Detailed Notes
Welcome back to our ongoing series exploring the developer journey! Today, we're diving into a topic that affects every coder's life: digital clutter. As developers, we often start our careers bright-eyed and eager, only to find ourselves buried under mountains of code, tabs, and digital debris years later. Clutter can significantly impede our productivity and creativity, whether in our codebases or desktops. This episode will explore practical strategies for decluttering your digital life, from cleaning messy code to organizing your workspace. We'll share real-world examples of clutter nightmares and provide actionable tips to help you streamline your development process.
Whether you're a seasoned developer drowning in legacy code or a newcomer looking to establish good habits early, this episode is for you. Let's dive in and learn how to cut through the digital noise, allowing us to focus on what truly matters - writing great code and building amazing software.
Read More... https://develpreneur.com/decluttering-your-code-and-digital-life
As developers, our work lives are intrinsically tied to the digital realm. By taking control of our digital environments and cultivating habits that promote organization and cleanliness, we become more efficient coders and create a more enjoyable and less stressful work experience. So, take a moment to assess your digital clutter – your future self will thank you.
Stay Connected: Join the Developreneur Community
We invite you to join our community and share your coding journey with us. Whether you’re a seasoned developer or just starting, there’s always room to learn and grow together. Contact us at [email protected] with your questions, feedback, or suggestions for future episodes. Together, let’s continue exploring the exciting world of software development.
Additional Resources
* Balance Your Time in a Busy World: Tools and Techniques (https://develpreneur.com/balance-time-busy-world/)
* Boost Your Developer Efficiency: Automation Tips for Developers (https://develpreneur.com/boost-your-developer-efficiency-automation-tips-for-developers/)
* Code Refactoring: Maintaining Clean, Efficient Code (https://develpreneur.com/code-refactoring-maintaining-clean-efficient-code/)
* Cleaning Your Task List (https://develpreneur.com/cleaning-your-task-list/)
Transcript Text
[Music] hello and we've hit record actually we hit record then we pause and forget it we're here we're here you're here let's get that next episode going uh one things we were we discussed last time as the potential was one that was a good one and now I got to go figure out where that went uh you had it somewhere around here oh there it is this is a nice thing use little bonus thing use like slack or something like that where you've got an easy way to keep track of conversations because it does make life so much better cutting the Clutter that's it cutting the Clutter this is a good one because it's actually I just had a saw a project come across that people were looking for some stuff and I'm like oh wow that is a fun little project that you guys have put together and it's it's a clutter related thing so I think let's go ahead and dive into this one and we're going to talk about clutter sound good all right well hello and welcome back we are continuing our season where we're talking about the developer Journey we are here at develop anur also building better developers which hopefully is going to happen to you as you go through your developer journey is that you're going to start you know young and and widey and all that kind of stuff and you're GNA get old but you're going to know a lot of crap because that's the only I guess that's the benefit of being old is somebody other than just now you have all kinds of new pains every day when you get up I am your pain for the next little bit here one of the two my name is Rob Broadhead I am a founder of developing North also a founder of RB Consulting where we do software Solutions we look at simplification Automation and integration to find ways to take your technology sprawl simplify it and give you a solution that works which funny enough is going to be very similar to the topic we're going to hit before I introduce Mike I do want to mention because sometimes I mix it up today we're going to focus on cutting the Clutter we're going to talk about as a developer we're going to talk about like the clutter not like necessarily around your desk or that may be something that comes up but really more like the developer clutter that you have to deal with but before we get into that we'll tease it a little bit and we'll send it out to Mike to introduce himself hey everyone my name is Mike MOS I'm one of the co-founders a developer ner I'm also the founder of Invision QA so if you're small to midsize business or a clinician looking for software custom software or just need help figuring out what you currently have we do software assessments and we also PR ourselves on quality software so we write a lot of software built on integration test unit testing and system testing clutter clutter clutter clutter clutter boy our lives would be so much easier if we didn't have clutter and this is particularly code oh my gosh and this is where this like where it's a perfect like you know dovetail into a recent project I saw it was described as and we've talked about these sort of like nightmarish type things is that it was originally built and I guess I can give some of the specifics of it it won't matter to it it was originally built in like python one or version one or two which for those of you that aren't python people that has not really been like that that's a long long time ago like 10 plus years ago um but then it's somewhere along the way got upgraded to Python 3 they also somewhere along the way upgraded their user interface and a couple years ago is when they did this and they did it I don't remember what they said but it's basically like you know pick your your CSS Library if they did they did it all in this new CSS library and they don't like that so they're going to throw that out but all the code's still there and it hasn't been completely ported over along the way they also had two or three other like halfed runs at doing some features that the code is still there but it's not complete and now it sits in Version Control but even that it sounds like there's like a couple of different branches and they're not really sure which Branch they on that would be an example of clutter and this is where I want to talk code in particular because this is something that I think is a it really is like a developer habit or standard and it is about keeping your clo your code tight and clean in particular when you're in development mode and you're you're writing stuff and then you realize maybe that you don't need it or that you know like you've got a big section a code and you realize I'm going to simplify that I'm going to refactor it into something smaller I know a lot of people I know and several developers that never delete everything anything comment comment comment comment comment that is a total nightmare to go through you have no idea unless you've actually maintained your type of code and had to pick it up and go search for something like for example is because most searches are going to just be text based search and so you're going to go search through code for this stuff and you're going to find this method like 18 different times and it's all commented out and you're going to go what the what is it where's the one you're you're having a dig through it Version Control will allow you to go back to that you don't have to comment it out to save it if you feel that strongly about it pull it out shove it into a little text file that is like my critical Snippets or something like that and then you're off and running I do this with datab work I do it all the time I have these long SQL files that all they are is all these different like queries and weird stuff that I've done for that client that database so I can go back to it and sometimes I have notes around it so I can go track track it I don't need to like shove it into some big skip script and have it all commented out Delete the code don't sit there and then have these big com particularly functions oh it drives me nuts you this big function it's commented out particularly if you use multi-line comments where you can have like a you know a slash asterisk and then there's nothing and then there's a slash asterisk somewhere at the end and you got to go find that now granted if you use an IDE usually you can find that stuff but still it's a pain and it gives you like files grow to these huge things just don't be afraid to delete it if you're using Version Control properly then you're going to be okay that stuff will disappear likewise extra files I don't know how many times I've like I've gone in and I've taken a you know like maybe there's an HTML file and I'm going to play around with it so I'll make it you know test copy or I'll I'll do something it be like I'll rename the file and I'll have it there if you leave those things sitting around it drives people nuts it is ridiculously that's not how you Version Control do not Version Control by doing like index one index two index 3 index four because nobody knows what the top number is I have I worked in a project that that was what this guy did and sometimes he had version two and sometimes it's version three and sometime he would just do V2 V3 V4 V5 you never knew what the top number was and they would be mixed so the V2 file would call a V5 which would call a V3 which would call a V4 and it was all just too painful so there is some clutter that you can definitely make some changes on is clean up the crap that you're not using don't be afraid to use like if you use git don't be AF afraid to use G ignore and don't store all that crap out in the repository if it's not needed or bonus material if it's private information don't put it out in your GitHub repository keep that stuff in the get ignore so you shouldn't have like your you know your local passwords and stuff like that yeah you can be like me and be lazy occasionally say okay here's a development database and I'll give you this information but generally speaking that should not be there shove that stuff out into a settings file or something that you deal with locally and then you don't have to worry about like for example a security breach because somebody breaks into your code out on GitHub I'm going to step off of my Soap Box because I was like I I just got a little bit into a tear there and I'm GNA let Michael like take a take us down a notch and a little feedback on that and then what's a like what's a clutter that that gets your head all you know about to explode because apparently that's the direction I'm taken oh so much to unpack it's really funny that you mentioned that so the first thing that comes to my mind are possible additional solutions to that so you you mentioned you know make sure you commit your code into GitHub there's things of code reviews uh other things look at using like sonar Q sonar lint uh any type of code static review tool they'll highlight things like that they'll say like hey you have all code out there that might not be used or dead code remove it you have Source control make a comment when you commit your code that hey I'm removing this for now it's still in history you also don't need to keep your branches kicking around so I get I guess I have two kind of soap boxy things myself so the big clutter the first clutter that comes to mind with get or with any Source control is a lot of managers like to keep old branches out there because they want to keep the conversation history of the changes that went on within the source code I don't know about you but I can't remember what I did three months ago and typically code moves so fast that code from a month ago that stuff doesn't matter anymore you're beyond you're past that get rid of that stuff make sure when you do commit your code you commit with solid comments in your commit and when you merge that code in that goes with it you have a history you can view the source code history there's all your notes so don't keep your Source you know don't keep all those brances around forever it also takes up space and your devops people will be very thankful if you manage that and maintain that well so kind of following on that soapbox of comments and like dead code being around in you know making our lives hell the additional piece so the flip side of that is copying and pasting code all over the place I have worked on so many projects where this one method is in six places doing the exact same thing in six places ready utility file call the utility file once uh a project I'm currently working on with spreadsheets we have certain uh reports that we do and and the logic right now is every report has a different set of sheets but in reality we actually have a template sheet for each sheet that's being reused by these different reports so what we really should be doing is writing a template sheet for like a summary and then extending it for each report and reusing it that way I ran across this because trying to write the unit test and integration test I found I had to to write six different tests on six different classes that did the exact same thing so when you're trying to find the logic for something and something's not working oh one method had the calculation backwards but everywhere else it was right so now you're going through all these places well this is right this is it makes life hell to try and track down a problem if it's all over the place the other problem with copying and pasting is you might be copying bad code into another project or into another class so be very careful with the whole copy paste thing if you need to make a copy step back and think to yourself is this a utility is this a parent class is this you know a standalone object or even it's own project that or you can move to a module and call a module for multiple projects look at streamlining it that way and the last thing before I throw it back to you Rob is as you're going through this not only avoid the copy paste but avoid the long methods or the long functions Write Clean code if you start walking through and you find a method does four different tasks write that out into four methods or four functions each function is a different task and then you call the uh the methods that you need that way you never know because that function that one task could be reused for something else so therefore again you're not duplicating code all over the place but if you don't separate those into separate methods you don't know because you're hiding that logic within this big nasty method what are your thoughts on that Rob I think with those I'm going to go ahead and just I'm going to let that sit because it is those are all like very good those are excellent points um I do want to switch a little bit out of the the the code Realm when we talk about clutter and two things that I think are are very common now is tab clutter is people have browsers open and you've got 400 tabs and also it's we'll call it it used to be desktop clutter you could sit down to somebody's desktop and they would have 400 icons sitting up on that that desktop but now we also get it with our phone or our tablet where you'll have all these applications you'll be scrolling through like page after page after page of icons and and apps and being like hey I need to go do this I need to go do that I where is it at how am I going to go get there there are all kinds of methods to reduce that clutter whether it's as simple as put it all in put these things into folders so you have like maybe on your phone maybe you have your work folder your personal folder your your workout folder your hobby folder that kind of stuff put those apps in there so at least you're not having the scroll scroll scroll scroll scroll same thing on your desktop I know that it's it's easy to have a desktop that's full of shortcuts and you know that like over here in the top left is always where that one thing is or down there in the bottom right is where that one is but as soon as something happens with your desktop icons the like the best example is when like the sort changes so they were all sorted by maybe not at all and now somebody these somewhere along the way you sorted all those things by name and now blowing your head up because you don't know where that icon is anymore so you're having to search through all this stuff use folders use a better organization because it really is it's just like your actual desk just throwing a bunch of crap out there and then going to find it yes there may be method to your Madness but if you have folders or something like that some sort of grouping it will make the method your Madness a lot easier for you to get through don't beat your head over where did I put that where did I put that where did I put that once you found that that's an issue put it set aside like you know earmark some time to go clean that stuff up and again it is it's really it's reducing clutter reduce the Clutter of your icons reduce the Clutter of all those tabs that you have open every time you open a browser uh one of the things that we've lost because now machines pretty much can stay up almost all the time was the idea it used to be in the day that you would get done with your workday and you would shut your machine off and the next day you would turn your machine on and so you had to worry about boot times and you may still do that somewhere but there are a lot of places where it don't where we don't and that allows us bad habits of having 400 different applications up and all these other things that yeah it's worth it like again if you have a defined end of the day which you should shut stuff down close stuff up things like that to just get yourself in the habit of decluttering your Digital Life as well as your physical life uh last thoughts from you yeah in addition to that declutter your desk and your desktop if you are in like healthcare you have to worry about Hippa and things of that nature the clean desk policy is not just a habit it's becoming mainstream so if you are in an office keeping stuff off your desk is pretty much key to ensuring that privac privacy private information isn't lifted or stolen or inadvertently seen and now you've got a legal issue additionally uh the last thing I would like to touch on is within the idea of organization and kind of clutter uh one of the additional things we come come across is your idea of boot times right having to reboot and shut down your computer the other thing to think about as you are testing your software or you are building software think about writing tests or testing stuff make sure you clean up after yourself so if you're going to insert a whole bunch of test data into a table make sure you also have delete statements to delete that test data back out when you're done so that you don't basically you leave your test environment in the same state it was before and after you test it this also allows you to test different things you can do load testing uh systems testing and some other features there but just kind of be cautious and think about that whole continuous integration continuous deployment but also think about cleaning up after yourself within your scripts and your tests yeah data Colter is probably one of the most uh painful things to go through and it definitely can it can really slow down uh development environments and things of that nature I don't know how often I've I've worked with situations it's like we need a way to like do a a delete or if you can't delete data then an archive or something because you've you you get uh like daily dashboards and stuff that suddenly have or not suddenly but grow and now they've got thousands and thousands of records and the whole thing is slow because you're you're hitting all of that data all the time and you need ways to like you know ignore some of it whether it's delete it clean it up filter it things like that that being said you don't need to delete clean up filter anything else the stuff we said you should just so ahead go ahead and just like sit back and just consume it and you know like how does that taste it should taste pretty good because we're suggesting that you declutter your life and and find some simplification trust me a little bit of work on this if you're at all like me it actually becomes sort of addictive because you realize that you put a little bit of time in and now you saved a whole lot of time and the next thing you know you're like well what if I put a lot of time in maybe I'm going to save so much time I'm going to start getting younger again or something like that there is Magic in declutter just getting rid of the Clutter and and realizing how much easier and simpler your life your tasks become at that point for example that would free up time so that you can send us comments and feedback and things like that and you can do that at info@ develop or.com we have a for out there on develop or.com so you can send us information there you can leave us comments whether it's at wherever your podcast wherever you gather podcasts and listen to them out on YouTube on our YouTube channel uh you can check out school. developer.com we also have comment for there you can sign in and give us feedback as well as there go out to our site blog articles we have comments turned on all that good stuff so you can give us feedback and let us know what you like what you don't like and recommendations for future topics that you might have that being said we're ready to bring this one to a close we are not done with the season we're like chugging along here like you roughly I don't know a 30ish maybe through with it so we got plenty to come we're going to continue that developer Journey uh as you guys do as well as well as you're continuing your journey we're going to talk about these things that we've hit hit on and even some things that we see coming up however it is you have the rest of your day going coming up so why don't you go out there and have yourself a great day a great week and we will talk to you next time bonus clutter stuff for these the people that are still sitting around and haven't left yet so I have two one especially if you have mobile devices lots of apps you don't need to buy a device that has a terabyte of storage on you don't need to pay for cloud information for terabytes of storage get in the habit of cleaning up your stuff if you have thousands of photos do you need a thousand photos no chances are you're only going to look at them once in a while pick your favorite photos dump them off to a computer print them out move them you know move move them to something more permanent the flip side of that is look around your house is there anything you haven't touched in a year or two get rid of it we don't need to pay for storage we don't need storage facilities you know the whole idea of unpacking and cleaning up the Clutter doesn't just apply the code you can do that with everything in your life and by doing that you get rid of something that you've been staring at for six months or a year and it's like you know I really need to get rid of that or you know I really don't have room for all this new stuff I bought well get rid of some of the old stuff so the new stuff can find a better place your thoughts I think that the first part is you you really don't need all that space now you can be like me you can like be a little pack ratty and you can save but you can save old emails and so old images and all that kind of stuff you can save that stuff and just shove it off somewhere it you will be happier for it because sooner or later your devices are going to get really really expensive because you're just storing crap there that you can find easier ways to do it whether it is offline in a cloud storage somewhere where you just you know you've got that away or at least not offline but you know that it's on cloud storage somewhere where you have access to it but at least it's not on your device where it is much more you know expensive to keep buying that storage over and over again or whether you want to store it somewhere on have a you know a big server at home that you can take a look at it you know it's that kind of stuff just pull that stuff off because it does slow down your devices also like if you don't have a lot of space on them then it's going to slow them down they're going to start griping and have issues so get that crap off periodically pull it off you utilize things like you know even the Apple like they've got the uh on the Apple devices they have like the store the app in the cloud if you don't use it for a while they'll basically pull it off of your device and you can always bring it back down again when you use it but if you haven't used it in a while just delete that thing if you if you don't need it don't use it General clutter is one of the things that I found is notes is where you're wherever you're taking note take taking notes make sure you like pick one there's so many places do it but like find a way to whether you you have like a little Journal book that you keep all your notes in or whether you use Evernote or whether you use one of these list device you know list apps whatever it is try to stick to one because the Clutter of having too many places to enter information can really become a pain when you're like where did I put that and I've done that a few times because I've been forced by clients and access and all that kind of stuff to have four or five different places and it'll be like where did I put that IP address for that server ah crap it's nope not there oh nope nope so the better the more you can simplify down your places that you store these things the easier it is to know that well I don't know how even if it's difficult to find it in that place at least you know you're looking in the right place so there's a couple for you you are looking in the right place if you want to become a better developer so you're here you're out on the developer n Channel as we've mentioned before you can check out our website I don't know why I'm pointing over here like the websites over here like on the internet go out to the YouTube channel take a left go five blocks and a right from there and boom you're at the developer Nur site something like that check us out on the developer Nur site we've got a lot of stuff there lots and lots and lots of material there as well uh if you're especially if you're trying to get away from the dig the video side of YouTube stuff lots of videos here but also we've got all kinds of like downloads and written content and things like that as well as the audio content of over 700 different episodes of the podcast we've been just like cranking through this there's a lot out there if you go out because some of these places don't even store some of the older stuff if you need an older one let us know if you want to go find out like what season one looked like shoot us an email and we will send you some audio files or a link to them that being said it is time for us to wrap this one up because we got to go out to our day and we got to work on becoming better developers ourselves besides just sharing these conversations even though they are very productive for us as well but we'll let you get out there thank you so much for your time and spending some time with us and uh we'll be here right around the corner we'll be yet another episode and we'll dive into all the ways that you can become a better developer have a good one [Music]
Transcript Segments
[Music]
hello and we've hit record actually we
hit record then we pause and forget it
we're here we're here you're here let's
get that next episode going uh one
things we were we discussed last time as
the potential was one that was a good
one and now I got to go figure out where
that went
uh you had it somewhere around here oh
there it
is this is a nice thing use little bonus
thing use like slack or something like
that where you've got an easy way to
keep track of conversations because it
does make life so much better cutting
the Clutter that's it cutting the
Clutter this is a good one
because it's actually I just had a saw a
project come across that people were
looking for some stuff and I'm like oh
wow that is a fun little project that
you guys have put together and it's it's
a clutter related thing so I think let's
go ahead and dive into this one and
we're going to talk about clutter sound
good all right
well hello and welcome back we are
continuing our season where we're
talking about the developer Journey we
are here at develop anur also building
better developers which hopefully is
going to happen to you as you go through
your developer journey is that you're
going to start you know young and and
widey and all that kind of stuff and
you're GNA get old but you're going to
know a lot of crap because that's the
only I guess that's the benefit of being
old is somebody other than just now you
have all kinds of new pains every day
when you get up I am your pain for the
next little bit here one of the two my
name is Rob Broadhead I am a founder of
developing North also a founder of RB
Consulting where we do software
Solutions we look at simplification
Automation and integration to find ways
to take your technology sprawl simplify
it and give you a solution that works
which funny enough is going to be very
similar to the topic we're going to hit
before I introduce Mike I do want to
mention because sometimes I mix it up
today we're going to focus on cutting
the Clutter we're going to talk about as
a developer we're going to talk about
like the clutter not like necessarily
around your desk or that may be
something that comes up but really more
like the developer clutter that you have
to deal with but before we get into that
we'll tease it a little bit and we'll
send it out to Mike to introduce himself
hey everyone my name is Mike MOS I'm one
of the co-founders a developer ner I'm
also the founder of Invision QA so if
you're small to midsize business or a
clinician looking for software custom
software or just need help figuring out
what you currently have we do software
assessments and we also PR ourselves on
quality software so we write a lot of
software built on integration test unit
testing and system
testing clutter clutter clutter clutter
clutter boy our lives would be so much
easier if we didn't have clutter and
this is particularly code oh my gosh and
this is where this like where it's a
perfect like you know dovetail into a
recent project I saw it was described as
and we've talked about these sort of
like nightmarish type things is that it
was originally built and I guess I can
give some of the specifics of it it
won't matter to it it was originally
built in like python one or version one
or two which for those of you that
aren't python people that has not really
been like that that's a long long time
ago like 10 plus years ago um but then
it's somewhere along the way got
upgraded to Python 3 they also somewhere
along the way upgraded their user
interface and a couple years ago is when
they did this and they did it I don't
remember what they said but it's
basically like you know pick your your
CSS Library if they did they did it all
in this new CSS library and they don't
like that so they're going to throw that
out but all the code's still there and
it hasn't been completely ported over
along the way they also had two or three
other like halfed runs at doing some
features that the code is still there
but it's not complete and now it sits in
Version Control but even that it sounds
like there's like a couple of different
branches and they're not really sure
which Branch they
on that would be an example of clutter
and this is where I want to talk code in
particular because this is something
that I think is a it really is like a
developer habit or
standard and it is about keeping your
clo your code tight and clean in
particular when you're in development
mode and you're you're writing stuff and
then you realize maybe that you don't
need it or that you know like you've got
a big section a code and you realize I'm
going to simplify that I'm going to
refactor it into something
smaller I know a lot of people I know
and several developers that never delete
everything anything comment comment
comment comment
comment that is a total nightmare to go
through you have no idea unless you've
actually maintained your type of code
and had to pick it up and go search for
something like for example is because
most searches are going to just be text
based search
and so you're going to go search through
code for this stuff and you're going to
find this method like 18 different times
and it's all commented out and you're
going to go what the what is it where's
the one you're you're having a dig
through it Version Control will allow
you to go back to that you don't have to
comment it out to save it if you feel
that strongly about it pull it out shove
it into a little text file that is like
my critical Snippets or something like
that and then you're off and running I
do this with datab work I do it all the
time I have these long SQL files that
all they are is all these different like
queries and weird stuff that I've done
for that client that database so I can
go back to it and sometimes I have notes
around it so I can go track track it I
don't need to like shove it into some
big skip script and have it all
commented
out Delete the code don't sit there and
then have these big com particularly
functions oh it drives me nuts you this
big function it's commented out
particularly if you use multi-line
comments where you can have like a you
know a slash asterisk and then there's
nothing and then there's a slash
asterisk somewhere at the end and you
got to go find that now granted if you
use an IDE usually you can find that
stuff but still it's a pain and it gives
you like files grow to these huge things
just don't be afraid to delete it if
you're using Version Control properly
then you're going to be okay that stuff
will disappear likewise
extra files I don't know how many times
I've like I've gone in and I've taken a
you know like maybe there's an HTML file
and I'm going to play around with it so
I'll make it you know test copy or I'll
I'll do something it be like I'll rename
the file and I'll have it there if you
leave those things sitting around it
drives people nuts it is ridiculously
that's not how you Version Control do
not Version Control by doing like index
one index two index 3 index four because
nobody knows what the top number is I
have I worked in a project that that was
what this guy did and sometimes he had
version two and sometimes it's version
three and sometime he would just do V2
V3 V4 V5 you never knew what the top
number was and they would be mixed so
the V2 file would call a V5 which would
call a V3 which would call a
V4
and it was all just too painful so there
is some clutter that you can definitely
make some changes on is clean up the
crap that you're not using don't be
afraid to use like if you use git don't
be AF afraid to use G ignore and don't
store all that crap out in the
repository if it's not needed or bonus
material if it's private information
don't put it out in your GitHub
repository keep that stuff in the get
ignore so you shouldn't have like your
you know your local passwords and stuff
like that yeah you can be like me and be
lazy occasionally say okay here's a
development database and I'll give you
this information but generally speaking
that should not be there shove that
stuff out into a settings file or
something that you deal with locally and
then you don't have to worry about like
for example a security breach because
somebody breaks into your code out on
GitHub I'm going to step off of my Soap
Box because I was like I I just got a
little bit into a tear there and I'm GNA
let Michael like take a take us down a
notch and a little feedback on that and
then what's a like what's a clutter that
that gets your head all you know about
to explode because apparently that's the
direction I'm
taken oh so much to unpack it's really
funny that you mentioned that so the
first thing that comes to my mind are
possible additional solutions to that so
you you mentioned you know make sure you
commit your code into GitHub there's
things of code reviews uh other things
look at using like sonar Q sonar lint uh
any type of code static review tool
they'll highlight things like that
they'll say like hey you have all code
out there that might not be used or dead
code remove it you have Source
control make a comment when you commit
your code that hey I'm removing this for
now it's still in history you also don't
need to keep your branches kicking
around so I get I guess I have two kind
of soap boxy things myself so the big
clutter the first clutter that comes to
mind with get or with any Source control
is a lot of
managers like to keep old branches out
there because they want to keep the
conversation history of the changes that
went on within the source code I don't
know about you but I can't remember what
I did three months ago and typically
code moves so fast that code from a
month ago that stuff doesn't matter
anymore you're beyond you're past that
get rid of that stuff make sure when you
do commit your code you commit with
solid comments in your commit and when
you merge that code in that goes with it
you have a history you can view the
source code history there's all your
notes so don't keep your Source you know
don't keep all those brances around
forever it also takes up space and your
devops people will be very thankful if
you manage that and maintain that
well so kind of following on that
soapbox of comments and like dead code
being around in you know making our
lives hell the additional piece so the
flip side of that is copying and pasting
code all over the
place I have worked on so many projects
where this one method is in six places
doing the exact same thing in six places
ready utility file call the utility file
once uh a project I'm currently working
on with spreadsheets we have certain uh
reports that we do and and the logic
right now is every report has a
different set of sheets but in reality
we actually have a template sheet for
each sheet that's being reused by these
different reports so what we really
should be doing is writing a template
sheet for like a summary and then
extending it for each report and reusing
it that way I ran across this because
trying to write the unit test and
integration test I found I had to to
write six different tests on six
different classes that did the exact
same thing so when you're trying to find
the logic for something and something's
not working oh one method had the
calculation backwards but everywhere
else it was right so now you're going
through all these places well this is
right this is it makes life hell to try
and track down a problem if it's all
over the
place the other problem with copying and
pasting is you might be copying bad code
into another project or into another
class so be very careful with the whole
copy paste thing if you need to make a
copy step back and think to yourself is
this a utility is this a parent class is
this you know a standalone object or
even it's own project that or you can
move to a module and call a module for
multiple
projects look at streamlining it that
way and the last thing before I throw it
back to you Rob is as you're going
through this not only avoid the copy
paste but avoid the long methods or the
long functions Write Clean code if you
start walking through and you find a
method does four different tasks write
that out into four methods or four
functions each function is a different
task and then you
call the uh the methods that you need
that way you never know because that
function that one task could be reused
for something else so therefore again
you're not duplicating code all over the
place but if you don't separate those
into separate methods you don't know
because you're hiding that logic within
this big nasty
method what are your thoughts on that
Rob I think with those I'm going to go
ahead and just I'm going to let that sit
because it is those are all like very
good those are excellent points um I do
want to switch a little bit out of the
the the code Realm when we talk about
clutter and two things that I think are
are very common now is tab clutter is
people have browsers open and you've got
400 tabs and also it's we'll call it it
used to be desktop clutter you could sit
down to somebody's desktop and they
would have 400 icons sitting up on that
that desktop but now we also get it with
our phone or our tablet where you'll
have all these applications you'll be
scrolling through like page after page
after page of icons and and apps and
being like hey I need to go do this I
need to go do that I where is it at how
am I going to go get there there are all
kinds of methods to reduce that clutter
whether it's as simple as put it all in
put these things into folders so you
have like maybe on your phone maybe you
have your work folder your personal
folder your your workout folder your
hobby folder that kind of stuff put
those apps in there so at least you're
not having the scroll scroll scroll
scroll scroll same thing on your desktop
I know that
it's it's easy to have a desktop that's
full of shortcuts and you know that like
over here in the top left is always
where that one thing is or down there in
the bottom right is where that one is
but as soon as something happens with
your desktop icons the like the best
example is when like the sort changes so
they were all sorted by maybe not at all
and now somebody these somewhere along
the way you sorted all those things by
name and now blowing your head up
because you don't know where that icon
is anymore so you're having to search
through all this stuff use folders use a
better organization because it really is
it's just like your actual desk just
throwing a bunch of crap out there and
then going to find it yes there may be
method to your Madness but if you have
folders or something like that some sort
of grouping it will make the method your
Madness a lot easier for you to get
through don't beat your head over where
did I put that where did I put that
where did I put that once you found that
that's an
issue put it set aside like you know
earmark some time to go clean that stuff
up and again it is it's really it's
reducing clutter reduce the Clutter of
your icons reduce the Clutter of all
those tabs that you have open every time
you open a browser uh one of the things
that we've lost because now machines
pretty much can stay up almost all the
time was the idea it used to be in the
day that you would get done with your
workday and you would shut your machine
off and the next day you would turn your
machine on and so you had to worry about
boot times and you may still do that
somewhere but there are a lot of places
where it don't where we don't and that
allows us bad habits of having 400
different applications up and all these
other things that yeah it's worth it
like again if you have a defined end of
the day which you should shut stuff down
close stuff up things like that to just
get yourself in the habit of
decluttering your Digital Life as well
as your physical life uh last thoughts
from you
yeah in addition to that declutter your
desk and your desktop if you are in like
healthcare you have to worry about Hippa
and things of that nature the clean desk
policy is not just a habit it's becoming
mainstream so if you are in an office
keeping stuff off your desk is pretty
much key to ensuring that privac privacy
private information isn't lifted or
stolen or inadvertently seen and now
you've got a legal issue
additionally uh the last thing I would
like to touch on is within the idea of
organization and kind of
clutter uh one of the additional things
we come come across is your idea of boot
times right having to reboot and shut
down your computer the other thing to
think about as you are testing your
software or you are building
software think about writing tests or
testing stuff make sure you clean up
after yourself so if you're going to
insert a whole bunch of test data into a
table make sure you also have delete
statements to delete that test data back
out when you're done so that you don't
basically you leave your test
environment in the same state it was
before and after you test it this also
allows you to test different things you
can do load testing uh systems testing
and some other features there but just
kind of be cautious and think about that
whole continuous integration continuous
deployment but also think about cleaning
up after yourself within your scripts
and your
tests yeah data Colter is probably one
of the most uh painful things to go
through and it definitely can it can
really slow down uh development
environments and things of that nature I
don't know how often I've I've worked
with situations it's like we need a way
to like do a a delete or if you can't
delete data then an archive or something
because you've you you get uh like daily
dashboards and stuff that suddenly have
or not suddenly but grow and now they've
got thousands and thousands of records
and the whole thing is slow because
you're you're hitting all of that data
all the time and you need ways to like
you know ignore some of it whether it's
delete it clean it up filter it things
like that that being said you don't need
to delete clean up filter anything else
the stuff we said you should just so
ahead go ahead and just like sit back
and just consume it and you know like
how does that taste it should taste
pretty good because we're suggesting
that you declutter your life and and
find some simplification trust me a
little bit of work on this if you're at
all like me it actually becomes sort of
addictive because you realize that you
put a little bit of time in and now you
saved a whole lot of time and the next
thing you know you're like well what if
I put a lot of time in maybe I'm going
to save so much time I'm going to start
getting younger again or something like
that there is Magic in declutter just
getting rid of the Clutter and and
realizing how much easier and simpler
your life your tasks become at that
point for example that would free up
time so that you can send us comments
and feedback and things like that and
you can do that at info@ develop or.com
we have a for out there on develop
or.com so you can send us information
there you can leave us comments whether
it's at wherever your podcast wherever
you gather podcasts and listen to them
out on YouTube on our YouTube channel uh
you can check out school. developer.com
we also have comment for there you can
sign in and give us feedback as well as
there go out to our site blog articles
we have comments turned on all that good
stuff so you can give us feedback and
let us know what you like what you don't
like and recommendations for future
topics that you might have that being
said we're ready to bring this one to a
close we are not done with the season
we're like chugging along here like you
roughly I don't know a 30ish maybe
through with it so we got plenty to come
we're going to continue that developer
Journey uh as you guys do as well as
well as you're continuing your journey
we're going to talk about these things
that we've hit hit on and even some
things that we see coming up however it
is you have the rest of your day going
coming up so why don't you go out there
and have yourself a great day a great
week and we will talk to you next
time bonus clutter stuff for these the
people that are still sitting around and
haven't left
yet so I have two one especially if you
have mobile devices lots of apps you
don't need to
buy a device that has a terabyte of
storage on you don't need to pay for
cloud information for terabytes of
storage get in the habit of cleaning up
your stuff if you have thousands of
photos do you need a thousand photos no
chances are you're only going to look at
them once in a while pick your favorite
photos dump them off to a computer print
them out move them you know move move
them to something more
permanent the flip side of that is look
around your house is there anything you
haven't touched in a year or two get rid
of it we don't need to pay for storage
we don't need storage facilities you
know the whole idea of unpacking and
cleaning up the Clutter doesn't just
apply the code you can do that with
everything in your life and by doing
that you get rid of something that
you've been staring at for six months or
a year and it's like you know I really
need to get rid of that or you know I
really don't have room for all this new
stuff I bought well get rid of some of
the old stuff so the new stuff can find
a better
place your thoughts I think that the
first part is you you really don't need
all that space now you can be like me
you can like be a little pack ratty and
you can save but you can save old emails
and so old images and all that kind of
stuff you can save that stuff and just
shove it off somewhere it you will be
happier for it because sooner or later
your devices are going to get really
really expensive because you're just
storing crap there that you can find
easier ways to do it whether it is
offline in a cloud storage somewhere
where you just you know you've got that
away or at least not offline but you
know that it's on cloud storage
somewhere where you have access to it
but at least it's not on your device
where it is much more you know expensive
to keep buying that storage over and
over again or whether you want to store
it somewhere on have a you know a big
server at home that you can take a look
at it you know it's that kind of stuff
just pull that stuff off because it does
slow down your devices also like if you
don't have a lot of space on them then
it's going to slow them down they're
going to start griping and have issues
so get that crap off periodically pull
it off you utilize things like you know
even the Apple like they've got the uh
on the Apple devices they have like the
store the app in the cloud if you don't
use it for a while they'll basically
pull it off of your device and you can
always bring it back down again when you
use it but if you haven't used it in a
while just delete that thing if you if
you don't need it don't use it
General clutter
is one of the things that I found is
notes is where you're wherever you're
taking note take taking notes make sure
you like pick one there's so many places
do it but like find a way to whether you
you have like a little Journal book that
you keep all your notes in or whether
you use Evernote or whether you use one
of these list device you know list apps
whatever it
is try to stick to one because the
Clutter of having too many places to
enter information can really become a
pain when you're like where did I put
that and I've done that a few times
because I've been forced by clients and
access and all that kind of stuff to
have four or five different places and
it'll be like where did I put that IP
address for that server ah crap it's
nope not there oh nope nope so the
better the more you can simplify down
your places that you store these things
the easier it is to know that well I
don't know how even if it's difficult to
find it in that place at least you know
you're looking in the right place so
there's a couple for you you are looking
in the right place if you want to become
a better developer so you're here you're
out on the developer n Channel as we've
mentioned before you can check out our
website I don't know why I'm pointing
over here like the websites over here
like on the internet go out to the
YouTube channel take a left go five
blocks and a right from there and boom
you're at the developer Nur site
something like that check us out on the
developer Nur site we've got a lot of
stuff there lots and lots and lots of
material there as well uh if you're
especially if you're trying to get away
from the dig the video side of YouTube
stuff lots of videos here but also we've
got all kinds of like downloads and
written content and things like that as
well as the audio content of over 700
different episodes of the podcast we've
been just like cranking through this
there's a lot out there if you go out
because some of these places don't even
store some of the older stuff if you
need an older one let us know if you
want to go find out like what season one
looked like shoot us an email and we
will send you some audio files or a link
to them that being said it is time for
us to wrap this one up because we got to
go out to our day and we got to work on
becoming better developers ourselves
besides just sharing these conversations
even though they are very productive for
us as well but we'll let you get out
there thank you so much for your time
and spending some time with us and uh
we'll be here right around the corner
we'll be yet another episode and we'll
dive into all the ways that you can
become a better developer have a good
one
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