
as they're listening to us and what we
want to talk about this time is sort of
a to me this is an upswing kind of uh
opportunity of a topic we going talk
about tools and one of the habits that I
think are very valuable to developers
and that I think we don't we really
underestimate them I don't think we
value them to the level that we do is
how we can bring our expertise into
recommending tools and utilizing tools
that are not technology so you know yes
we everybody would say yeah if I need to
know about what's the right IDE I'm
going to talk to my developer pal and
stuff like that and they're going to
talk like that in a very deep voice but
then there's all these
other countless like just even if you
just talk of the industries there's
countless industries of tools that are
out there when you think of things like
there's there's customer relationship
management stuff and Enterprise
management and uh just bug tracking
ticket tracking issue tracking lists
productivity tools connection tools
email to blah blah blah blah blah just
tons of them and it is very valuable for
us to spend some
time thinking through these evaluating
these now some it is very much a resume
enhancer or can be for you for example
if you spend some time and you
understand how to let's say you're a
just a a we'll call a general purpose
developer like maybe you do Java you do
C or python or PHP or something like
that then it is very valuable for you to
also know enough to for example
integrate with Salesforce or Nets Suite
or the database size sides maybe like
you know uh Oracle financials or
Microsoft Dynamics and some of those
kinds of things but also even smaller
tool well call them smaller tools no
offense to like your mail chimps and
HubSpot and QuickBooks uh QuickBooks
Online you know those kinds of things it
is very useful for us to understand and
spend some time in these tools
there is a whole industry we interviewed
a guy not too long ago okay a couple
years ago now that his whole business
was based on customizing assana and
there's things like that that there are
these niches that are out there that are
sometimes based or surrounding you know
work around a specific tool or set of
tools it's very helpful for us to spend
some time keeping up with the Joneses
we'll say but keeping up with what's out
there now as building a habit one of the
things that I found that's useful is
this is not so much a a daily task
although we're going to turn it into one
because that's part of the challenge
it's not so much a daily task but to me
it is more well I feel I think it's best
described as seasonal there will be
times that there will be a certain
flavor of products that I'm going to be
interested in that I'm going to do some
research on and spend some time with
usually yes it's related to a customer
or something that they need or
potentially maybe it's a project that
I'm trying to win and I know I need to
know a little bit more about this world
or this area of projects or these areas
of applications or we're even if we're
building something custom because I want
to go see what's out there because it's
not we're not going to use the word
steal but we'll say
um repeat with prejudice or something
like some of their skill some of the
features and functions that are out
there because it's and it's not about
the function per say or exact precisely
as much as like what does this type of
project this type of application this
type of product generally need to
provide so we have you know it's a
little bit of a sanity check to make
sure that our requirements make sense
and it's also a little bit of a where
can we get some you know some germs of
ideas that we can build something that's
going to be better for our
customers I give you something to work
with before I pass it on to Michael and
let him go all the places he's going to
go one of the things I like to do with
these projects with the is just like
learning anything else and this is
probably because I'm very much a a
Hands-On I want to like do something
with it I want to I want to apply that
knowledge and that helps it you know
sink into my my head so a lot of times
I'm going to do is I'm going to take
particularly if I'm looking at multiple
applications now maybe I just need one
but I'm going to have a a need so for
example let's say well we can go back
let's say that in the revamping of the
development or stuff I want to spend
some time looking at marketing tools how
can we better what's are there tools out
there that we don't use that we can you
know we could adopt and that will help
us with our marketing efforts now
thinking through these kinds of things
in themselves is a useful exercise
because it's like okay what the heck
would that tool even give me what does
it provide to me
and so part of this is building out sort
of your little list of like this is my
requirements for this kind of tool and I
use this quite often where I've got sort
of like a core requirements that fit me
my business my
situation and I can take those and with
a lot of different applications I can
find ways to apply those so I could go
out in this art marketing thing and say
okay well I want something where I'm
going to be able to have a mail list I
want to be able to track customers I
want to be able to track their uh their
open rate you know and and maybe have
some sort of automated send to my list
or maybe multiple lists cool got a list
of stuff now what I want to do is I hate
to say it but a lot of time I start with
like a Google Search and actually one of
the best things is pick like what you
know or the product that you have or the
the one name you know and then go
Google products like X or alternatives
to X that will almost always pop up one
of the comparison sites it'll give you
like the best 20 you know males list
software Solutions of 2022 or whatever
they and you find one for this year or
close enough to it and start walking
through it because usually those are a
great way to get started with just a
highlevel point of view of like what is
out in this market what should I be able
to talk to my customers about if I'm
building something in this in this realm
what are some things like name dropping
I should do to be able to say well it's
sort of like this or sort of like that
now that's the first step the second
step is now I need to go look at those
so when I say it's sort of like this I
actually know what the heck I'm talking
about and it's not just I'm dropping a
name but it's like I've spent a little
time on it now this goes back to those
requirements what I usually will do is
depending on my time frame and stuff
like that is take my requirements and
say to myself or to the round room in
general what is it that I could do to to
prove that I can support you know meet
some of these requirements in a short
period of time short period of time
maybe an hour maybe a day maybe two or
three days but then my goal is to go get
you know step on one of th get one of
those applications usually you can
download a fully functioning version for
some period of time there's some sort of
demo or something that will allow you to
get used to it to play around with it as
we say and even if it's one that like
hey it's seven days free and then
they're going to charge you $4 billion
at the end just make darn sure you
cancel that by day four or
five and if they don't allow you if it's
really painful to cancel it at least
you're protecting your customers from
being you know hit by the same kind of
stuff but it it is a it is a challenging
thing to do because I have to usually be
very focused on like I have a small
period of time I've got a demo I've got
a lot of products that I want to compare
so I want to like go through this and
repeat this
process and I want it to be something
that is by Nature it's going to be a
throwaway even though there have been
more than a few times that I've gotten
into it and enjoyed working on the
product so much that I've been like I'm
going to buy that product or I'm G to
you know I'm going to start using this
so that is like a really short list of
just start with some requirements go for
a search just find sort of a the world
of those kind of things and then say all
right I'm going to build a short list
which a lot of times my short list is if
they don't have a demo if they don't
have a free demo then it's it's out of
the list and so you bring it on down and
get down to something that's you know
even if it's like three to five that now
has allowed you to expand your world of
knowledge and if you're comparing
something that you've done before then
maybe one or two of those are things
that you've used in the past and you
want to see how they've updated them and
then the others are going to be some new
ones now you can compare what I've said
to the new guy on the other side of the
internet there what are your thoughts on
this one Mike and maybe your approaches
to it sure so you threw out a whole
bunch of different apps and ideas and I
wanted start with a simple concept so if
you're going to use tools or apps or
anything to try to improve your life or
improve your apps make sure that you
first see if there's a demo play around
with it try it out you know kick the
tires you don't want to just say hey I'm
going with this tool and you find out
three months down the road that you
spent $300 and the thing doesn't work
also once you find a tool that you like
stick with it don't once you find
something that works for you stop you
know if it works it's cheap you don't
need to waste any more time trying to
kick the wheels and try something
else and finally avoid tools that add
work so one of the things I found is
when you go out and start looking for
tools you start using apps make sure the
app improves your life not make your
life more difficult uh one of the best
examples I can throw out there is
QuickBooks QuickBooks d top version
awesome QuickBooks
Online total floar it is so much
additional work to do something in
QuickBooks Online versus QuickBooks
desktop it's it's one of those where
it's like okay I'm going back to this or
going to something like wave apps which
is free for most of the functionality
and we'll get you 90% there so as you're
looking at tools make sure it does the
job you want make sure it's easy to use
and make sure it doesn't make your life
more difficult
now as developers we tend to make our
lives difficult because when we see a
problem we typically are like oh I can
write a solution to do
that 90% of what we do as developers
have probably already been done before
in some frame or fashion so like if you
need to like a calendar application well
you have Outlook you have Google
Calendar there are things out there that
may already do what you're trying to
accomplish so do some Googling search do
some research and see if there's
something out there that already does it
maybe there's a free API you can use
some examples you can pull in or an app
you can just plug into like Rob said
like MailChimp or srid or something else
out there you can use what's already
there the best example of this is
something we looked at years ago uh
early on when we were doing another
project we looked at things like mly and
there were some other social media apps
out there for pushing out your
notifications to social media so when
you're doing blogs we you you always
have to do that marketing you have to
push it out you have to bring in your
customers well initially we tried to
write our own we tried to use the apis
for Facebook LinkedIn all those fun
places and the problem we ran into a lot
was those applications constantly get
updated apis changed things break and
we're spending so much more time just
trying to push our software out than it
would be to just literally go to those
social media outlets and just post the
material
ourselves then we ran across a couple
different apps that gave us the ability
to do that some were good some were bad
so when you're looking for these tools
again make sure that it makes your life
easier not harder and make sure that if
you start having problems with it see if
there something else you should use or
is there something you maybe this is not
working at all maybe it's something you
need to do
yourself wow there's a couple good
little follow-up pieces of wisdom there
and the first one is is yes once you
find it stick with it um this is part of
what we actually this is part of what we
talk to with our customers on a regular
basis is let's see what you have and how
you use it because sometimes you're
using it just fine and you may think
there's something better and maybe there
is but the cost of transitioning is more
than it's worth and particularly if you
know what you're doing if you're
comfortable with the tool there's going
to be that level of discomfort As you
move to a new tool I do want to just BEC
and this is off topic a little bit but
because you mentioned this as a
developer I'm going to use an example I
from years
ago uh if you know probably a lot of you
people have run into the atlassian
series of tools like jira Confluence and
stuff like that well I don't know if I
don't think it's actually still there it
may still be for some of their products
but it used to be that for $10 for up to
like up to 10 users you could download
jira Confluence and a couple of the
other tools for life it was a lifelong
subscription 10 bucks never have to pay
money again host it yourself do whatever
you want now you do have to I think pay
for some upgrades eventually and some
stuff like that but if you want to stick
to one version orever
awesome I just like I'm like cool I'm
going to do that I'm going to throw it
on a server the problem is is that means
I'm administering it and about once a
quarter I would like need to go get a
you know go get an update and go install
it and stuff like that and I would
probably spend I don't know two or three
hours like migrating doing all this kind
of stuff for $10 a month you could get a
hosted version same number of users
their server their problem it just works
didn't work necessarily quite as fast as
what I could set up on mine but it still
worked it took me very little time to
calculate what it was going to C what it
cost me to maintain my
server for for free software free after
I'd spent the 10 bucks so now that's
like that's in the past so you know year
two year three year four zero money on
the software but the administrative side
was well over the 120 bucks it cost to
do 10 months 12 months at $10 or1 months
at $12 if you wanted to go that right so
moral of that story is think about the
value of your time now there are other
things there are other factors in there
maybe that you want to learn how to
administer that you want to spend some
time on that you want to learn that tool
or something like that okay but if it's
just raw hey I can do that so I'm going
to that's where you should be like yeah
you can do it but should you
now with the
tools I want to I I really do want to
like sort of wrapping this up is go back
to the the point there I just brought
about Michael saying like stick with it
once you find one stick with it because
for us yes you may eventually need to
stick with something new because it may
you know just not be very good it may
fall behind it maybe there's another
good product out or something like that
but you don't want to do this very
regularly you want to find something and
stick with it and if you're like me and
like Michael I happen to know I'm going
to like call him out on this because we
both do this when you see six different
applications you're going to see
features of each of those that you want
and you're going to be tempted to use
two or three of them at a time and this
is not a developer problem I have been
in a lot of customers that have no
development experience whatsoever and
they want to use and they do use three
or four different things that basically
do the thing the applications do
basically the same thing we have to
watch out for that because it's really
easy for us to do stuff like you know
bounce around and do you know have 18
windows open at a time and we think that
we're doing more this goes back to
another favorite is are you being prod
productive or are you being busy so just
because you have 14,000 windows up does
not mean you're being
productive find your tool find a way to
make it yours use it that's if you're
doing it for yourself now on a general
sense you can just like when you're just
learning about it cut it off like have a
have a l time box it spike it whatever
you however you want to look at it is
basically say okay I'm going to spend
two days on this or three days on this
or a week on this and then I'm going to
move on to the other one and and stick
with that because now sometimes you know
if it if it sucks and you want to bail
on day one awesome but if it's doing
pretty good there's going to be a limit
unless you're on the last one and you're
like I love it this is it fine but
anything else you got to limit yourself
otherwise it's really easy to get lost
in rabbit holes and you're going down
all these little rabbit trails and
you're you're spending way too much time
playing around with the like the neat
little features of the app as opposed to
like getting that holistic kind of
knowledge that we want
to now before the challenge I'm GNA
throw it back to you one more time M
because I think you had a couple looks
like you had a couple things to say yeah
you touched on you know look at your
time and the cost of time on like a time
it takes to do something even if you
find an app that is wonderful it does
everything you want if you are spending
more time doing that task than you were
before the app that app's not worth it
you got to be careful about the tools
that you use that they are not just
beneficial but they're also they fit
within that time box for your time
versus money so you want to make sure
that the effort involved makes sense so
be careful because I've run into this
trap quite a bit where as Rob through
out I liked using mult apps I'm always
checking out the app stores seeing
what's out there because it's always
changing but the trick is the whole 8020
rules is kind of flip for applications
the apps that are out there is probably
more 20% are more valuable to you for
your time versus the rest so spend a
little bit of time a little bit of
effort and make sure you're not wasting
time yeah that's that's where I say this
where we get in that challenge of being
better developers being more prod
productive with our time as opposed to
just being busy and cranking stuff out
that may not be the most productive
route now for the challenge for this
one is to spend the next seven days and
start with the first day pick this one
we're not going to do like the full
evaluation the apps to start this is
just this week get a list and then each
day spend five or 10 minutes going out
to the site of one of them and just get
to know a little bit about it
is it something that has a demo what's
up with the demo what's the value of it
things like that because then I think at
the end of the week it'd be really cool
for you to even at the end of the week
now you've spent a little bit of time so
you know these tools a little bit get to
the end and maybe craft yourself a
little plan how am I going to go deeper
for these plans for these projects or
these applications or whatever they are
or another thing you can do is just say
okay now I'm going to go to a different
type of tool and just do that for you
know if you get a week then there's one
line of business one type of application
that you're going to know more about
preferably one that's in your at least
uh job adjacent or something like that
if not something specifically for your
employers if you want some very easy
ones to do anything that's a Wiki
related kind of site anything that is a
bug or task related kind of site uh
anything is a Time tracking kind of site
and then probably anything that is a uh
like a a Vio type tool or things like
that those are just everybody and a male
client male clients everybody use them
those kind male clients is a fun one
because you're going to find a bunch
that you've never heard of and you might
find one that you actually like there's
some pretty cool things out there
specifically now as we're getting into
the world of AI there's some neat stuff
so that's your
challenge when you get done with it I
would love to hear what's your top three
products in whatever your area is that
you decide to check out you know send us
an email info develop and.com leave us a
comment whether you're watching us on
YouTube whether you're listening to the
podcast you can send us uh we have a
contact us form on developer.com you can
check it out there you can check out the
the quote new developer.com that was
really just a couple minor changes but
it's what do you expect with 10 to 15
minutes come on and I think I spent more
than that because I got bit by Google
AdSense and some of its kind of stuff
and setting it up in our site which had
to catch up a couple of things to get to
that point that being said
go out there and have yourself a great
day a great week and we will talk to you
next
time bonus
material we gave some already so now you
gota we got to kick it up a notch on our
bonuses we did um one of the things we
didn't touch on at all was don't forget
to use AI as an option to look for these
tools AI is still very powerful use the
search engines heck if you want even use
or look at different AI apps for the
different tools or apps that are out
there the other thing to mention is if
you are trying different things
especially if you're doing AWS or some
of the other cloud-based applications
make sure you're very careful if you
sign up for a free trial that you cancel
that trial at the end schedule it on
your calendar hey this will expire in 14
days or uh what is it rocket not rocket
app um oh into it bought it but there
was a very good app out there that's
being advertised oh yeah like rocket
money or something like that yeah
something like that yeah actually like
scan your accounts and find the things
that will like the memberships that you
forget that you subscribe to hey there's
a bonus look for something like that if
you don't know what you're wasting money
on but be careful when you do sign up
for things that you are conscious if
there is a trial period and you're going
to be charged for
it one little tip with that go get a pre
paid Visa card or a gift card use that
for all your sites it's a valid card as
long as it isn't expired you can stick
it out there if there's no money on it
when they go to try to charge you it's
going to kick back as whoops we can't
charge you and your account's canceled
anyway that is a nice that's a that's a
good little bonus to that I would also
say uh some bonus stuff is look at the
if you're looking at anything that is a
software as a service look at the tiers
because
and look at the fine print there's a lot
of times there's a free option that is
actually not listed anywhere in the
pricing but you can like find that it
does exist and I have found more than a
few times that the free version of
whatever it is is perfectly good and
that 8020 rule it really like is mostly
most little companies are perfectly fine
in the Free World they don't need to pay
any money to it they don't have to they
can just U ize that now a lot of these
software companies eventually figure
that out and they don't have a free tier
anymore or they limit it but you can get
them early
on sometimes you can save quite a bit of
money that includes your Cloud providers
there are all kinds of introductory free
tier offers that whether you're with
Azure whether you're with Amazon whe AWS
whether you're with gcp whatever it is
those there are some really good
introductory type things in there that
may allow you Beyond just like a 7-Day
or 20-day trial period but maybe
something that's useful budget-wise for
a whole year or so or or months and
months so check that stuff out that
being said our stuff is always free I
mean unless you want to donate then hey
but it's still free that was on you you
chose to donate so you can check us out
you can anywhere develop andur is got
tons and tons of stuff every time I go
out there and start doing work on the
site I'm reminded that we've got tons
and tons of content out there so if you
want to look something up if you want to
learn how to do something we probably
have it somewhere we got literally over
a thousand articles out there of varying
sorts we got audio we got video we got
written most of those we have written
plus audio or video you can check out
just the YouTube site I think is now
like I think we're over 200 things there
there's a lot of stuff out there more
than happy to share it if you have
questions about any of us you know how
to contact us info developer.com leave
us comments on whatever it is uh any
kind of feedback we'll be happy to even
if it was from 10 years ago we'll be
happy to do our best to like you know
dust that off and get back to it and
figure out how to you know to get it
updated or to help you out with any
questions you have thanks as always for
spending some time with us and investing
your your time in becoming a better
developer because sooner or later we'll
cross paths and we'll be so happy that
you did all of these great things we've
talked about so we'll say gosh your code
is awesome easy to maintain smells good
all that kind of goodness got there have
yourself a great day and we will talk to
you next time
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