Detailed Notes
Looking to become a more productive, skilled, and successful developer? 🚀 In this episode of Building Better Developers with AI, Rob Broadhead and Michael Meloche break down the Top Essential Habits for Software Developers that help you stay sharp, grow your career, and make an impact in your role.
✅ How AI tools can support your developer habits ✅ Daily routines that improve code quality and efficiency ✅ Time management tips using Pomodoro and task lists ✅ The power of continuous learning for software developers
These practical steps help you sharpen your skills, avoid burnout, and advance in your development career—whether you’re just starting out or looking to level up.
🎧 Listen to more episodes and claim your free developer career guide at https://develpreneur.com/
👉 Like, share, and subscribe for more ways to build better developers with AI!
Transcript Text
[Music] We're going to Whoa, we just pressed record in the middle of crazy days up. Um so we are back to uh essential habits for software developers boosting productivity and career grow. Wow, this is there are moments where I look at these things and I'm like wow that is such a let me see I'm going to say ask chat GBT let's see now provide topics and focus for this title essential habits for software developers boosting productivity and career our titles are such AI stuff it feels like that's actually I think at the end of this this would be a really fun episode would be to wrap this up even maybe before the season because there's a lot of cool stuff we've gotten out of this season. I'm sorry. Hello for everybody. I I was reading and not saying hi to those of you guys that have joined us. Um I think it would be really cool to have an episode. one is I think just an episode talking about the impact that AI had on all of our topics is going to be awesome, but also I think an episode which I think we've talked about this before, but like go back to recognizing AI because I think that's actually very important. I was actually I almost offended a person that we're not going to name but what happens to be my project manager because I said there's an email that she drafted and I was like I asked I I did you use AI? She said no. And I said well that's actually pretty cool because I said there is some there's there is wording and there's there's things that felt AI but the uh the rhythm did not feel AI. So I think there's some things that we can learn and I think is very useful to us as developers um not only in general but also with the code to figure out when we're looking at AI generated code and there's there are definitely some telltale marks and you and I you probably know as well because you've seen some AI generated code you've used AI generated code I bet um and you know there's like you get once you do it you realize okay this is what it looks like so It's very useful to know that. It's It's always good to have that context. Sorry everybody if I went a little bit off field. No, but that'd be a good topic to definitely have because I do use AI a lot um more for testing though because uh well testing and refactoring because sometimes your code gets nasty and it's like well how can I clean this up and you can go too far. You could kind of go in between and AI is a nasty little I if you don't play with AI enough and you just say, "Hey AI, go build me code or go write me this." You're going to get crap. Be careful. Uh basically, buyer beware. Don't just assume it works out of the box. You need to literally understand what the hell you're doing. So, if you want to play with AI, start playing with AI now. But don't really start pushing it into your development environments for at least three months or even six months. I will say um use one of the training there's a bunch of training sites out there that use AI. Um what's the one I use? Uh just because they're fun. I'm gonna go look at them. Um code signal codes signal.com. Uh then there's a coty c o d a c y.com I think is another one. Um they use AI to generate training material basically. Um use them get use them and use AI to answer the questions. Use like go I highly recommend download the chat GPT client. God this is so much bonus information. So, sorry for everybody, but you limit the after bonus, but yeah, it's pre-bonus. Um, download the chat GPT like desktop client. It's a little bit faster, a little bit better. Use it for a while. The other thing that I have found very, very useful, go out, you can even use AI to do it. Build a chatbot. build an AI chatbot and specifically work with the uh they call it it's basically it's like the context or the settings. Um let me see do they have an actual I may be getting the name wrong so let me go look real quick. As he's looking I'm going to age myself. This is very similar to the old dragon age for speaking uh speech to text. Same idea. You have to train what you're using to understand what you want. Otherwise, you might get something that looks right but is wrong. Okay? It's called the system prompts. Um, why did I forget that? Because I've had a couple to drink. Um, understand how prompts work. Um, what is useful, what is not, what is uh retained and what is not. Um, it is very much like the old Google foo, the ability to and I like I've mastered Google fu. I asked Google stuff all the time. It's why I didn't use AI for the longest time because I could ask Google all kinds of crap. I knew how to like leverage all of its search engine stuff. AI is not much different. Now, each AI engine is a little bit different. know which like pick one, master it, understand its um the kind of answers it's going to give you and how to tell it to give you better answers and that is going to be invaluable to your career moving forward. I guarantee you everybody wants to do AI. I went to a startup meetup a week or two ago. I was like a dozen companies like founders, entrepreneurs that are starting new companies. 11 out of the 12 had AI as part of it. And every one of them was it was AI that made a lot of sense. It's like you of course I'm going to use AI to do that because it makes it better. Spend some time in doing this. Wow, this is such bonus material. I almost feel like we should have another uh episode on it, but please do so. I think building a chatbot and give it a why. Don't just build a chatbot to like do tech support or something like that. Build a chatbot. I will I will go ahead because I probably had too much drink. Probably shouldn't share all this. I built a chatbot that was effectively a scraper of sorts that is going out and using public information to go find information about companies because I need contact information for those that are in the seauite of these companies. I built this chatbot. Now it's very valuable to learn what it will provide you and what it won't because they will AI will provide you answers that are actually BS. For example, I got back LinkedIn links for contact information for these people. They are not valid links because AI will not go search the web or at least chat GPT will not go search the web. And I was using the AI the API the AI API too many A's and I's in there. Um but I think is it is very educational. This is a great building better developers things for you to do. You can build a chatbot in probably an hour or less and then go play with it. That is where you'll become a better developer. All right, bonus material done. I did I already spit that out into there. I want to make sure I did. Essential habits for software developers boosting productivity. Okay, go ahead. Throw my last because we'll skip the bonus at the end. We'll just do all the bonus. That doesn't mean quit before we get to the end. There may still be bonus. I'm just saying that's true. We We always seem to do whatever we want. Um, with what Rob mentioned, look at free tools like AWS EC2 instances. these. There's a lot of cool things out there, a lot of free things out there for you to play with cloud-based uh instances where you can set these up and build these chat bots live so you can actually do more things online, bigger, better, uh however you want to do them. Just don't necessarily limit yourself if you're strapped for money to what you have because if you have a very old machine, look at grabbing an EC2 instance and throwing it out there and play with that. That was the only thing I wanted to throw out there because some people do have that. I've talked to a couple people. It's like, I don't have the money, so I can't play with AI. Yes, you can. There's a lot of free tools out there. You just have to tap into that. I will give you a pro tip. If you're using I'm sure um wow, I've got a lot of thoughts on that. All of the major cloud providers do have all kinds of programs for nonprofits, startups, developers. There's a whole kind of stuff. So, whatever your situation is, feel free to spend a little bit of time searching for programs, uh, discounts, price, all kind pricing strategies, stuff like that. Based on whatever your business is, you may find something that's really useful. The other thing is AWS in particular. I love ad AWS. Okay. Yeah, I love AWS. Sorry. Um, you guys may know because I did a whole season on their services. I've been very happy with it. Used it for a long time. They have reserved instances. Whatever server you think you need or that you need, you can get a reserved instance and it cuts the cost by like 50% or more. It doesn't Yes. you're committing to paying for it for like a year or something like that. But if you're a developer, it's not a bad thing. If you'd like more information, shoot me a just hit me up at info at developer.com. I would love to like point you to some stuff, give you some information I found, customers I've dealt with over the years. Um, because we do help people like reduce costs and things like that. And there are very good cost-effective programs out there. There's always the free tier. Amazon have it has it. Uh GCP has uh I think it's like I don't know what it's up to now. I think it's like $300 of just like a bucket of free credits when you first start. So there are options out there depending on which one you want to learn how to use. Honestly, I I love AWS, but that doesn't mean that I like Azure is really awesome as well. GCP, I don't know you so well, but that's okay. What I've dealt with it, GCP is really cool as well. Um, whatever is your, you know, whatever is your brothers, as they say, go do it. you can probably find a lower co a low enough cost solution that unless you're like scrambling to actually put food on your table with a I mean I've done this with a 10 $50 $100 a month budget. I don't know where you're at, but you can find things to do that. All right, enough of that. Did you have one more? No. Good. Because I wasn't going to let you talk anyways. Raspberry Pi. All right. This is what happens when we were on our second episode and we have All right. What are you drinking? Bourbon and Coke. What's your bourbon? Uh uh Jim Beam. Uh yeah, Jim Be uh yeah, Jim Beam Black. Okay. So, Jim Beam, if you ever want to uh like, you know, help us out, we're out here. A little sponsorship wouldn't hurt. Um, if I can get it doesn't want to like grab my bottle. Put it closer in front of you. Maybe if you put it in front of you. And maybe that's what it is. It's like There you go. Uncle nearest my favorite. Uh, nearest green. Uncle nearest rye is what I am drinking right now. And obviously it's towards the end of a bottle, but that's how that works. That's not going to help. Oh, no. has to have a backing. Um, just doing that straight. There you go. There we go. Jim Beam, Uncle Nearest, if you'd like to sponsor a podcast, we are here. Actually, it's not even a podcast at this point. A YouTube channel, we would be happy to do so. Building better developers with alcohol. Hey, I'm sorry. If you're under 21, please don't drink. All right, I have to uh make this one not child friendly. We really we have to work on that. We've used language that we shouldn't use as well. Things like code testing bugs. All right, I'm sorry. Anyways, back to the episode with a three, a two, and a one. Hello and welcome back. We are here building better developers with AI. We are spending this season taking a prior season and we are basically pushing our prior episode topics through AI and seeing what comes out. So far it's been really good. I don't want to spoil what's coming ahead. So first I will introduce myself. My name is Rob Broadhead. Happen to be one of the founders of developer building better developers. I am also a founder of RB Consulting where we help you wrangle technology. If you have that technology sprawl that everybody is like starting to get used to, you have that technology junk drawer that needs to be cleaned up, we sit down with you, we talk about your business, not your technology, but your business. What is it that you are trying to do? What is your why? What is your secret sauce? We craft a special recipe just for you. take that technology and the technology that's out there because sometimes you don't even know what's available but we do because we've spent decades over three even though we're so young over three decades in technology learning how it works learning what's out there learning what works for our customers whether they're big or small and then we help you craft a roadmap going forward we can hand that off to you and you guys can go forward or we can help you implement it whether it's building a team, adding technology, RFPs, you name it. We start with that technology assessment and then we go from there based on what you are served best by. Good thing, bad thing for this week, uh, good thing is sunshine. I love sunshine. I left the north of the US, Chicago. I'm not going to name names, but I just did. uh because it's too cold and too dark for like eight months out of the year and I came to a sunnier part of the world. Love it. Great. I feel better. I'm getting my vitamin C, D, whatever. All E, F, Z, all of those. Yes, I'm not a biology major, but getting all that good stuff out of the sunshine, it makes me happy, brings me joy. The bad thing is it is freaking hot out there and I'm one of these people that if you put put me in a room that's hot like 75 or 76° I will sweat. You put me in 90 to 95 degrees in like you know and a 99% humidity it drives me nuts. I am like dripping water and that is the bad thing right now. But you know what? I will take it because it is actually pretty nice. Also, what I will take because he drives me nuts, but he's not that bad a guy is Michael. So, go ahead and introduce yourself. Hey everyone, my name is Michael Malashsh. I'm one of the co-founders of developer building better developers. I'm also the founder of Envision QA where if you're a passionate entrepreneur or business looking for help with software solutions, we recognize your desire for a reliable, high-erforming solution that sets you apart from the competitors. We offer tailored software and quality assurance solutions to optimize the performance and reliability of your e-commerce platform, pitcher flawless user experience, increase sales, and a competitive edge in the market. Now, it's hard going after RAW because a lot of times I just want to say ditto, but anyway, good and bad. Good and bad this week. the good uh couple weeks ago there was a lot of like uh good previews online for upcoming software releases, video games, things of that nature. Bad. I have no time to play any of them. It's like there's so many cool things coming out. It's like, "Oh, I want to play that. I want to play that. I want to play that. I want to play it." I'm like, "I don't have time. What the hell am I thinking?" So, it's like, "Okay, which one of the three and when are they coming out?" It's like, "Cool. This year, my wife might actually have a chance to buy me a Christmas present because I will not have a chance to buy it for myself before the end of the year, unless it happens to be a Switch if I can happen to find one between now and then because I doubt she will. Back to you. U switch two, I'll geek out for a second. Switch to my list. I'm going to get one for my wife first because she has zero switches, which is probably why she's such a sad individual. If she had just one, she would be a happier person, but I'm going to go ahead as soon as I can get her one. Yes. Smack upside the head. Um, try to get her one if I can. She's choking me now. Segue there. Don't buy used. Oh, definitely. I know apparently has bricked those, so be careful with that. Yeah, they've they've taken a very That's a whole another topic, a whole another world. Maybe we'll talk about that like in Thanksgiving or Christmas episodes. Um Nintendo took a really interesting uh stance on the Switch 2 uh release, which has been very interesting. Um anyways, would love to get one get one for my wife first. I am just waiting for I know I'm probably the only person that does this, but Oblivion the like new release on the Steam Deck is still driving me nuts. Sometimes it crashes sometimes. Like as soon as I do a quick travel to somewhere, it's like no, you're not going to do that. And the heat that pours off of that is phenomenal. Okay, geek mode off. Let's get back to our topic for this episode because we need to actually get back to building better developers and not gamers. Okay, so this episode I asked him what about essential habits for software developers boosting productivity and career growth and of course because GPT loves me chat GPT said great choice for your developer podcast and this is what it gave me. Okay, first it actually gave me a core message. I don't think I've had this one before. Core message. Success as a developer isn't just about what you know. It's about what you consistently do. The right habits compound over time into productivity, expertise, and opportunities. Oh my gosh, that is so much the message that we have built for almost a decade now. the momentum of sh I want to finish I'm gonna finish my thought and I'm gonna throw it to you. So see I told you we're like an old married couple. We talk about momentum. We talk about the like just do a little bit every day. That message is so much about consistently doing every day. And now I'm going to pass it to my partner who apparently has something to say about I was going to have you reiterate that a little bit slower so that everyone could hear you because you went through that very quickly. Wow. My wife just said, "Okay, I'm just kidding. Success I'm going to go I'm going to go very slow because this is really important. Success as a developer isn't just about what you know. It's about what you consistently do. The right habits compound over time into productivity, expertise, and opportunities. This is the core of the developure book. It is about you will stay every day in your job learning stuff, making progress. You don't have to spend hours and hours and hours. Just a little bit every day moves you forward and eventually that journey of a thousand miles when you do it a step at a time you eventually get there. All right. Now I'll tack on to that. So building better habits the core of this. If you do something for more than 10 days repetitively it becomes a habit. If you do well are you kicking your head now? But I find that if you force yourself to do a task daily for at least 10 days almost a week and a half it generally you will pick it up and it becomes a habit. There's good and bad to that. You can pick up bad habits during that while you're trying to do a good habit you could pick up a bad habit. So habits are habitual but be by the nature of habit. But one of the things that I'm very conscious of and I've talked about this a lot is make sure you make lists. Write down Whoops. Write down what it is you want to do in a day. Get it done. If you're not getting it done, you have a bad habit. You have a habit of saying I'm going to do this and not do it. The question is why? You need to ask yourself, why are you not doing it? Are you not doing it? Because what you're writing on your little notepad, your little sheet here, is not what's important. Are you putting are you putting being are you putting busy tasks ahead of important tasks? And that is the key distinction here. Make sure that what you're working on, what habits you want to build are focused on the things that keep the dial moving, that are really what it is you need to accomplish, not what you need to do to make it look like you're being busy and you're accomplishing things. All right. So, first off, for those of you that are watching the YouTube channel, you saw me going, "No, it's not 10 days. It's actually I've heard it's 21 days." And then I've heard speakers that are habit experts that say it's actually more than that. I the key is and I can't remember who s told me this or didn't tell me this specifically but I heard a speaker that they said the key is not that you miss a day, it's that you don't miss two days in a row. And I I want to say it's the Atomic Habits guy. I'm not sure who it is, but that's the key is to build momentum. If you miss a day, it's not going to kill you. If you miss two days in a row, you will lose momentum. That is the key. I'm going to jump ahead to a couple, but I do want to come back to this because I think this is so so important. So the first thing it suggested we didn't even get to the first topic was daily coding discipline habit write or review code every day even for 30 minutes why it matters keeps skills sharp builds muscle memory reduces mental cold starts how to do it many challenges open source contributions or small side project sprints pro trip uh track coding streaks or use a developer journal to stay consistent This is so much I will give you a second. This is so much what we preach. This is why we do the 15 minutes of learning and stuff like that that we do. This is something that has has been such an incredible benefit to me in particular as a developer. I'm going to throw this out and I'm going to let Michael actually talk because I've been cutting him off for so long. Um, this is so important to do with the technologies that you're not actually working on. So, if you are sitting in a Java developer job, but you want to keep your Python skills sharp, have a side project that is Python development. Or likewise, if you are in a C sharp job and you don't want to lose your job, your your C will be kept sharp for no pun intended through your day job, but you need to make sure that you're still keeping current. And it's not even current, but just not letting Rust build on the Java side of it. And I'm going to go ahead and throw it right to you. All right. Plain and simple. You're a developer. There are code repositories. At the end of the day, whatever you're working on, you need to commit to your code repository. Take five minutes, go look at GitHub, whatever. Create a temporary PR. I don't care. Go look and see what you did for the day in your code and does it make sense? If it doesn't make sense, two things need to happen. One, you need to quickly fix it. Or two, you need to document your code quickly so that when you push it back up, you know what you did. Because if you're looking at that co PR or that code review and you immediately cannot understand what the hell you did, you have a problem. And that is the first thing that jumped in my mind when you brought this up. So I was like, I wanted to jump the gun. That is a mega bonus because that actually is not in our book. That is a very very useful tip to have. If you don't re like we've never I don't know that we've ever talked about reviewing your own code. This is something we have recently. Um I have never used Sonar Cube before with my git with GitHub. I've used it with like you know here and there and I've used other code uh static code analysis tools like that but to use it in a regular basis has actually been a very informative process for me because every time I do a commit and a push it barks at me about whatever it likes or dislikes and that forces me to go back and actually review my own code more often. often that I would like to admit that is an incredibly useful habit to get into is commit your code. Even if it's your own little repository and side hustle, PR yourself and then code review your own code. Just that extra set of eyes when it's your own stinking eyes will help immensely. It is amazing what you will catch in those kinds of things. particularly, and this is why I love so much the static code analysis tools that are out there, all the way back to uh some of the like the very high-end tools that are out there. And I forget the names off the top of my head. They're very expensive, but they're very useful because they will give you feedback. That is exactly what you need as a developer because we get into our little silos. We have our way to solve problems. We have our way to write code. We have all of our uh preferences built out into our IDE. Use the if you're Python, use the uh the PEP. I'm getting choked up. I'm so emotional about this. Use Pep 8 uh in Java. Go and use the various Java sites that are out there. PHP has got its own uh version. I wish I could think of all of these that are out there. They're I'm missing them right now. go to the standards. How is the most current version used being that's out there that's being used that's being developed? How is that being written? What are the styles that are out there? And this includes like naming standards and stuff like that. Go look at those because they will make you a better developer. I'm going to move on. We have time for one. Wait, I'm not gonna move on because Michael has something to say. I think we have time for one more topic. We do. All right. What's the next bullet point? Yes, we've gone too far. Effective time management. This is so a and Michael doesn't know. I'm just going to let you know. He did not know that. That is the next bullet point. Effective time management habit. Use time blocks or pomodoro. Oh, I love this. to avoid burnout and context switching tools. calendar blocking toggle to o gg l notion or visual studio code timers side hustle angle maximize limited hours protect your maker time uh discussion prompt when are you most productive and how do you defend that time I am going to use this before I toss it back to Michael to say that I still I have adjusted if you if you go back to last season you will hear how much I loved the pomodora stuff it was because of the place I was in workwise at that mo moment. But I still I use a very different Pomodoro technique. I use a uh a focus app which I'm going to look up right now called Brain FM. Brain.fm. There's other ones like that. It's got a lot of different settings essentially, but it is just it is music that is it is sound and music that is intended on like enhancing certain mental aspects. I use that on a regular basis as my pomodoro basically and I have grown. I use a 1 hour 60inute pomodoro on a regular basis and it has been very very effective. But now I own my time more than I did before. before that 25 minutes is what I needed because I needed to actually do like a little bit of everything. I have uh I have less chunks right now and so it works very well to do a one hour. I am literally exhausted in a mental sense by the time I'm done with the one hour and I get so much accomplished. So, I I I'm sorry that I keep singing the praises of that technique, but it really is if you can sit down and focus for a set number of minutes. I don't care if it's 25, 45, 60, 90, whatever your focus is, you will be amazed at how productive you will get. Now, I'm going to pass it on to somebody that has always struggled with saying that word, but that's okay. He's gonna work on his Italian. Go for it, Michael. All right, I'm not even going to say it. That is a safe approach. Um, my biggest problem with this is in a lot of companies I've worked for or in a lot of situations, they do not foster the culture or the environment for you to thrive in the Pomodoro technique to actually do what Rob is suggesting. which is why I've gone with the list approach where I write down what I need to get done in the day and I try to stick to it. Project management tools are great for this, Jiren, Trello, things like that. But the problem you run into with those is still you get scope creep. You need to commit to something say I'm going to get this done. If you don't get it done, make a note as to why. Was it because you ran into scope creep? Is it because oh this problem you're trying to solve is bigger than it is. This is a big problem in software development. If you work on a ticket and you pointed it as a team as a one because it looked simple but you get into it and it starts blowing up you need to bring that to everyone's attention. So, the next standup you have, comment the ticket. Say, "Hey, I've uncovered this." Document what you found and then bring it up. Do not try to bring it up without documenting it because if you sleep on it, you're going to forget about it and the next day you're going to be like, "I have no idea." Um, just be clear and concise and document, document, document. Keep in mind the cover your ass CYA approach to everything. Even if you're on the pomodoro technique, make sure that what you're working on is what you're working on. And if it starts bloating or expanding, bring that up immediately. That means that what you're focused on is not focused enough and you may need some additional direction to make sure you get to where you need to be to get it completed. Gosh, that is is rare that I say that, but that is really in an incred No, I'm kidding. That was that is an incredible point to make. Part of what I find so much valuable with the Pomodoro technique, and I will note that Michael said it correctly, didn't stumble over it, and he's been drinking. Um, if you're on the podcast, no, he hasn't. Um, go check the YouTube channel. Um, it is very useful to have that pomodoro because it really does time box stuff and I think that is what as I have expanded the pomodoro length that I use, it has been really helpful with me and helping me understand even more my estimates for work. Because honestly, most of what I do, I think I can cover in a 1-hour pomodoro. If I get to the end of it, whatever my point is basic, well, my points, this is like a little secret behind the thing. My points when I'm doing um scrum pointing and stuff like that, it's basically the number of pomodoros it's going to take me to get that thing done. And if I take like if I if I point it as one and it takes me more than one pomodoro to get it done, then I note that. And Michael has really nailed what we need to do as developers. Whether you do it, however you do it, you need to document. You need to know where you misestimated it. It's not necessarily where it was misestimated by somebody else because you can only control what you estimate and what your abilities are, but this is what will help you become a better estimator. If you understand that this took longer than I expected, and of course with your team, if it impacts them, you need to let them know. Say, "Hey, this took longer than I expected." Like, throw that out there. That helps you. that helps the team. This there are so many levels of value that that brings to you. Now, I'm going to move on because I want to at least jump into one other and I have no idea how long we've gone because I apologize. I didn't look at the time before we started this one. We are too long. But I'm going to jump into this real quick and then I'm going to wrap this one up. Continuous learning. I love this even before I read it. Habit. Read or watch something technical weekly book, document, blog, YouTube or podcast. Hey. Hey. Um, growth edge. Stay current with frameworks, languages, and soft skills. My gosh, this is the bulk of what our book is. Career boost. Learning equals leverage. It's how you move from junior to lead. The best way to move from junior to lead is to read our freaking book and listen to our podcast on a regular basis because this is what we live and we are there with you. I will throw out hey brain FM if you need a sponsorship. Give us a call. We would love to talk to you. Love your app. Would love to like boost you guys on a regular basis. As always shoot us an email at [email protected]. I will even offer you right now. You shoot me an email in uh it is the end of June. You send me an email by the end of July. Me being [email protected] I will send you a copy of our book. Gratus free all of those other word libé. Uh I don't even know if that's actually the word that I'm trying to think of but we will give it to you free. We'll shoot you one. just give us your email address or actually your physical mailing address um or your email address. We'll shoot you the digital copy. I I would love to offer that for now because it is really got a lot of the stuff that we've talked about. I think it's very valuable particularly if you're trying to figure out how do you map out your career? Maybe you've topped out, maybe you plateaued, maybe you're struggling to figure out where you go from here. It is actually a very useful book. If you don't think so, I would love to get that feedback because we'll do a version two and we will do a better version of it. As always, we have Facebook uh we have developer.com developer Facebook page developer.com if you want to leave us feedback. Uh developer on X, you know, used to be Twitter. I think we've finally gotten so we can just call it X. Thank you Elon Musk for that to get a year later or whatever it is. Uh also developer.com we have a contact us form. Every single article, every podcast, there's ways to leave us feedback. We will get it. We would love to hear it. We would love to make this better because we are also building a better podcast for you, not for ourselves. Thank you so much. Thank you for your time. As always, go out there and have yourself a great day, a great week, and we will talk to you next time. Bonus material. Go watch the pre-show cuz there was a whole lot before the show. Uh, just one last thing, check out the website, check out our podcast, check out YouTube if you're, you know, if you're watching us, great. Um, seriously, thank you for being a follower of us. Like, share, repeat, and give us your feedback. Have a great day. I will say as bonus material, this is like behind the scenes. Apparently, there is behind the scenes a I guess it's a slack message. Yes, a slack message of get him food. So, apparently I've had too much fun this episode. I I actually don't apologize because you know sometimes we got to have fun. This is like episode Do you even know what episode this is? Is like eight nine. Nine. We're on nine. No. Overall like 800 900. What? Yeah. Give me 10 seconds. Uh pull that up. Pull that up. You are on [Music] 884. Oh my gosh. This is 884 episodes that we have done. So, for me to have a little bit of fun, we're crazy. Yeah. And I say that this is bonus material. I will once again I will hang my hat on. If you have not gone through the interview season like it's like now about three or four seasons back it's like 20 21 something like that. Uh it was 90 something episode. It was a lot of episodes. The first couple of interviews were okay but by the time we got even like the fifth to 10th episode there are some of the most fascinating people I have ever met that we got to interview. I had so much fun. I hate that I stopped recording so many times before the end of like the conversation. I had great conversations. Uh Greg and I wish I could think of his name that was a piano player that had was worried about losing his voice. I hope it's Greg. Um incredible conversation there. The guy that worked with the Blue Man Group that is out with uh working with Google right now. Awesome. Incredible conversations and those are just pieces of it. Well, I was gonna say and if a lot of these podcasts aren't still out there cuz some of the platforms cut them off after a certain level of episodes, let us know. We have a lot of these archived, not necessarily all of them. We have most of them. So, if you want to follow up on an old episode, let us know. We'll send it to you. We will do that. And also I think the developer.com site I think has every single episode in some way form or fashion. We'll we'll find out because if you define one that is not pointing to an episode let us know because we will go like connect you know we'll correct that link and things like that. Um obviously 800 plus episodes in the first 100 so episodes may not be as good. This is speaking as a guy that created like directed, exe, you know, director, producer, all of that, edited. Yes, it's gotten better. Um, I go back to the interview episodes to me still the pinnacle of some of what we did. No offense to Michael. We've actually had some really good uh you know the last couple seasons have had a lot of really good episodes, a lot of really good content, but the stuff we got in the interviews I that is topnotch. I cannot I cannot even, you know, say enough good stuff about it. So that's your bonus. I mean, we're still going to do interviews. I mean, we're still going to do interviews. Don't don't throw that out. I mean, it may be with you. You right there, you might be the next one we interview. Um, yes, we still have those on there. It may even be her back there that's in the like, you know, back in the, you know, the crowd that's yelling, "Hey." Um, the peanut gallery is full of people that want to be part of our interview guests. Um, I I will I will be honest to all you guys because you guys are, you know, me familia, you guys are like right there, Minte. Um, I love doing interviews. If you want to do an interview and you're not the most boring person in the world, and yes, I have interviewed like two or three of those people. But for the most part, I think I literally have one interview that never actually went to production. It was that bad. Uh, but that being said, I would love to talk to you and I have confidence that we will make an interesting conversation out of that. Um, I would love to talk to you. Shoot us a, as always, shoot us an email [email protected]. Uh, let us know. We would love to talk to you. Uh, Michael and I have not done the dual host interview thing. It is on our list of things to do. I have people that I want to talk to. he has people he wants to talk to. At some point, we'll do this. If it if it interrupts the AI uh season, I apologize so much. Um, that being said, I apparently have had more to drink and not enough to eat right now. And, uh, that's that behind the scenes stuff you get as part of the YouTube. Michael's doing the cut cut. We'll fix it. We'll fix it in editing. You guys have had more bonus than you wanted at this point. Thank you always. I really do appreciate you. What was it? 892. Uh we're 800 plus. I mean, we're well uh 884. 884 is a lot of episodes. I will say 100. One of my favorites, Gary Vaynerchuk, did 1,000 and he quit. And I almost cried during that last week of uh Wine Library TV when he got to the thousand part because we knew we the crowd knew it was coming. Um I don't know that we're going to do that in a thousand, but hundreds is a lot. And you guys are there. I'm sure there's at least one of you. There probably only one of you that's been here from the start and that's actually me. But hey, um thank you so much for your time. We really do appreciate what you've invested in us. We would love to invest back into you. Let us know any way that we can do so that we can help you out uh or that we can improve our content. We're always we're always looking for ways as well. Always looking for ways to build a better podcast as well as building better developers ourselves and use. Thank you. So use thank you so much. Have a great evening. Have a great week. And we will talk to you next time. [Music]
Transcript Segments
[Music]
We're going to Whoa, we just pressed
record in the middle of crazy days up.
Um
so we are back to
uh essential habits for software
developers boosting productivity and
career grow. Wow, this is
there are moments where I look at these
things and I'm like wow that is such a
let me see I'm going to say ask chat GBT
let's see now
provide topics and
focus for this title
essential habits for software developers
boosting productivity and career our
titles are such AI stuff it feels like
that's actually I think at the end of
this this would be a really fun episode
would be to wrap this up even maybe
before the season because there's a lot
of cool stuff we've gotten out of this
season. I'm sorry. Hello for everybody.
I I was reading and not saying hi to
those of you guys that have joined us.
Um
I think it would be really cool to have
an episode. one is I think just an
episode talking about the impact that AI
had on all of our topics is going to be
awesome,
but also I think an episode which I
think we've talked about this before,
but like go back to recognizing AI
because I think that's actually very
important. I was actually I almost
offended a person that we're not going
to name but what happens to be my
project manager because I said there's
an email that she drafted and I was like
I asked I I did you use AI? She said no.
And I said well that's actually pretty
cool because I said there is some
there's there is wording and there's
there's things that felt AI but the uh
the rhythm did not feel AI. So I think
there's some things that we can learn
and I think is very useful to us as
developers
um not only in general but also with the
code to figure out when we're looking at
AI generated code and there's there are
definitely some telltale marks and you
and I you probably know as well because
you've seen some AI generated code
you've used AI generated code I bet um
and you know there's like you get once
you do it you realize okay this is what
it looks like so It's very useful to
know that. It's It's always good to have
that context. Sorry everybody if I went
a little bit off field. No, but that'd
be a good topic to definitely have
because
I do use AI a lot um more for testing
though because
uh well testing and refactoring because
sometimes your code gets nasty and it's
like well how can I clean this up and
you can go too far. You could kind of go
in between and AI is a nasty little
I if you don't play with AI enough and
you just say, "Hey AI, go build me code
or go write me this." You're going to
get crap. Be careful. Uh basically,
buyer beware. Don't just assume it works
out of the box. You need to literally
understand what the hell you're doing.
So, if you want to play with AI, start
playing with AI now. But don't really
start pushing it into your development
environments for at least three months
or even six months.
I will say um use one of the training
there's a bunch of training sites out
there that use AI. Um what's the one I
use? Uh just because they're fun. I'm
gonna go look at them.
Um code signal codes signal.com. Uh
then there's a coty c o d a c y.com I
think is another one. Um they use AI to
generate
training material basically. Um use them
get use them and use AI to answer the
questions. Use like go I highly
recommend download the chat GPT client.
God this is so much bonus information.
So, sorry for everybody, but you limit
the after bonus, but yeah, it's
pre-bonus. Um,
download the chat GPT like desktop
client. It's a little bit faster, a
little bit better.
Use it for a while.
The other thing that I have found very,
very useful,
go out, you can even use AI to do it.
Build a chatbot. build an AI chatbot
and specifically
work with the
uh they call it it's basically it's like
the context or the settings. Um let me
see do they have an actual
I may be getting the name wrong so let
me go look real quick. As he's looking
I'm going to age myself. This is very
similar to the old dragon age for
speaking uh speech to text. Same idea.
You have to train what you're using to
understand what you want. Otherwise, you
might get something that looks right but
is wrong. Okay? It's called the system
prompts. Um, why did I forget that?
Because I've had a couple to drink. Um,
understand how prompts work. Um, what is
useful, what is not, what is uh retained
and what is not. Um, it is very much
like the old Google foo, the ability to
and I like I've mastered Google fu. I
asked Google stuff all the time. It's
why I didn't use AI for the longest time
because I could ask Google all kinds of
crap. I knew how to like leverage all of
its search engine stuff. AI is not much
different. Now, each AI engine is a
little bit different.
know which like pick one, master it,
understand its um the kind of answers
it's going to give you and how to tell
it to give you better answers
and that is going to be invaluable to
your career moving forward. I guarantee
you everybody wants to do AI. I went to
a startup meetup a week or two ago. I
was like a dozen companies like
founders, entrepreneurs that are
starting new companies. 11 out of the 12
had AI as part of it. And every one of
them was it was AI that made a lot of
sense. It's like you of course I'm going
to use AI to do that because it makes it
better.
Spend some time in doing this. Wow, this
is such bonus material. I almost feel
like we should have another uh episode
on it, but
please do so. I think building a chatbot
and give it a why. Don't just build a
chatbot to like do tech support or
something like that. Build a chatbot. I
will I will go ahead because I probably
had too much drink. Probably shouldn't
share all this. I built a chatbot
that was effectively a scraper of sorts
that is going out and using public
information to go find information about
companies because I need contact
information for those that are in the
seauite of these companies. I built this
chatbot. Now it's very valuable to learn
what it will provide you and what it
won't because they will AI will provide
you answers that are actually BS. For
example, I got back LinkedIn links for
contact information for these people.
They are not valid links because AI will
not go search the web or at least chat
GPT will not go search the web. And I
was using the AI the API
the AI API too many A's and I's in
there. Um but I think is it is very
educational. This is a great building
better developers things for you to do.
You can build a chatbot in probably an
hour or less and then go play with it.
That is where you'll become a better
developer. All right, bonus material
done. I did I already spit that out into
there. I want to make sure I did.
Essential habits for software developers
boosting productivity. Okay, go ahead.
Throw my last because we'll skip the
bonus at the end. We'll just do all the
bonus.
That doesn't mean quit before we get to
the end. There may still be bonus. I'm
just saying that's true. We We always
seem to do whatever we want. Um,
with what Rob mentioned, look at free
tools like AWS EC2 instances. these.
There's a lot of cool things out there,
a lot of free things out there for you
to play with cloud-based uh instances
where you can set these up and build
these chat bots live so you can actually
do more things online, bigger, better,
uh however you want to do them. Just
don't necessarily limit yourself if
you're strapped for money to what you
have because if you have a very old
machine, look at grabbing an EC2
instance and throwing it out there and
play with that. That was the only thing
I wanted to throw out there because some
people do have that. I've talked to a
couple people. It's like, I don't have
the money, so I can't play with AI. Yes,
you can. There's a lot of free tools out
there. You just have to tap into that.
I will give you a pro tip.
If you're using I'm sure um
wow, I've got a lot of thoughts on that.
All of the major cloud providers do have
all kinds of programs for nonprofits,
startups,
developers. There's a whole kind of
stuff. So, whatever your situation is,
feel free to spend a little bit of time
searching for
programs, uh,
discounts,
price, all kind pricing strategies,
stuff like that. Based on whatever your
business is, you may find something
that's really useful.
The other thing is AWS in particular. I
love ad AWS.
Okay. Yeah, I love AWS.
Sorry. Um, you guys may know because I
did a whole season on their services.
I've been very happy with it. Used it
for a long time.
They have reserved instances.
Whatever server you think you need or
that you need, you can get a reserved
instance and it cuts the cost by like
50% or more. It doesn't Yes. you're
committing to paying for it for like a
year or something like that. But
if you're a developer, it's not a bad
thing. If you'd like more information,
shoot me a just hit me up at info at
developer.com. I would love to like
point you to some stuff, give you some
information I found, customers I've
dealt with over the years. Um, because
we do help people like reduce costs and
things like that. And there are very
good cost-effective programs out there.
There's always the free tier.
Amazon have it has it. Uh GCP has
uh I think it's like I don't know what
it's up to now. I think it's like $300
of just like a bucket of free credits
when you first start. So there are
options out there depending on which one
you want to learn how to use. Honestly,
I I love AWS, but that doesn't mean that
I like Azure is really awesome as well.
GCP, I don't know you so well, but
that's okay. What I've dealt with it,
GCP is really cool as well. Um,
whatever is your, you know, whatever is
your brothers, as they say, go do it.
you can probably find a lower co a low
enough cost solution that unless you're
like scrambling to actually put food on
your table with a I mean I've done this
with a 10 $50 $100 a month budget.
I don't know where you're at, but you
can find things to do that. All right,
enough of that.
Did you have one more? No. Good. Because
I wasn't going to let you talk anyways.
Raspberry Pi.
All right. This is what happens when we
were on our second episode and we have
All right.
What are you drinking? Bourbon and Coke.
What's your bourbon? Uh uh Jim Beam. Uh
yeah, Jim Be uh yeah, Jim Beam Black.
Okay. So, Jim Beam, if you ever want to
uh like, you know, help us out, we're
out here. A little sponsorship wouldn't
hurt. Um,
if I can get
it doesn't want to like grab my bottle.
Put it closer in front of you. Maybe if
you put it in front of you. And maybe
that's what it is. It's like There you
go.
Uncle nearest my favorite. Uh, nearest
green. Uncle nearest rye is what I am
drinking right now. And obviously it's
towards the end of a bottle, but that's
how that works. That's not going to
help.
Oh, no. has to have a backing.
Um,
just doing that straight. There you go.
There we go. Jim Beam, Uncle Nearest, if
you'd like to sponsor a podcast, we are
here. Actually, it's not even a podcast
at this point. A YouTube channel, we
would be happy to do so. Building better
developers with alcohol. Hey, I'm sorry.
If you're under 21,
please don't drink. All right, I have to
uh make this one not child friendly.
We really we have to work on that. We've
used language that we shouldn't use as
well. Things like code testing
bugs. All right, I'm sorry.
Anyways, back to the episode with a
three, a two, and a one. Hello and
welcome back. We are here building
better developers with AI. We are
spending this season taking a prior
season and we are basically pushing our
prior episode topics through AI and
seeing what comes out. So far it's been
really good. I don't want to spoil
what's coming ahead. So first I will
introduce myself. My name is Rob
Broadhead. Happen to be one of the
founders of developer building better
developers.
I am also a founder of RB Consulting
where we help you wrangle technology. If
you have that technology sprawl that
everybody is like starting to get used
to, you have that technology junk drawer
that needs to be cleaned up, we sit down
with you, we talk about your business,
not your technology, but your business.
What is it that you are trying to do?
What is your why? What is your secret
sauce? We craft a special recipe just
for you.
take that technology and the technology
that's out there because sometimes you
don't even know what's available but we
do because we've spent decades over
three even though we're so young over
three decades in technology learning how
it works learning what's out there
learning what works for our customers
whether they're big or small and then we
help you craft a roadmap going forward
we can hand that off to you and you guys
can go forward or we can help you
implement it whether it's building a
team, adding technology, RFPs, you name
it. We start with that technology
assessment and then we go from there
based on what you are served best by.
Good thing, bad thing for this week,
uh, good thing is sunshine. I love
sunshine. I left the north of the US,
Chicago. I'm not going to name names,
but I just did. uh because it's too cold
and too dark for like eight months out
of the year and I came to a sunnier part
of the world. Love it. Great. I feel
better. I'm getting my vitamin C, D,
whatever. All E, F, Z, all of those.
Yes, I'm not a biology major, but
getting all that good stuff out of the
sunshine, it makes me happy, brings me
joy.
The bad thing is it is freaking hot out
there and I'm one of these people that
if you put put me in a room that's hot
like 75 or 76° I will sweat. You put me
in 90 to 95 degrees in like you know and
a 99% humidity it drives me nuts. I am
like dripping water and that is the bad
thing right now. But you know what? I
will take it because it is actually
pretty nice. Also, what I will take
because he drives me nuts, but he's not
that bad a guy is Michael. So, go ahead
and introduce yourself. Hey everyone, my
name is Michael Malashsh. I'm one of the
co-founders of developer building better
developers. I'm also the founder of
Envision QA where if you're a passionate
entrepreneur or business looking for
help with software solutions, we
recognize your desire for a reliable,
high-erforming solution that sets you
apart from the competitors. We offer
tailored software and quality assurance
solutions to optimize the performance
and reliability of your e-commerce
platform, pitcher flawless user
experience, increase sales, and a
competitive edge in the market. Now,
it's hard going after RAW because a lot
of times I just want to say ditto, but
anyway, good and bad. Good and bad this
week. the good uh couple weeks ago there
was a lot of like uh good previews
online for upcoming software releases,
video games, things of that nature. Bad.
I have no time to play any of them. It's
like there's so many cool things coming
out. It's like, "Oh, I want to play
that. I want to play that. I want to
play that. I want to play it." I'm like,
"I don't have time. What the hell am I
thinking?" So, it's like, "Okay, which
one of the three and when are they
coming out?" It's like, "Cool. This
year, my wife might actually have a
chance to buy me a Christmas present
because I will not have a chance to buy
it for myself before the end of the
year, unless it happens to be a Switch
if I can happen to find one between now
and then because I doubt she will. Back
to you.
U switch two,
I'll geek out for a second. Switch to my
list. I'm going to get one for my wife
first because she has zero switches,
which is probably why she's such a sad
individual. If she had just one, she
would be a happier person,
but I'm going to go ahead as soon as I
can get her one. Yes. Smack upside the
head. Um,
try to get her one if I can.
She's choking me now. Segue there. Don't
buy used. Oh, definitely. I know
apparently has bricked those, so be
careful with that. Yeah, they've they've
taken a very That's a whole another
topic, a whole another world. Maybe
we'll talk about that like in
Thanksgiving or Christmas episodes. Um
Nintendo took a really interesting uh
stance on the Switch 2 uh release, which
has been very interesting. Um anyways,
would love to get one get one for my
wife first. I am just waiting for
I know I'm probably the only person that
does this, but Oblivion the like new
release on the Steam Deck is still
driving me nuts. Sometimes it crashes
sometimes. Like as soon as I do a quick
travel to somewhere, it's like no,
you're not going to do that. And the
heat that pours off of that is
phenomenal. Okay, geek mode off. Let's
get back to our topic for this episode
because
we need to actually get back to building
better developers and not gamers. Okay,
so this episode I asked him
what about essential habits for software
developers boosting productivity and
career growth and of course because GPT
loves me chat GPT said great choice for
your developer podcast and this is what
it gave me. Okay, first it actually gave
me a core message. I don't think I've
had this one before. Core message.
Success as a developer isn't just about
what you know. It's about what you
consistently do. The right habits
compound over time into productivity,
expertise, and opportunities. Oh my
gosh, that is
so much the message that we have built
for almost a decade now.
the momentum of
sh I want to finish I'm gonna finish my
thought and I'm gonna throw it to you.
So
see I told you we're like an old married
couple.
We talk about momentum. We talk about
the like just do a little bit every day.
That message is so much about
consistently doing every day. And now
I'm going to pass it to my partner who
apparently has something to say about I
was going to have you reiterate that a
little bit slower so that everyone could
hear you because you went through that
very quickly.
Wow. My wife just said, "Okay, I'm just
kidding. Success I'm going to go I'm
going to go very slow
because this is really important.
Success as a developer isn't just about
what you know. It's about what you
consistently
do. The right habits compound over time
into productivity, expertise, and
opportunities.
This is the core of the developure book.
It is about you will stay every day in
your job learning stuff, making
progress. You don't have to spend hours
and hours and hours. Just a little bit
every day moves you forward and
eventually that journey of a thousand
miles when you do it a step at a time
you eventually get there. All right. Now
I'll tack on to that. So building better
habits the core of this.
If you do something for more than 10
days repetitively it becomes a habit. If
you do well are you kicking your head
now? But I find that if you force
yourself to do a task daily for at least
10 days almost a week and a half it
generally you will pick it up and it
becomes a habit. There's good and bad to
that. You can pick up bad habits during
that while you're trying to do a good
habit you could pick up a bad habit. So
habits
are habitual but be by the nature of
habit. But
one of the things that I'm very
conscious of and I've talked about this
a lot is make sure you make lists. Write
down Whoops. Write down what it is you
want to do in a day. Get it done. If
you're not getting it done, you have a
bad habit. You have a habit of saying
I'm going to do this and not do it. The
question is why? You need to ask
yourself, why are you not doing it? Are
you not doing it? Because what you're
writing on your little notepad, your
little sheet here, is not what's
important. Are you putting
are you putting being are you putting
busy tasks ahead of important tasks?
And that is the key distinction here.
Make sure that what you're working on,
what habits you want to build are
focused on the things that keep the dial
moving, that are really what it is you
need to accomplish, not what you need to
do to make it look like you're being
busy and you're accomplishing things.
All right. So, first off, for those of
you that are watching the YouTube
channel, you saw me going, "No, it's not
10 days. It's actually I've heard it's
21 days." And then I've heard speakers
that are habit experts that say it's
actually more than that.
I the key
is and I can't remember who s told me
this or didn't tell me this specifically
but I heard a speaker that they said the
key is not that you miss a day, it's
that you don't miss two days in a row.
And I I want to say it's the Atomic
Habits guy. I'm not sure who it is, but
that's the key is to build momentum. If
you miss a day, it's not going to kill
you. If you miss two days in a row, you
will lose momentum.
That is the key. I'm going to jump ahead
to a couple, but I do want to come back
to this because I think this is so so
important. So the first thing it
suggested we didn't even get to the
first topic was daily coding discipline
habit write or review code every day
even for 30 minutes why it matters keeps
skills sharp builds muscle memory
reduces mental cold starts how to do it
many challenges open source
contributions or small side project
sprints pro trip uh track coding streaks
or use a developer journal to stay
consistent
This
is so much I will give you a second.
This is so much what we preach. This is
why we do the 15 minutes of learning and
stuff like that that we do.
This is something that has
has been such an incredible benefit to
me in particular as a developer. I'm
going to throw this out and I'm going to
let Michael actually talk because I've
been cutting him off for so long. Um,
this is so important to do with the
technologies that you're not actually
working on. So, if you are sitting in a
Java developer job, but you want to keep
your Python skills sharp, have a side
project that is Python development. Or
likewise, if you are in a C sharp job
and you don't want to lose your job,
your your C will be kept sharp for no
pun intended through your day job, but
you need to make sure that you're still
keeping current. And it's not even
current, but just not letting Rust build
on the Java side of it. And I'm going to
go ahead and throw it right to you. All
right.
Plain and simple. You're a developer.
There are code repositories. At the end
of the day, whatever you're working on,
you need to commit to your code
repository. Take five minutes, go look
at GitHub, whatever. Create a temporary
PR. I don't care. Go look and see what
you did for the day in your code and
does it make sense? If it doesn't make
sense, two things need to happen. One,
you need to quickly fix it. Or two, you
need to document your code quickly so
that when you push it back up, you know
what you did. Because if you're looking
at that co PR or that code review and
you immediately cannot understand what
the hell you did, you have a problem.
And that is the first thing that jumped
in my mind when you brought this up. So
I was like, I wanted to jump the gun.
That is a mega bonus because that
actually is not in our book. That is a
very very useful tip to have.
If you don't re like we've never I don't
know that we've ever talked about
reviewing your own code.
This is
something we have recently. Um I have
never used Sonar Cube before with my git
with GitHub.
I've used it with like you know here and
there and I've used other code uh static
code analysis tools like that but to use
it in a regular basis has actually been
a very informative
process for me because every time I do a
commit and a push it barks at me about
whatever it likes or dislikes and that
forces me to go back and actually review
my own code more often. often that I
would like to admit
that is an incredibly useful habit to
get into is commit your code. Even if
it's your own little repository and side
hustle, PR yourself and then code review
your own code.
Just that extra set of eyes when it's
your own stinking eyes will help
immensely. It is amazing what you will
catch in those kinds of things.
particularly, and this is why I love so
much the static code analysis tools that
are out there, all the way back to uh
some of the like the very high-end tools
that are out there. And I forget the
names off the top of my head. They're
very expensive, but they're very useful
because they will give you feedback.
That is exactly what you need as a
developer because we get into our little
silos. We have our way to solve
problems. We have our way to write code.
We have all of our uh preferences built
out into our IDE.
Use the if you're Python, use the uh the
PEP.
I'm getting choked up. I'm so emotional
about this. Use Pep 8 uh in Java.
Go and use the various Java sites that
are out there. PHP has got its own uh
version. I wish I could think of all of
these that are out there. They're I'm
missing them right now. go to the
standards.
How is the most current version used
being that's out there that's being used
that's being developed? How is that
being written? What are the styles that
are out there? And this includes like
naming standards and stuff like that.
Go look at those because they will make
you a better developer. I'm going to
move on. We have time for one. Wait, I'm
not gonna move on because Michael has
something to say. I think we have time
for one more topic. We do.
All right. What's the next bullet point?
Yes, we've gone too far. Effective time
management. This is so a and Michael
doesn't know. I'm just going to let you
know. He did not know that. That is the
next bullet point. Effective time
management habit. Use time blocks or
pomodoro. Oh, I love this. to avoid
burnout and context switching tools.
calendar blocking toggle to o gg l
notion or visual studio code timers
side hustle angle maximize limited hours
protect your maker time uh discussion
prompt when are you most productive and
how do you defend that time I am going
to use this before I toss it back to
Michael to say that I still I have
adjusted if you if you go back to last
season you will hear how much I loved
the pomodora stuff it was because of the
place I was in workwise at that mo
moment. But I still I use a very
different Pomodoro technique. I use a uh
a focus app which I'm going to look up
right now called Brain FM. Brain.fm.
There's other ones like that. It's got a
lot of different settings essentially,
but it is just it is music that is it is
sound and music that is intended on like
enhancing certain mental aspects.
I use that on a regular basis as my
pomodoro basically and I have grown. I
use a 1 hour 60inute pomodoro on a
regular basis and it has been very very
effective. But now I own my time more
than I did before. before that 25
minutes is what I needed because I
needed to actually do like a little bit
of everything. I have uh I have less
chunks right now and so it works very
well to do a one hour. I am literally
exhausted in a mental sense by the time
I'm done with the one hour and I get so
much accomplished. So, I I I'm sorry
that I keep singing the praises of that
technique, but it really is if you can
sit down and focus for a set number of
minutes. I don't care if it's 25, 45,
60, 90, whatever your focus is, you will
be amazed at how productive you will
get. Now, I'm going to pass it on to
somebody that has always struggled with
saying that word, but that's okay. He's
gonna work on his Italian. Go for it,
Michael. All right, I'm not even going
to say it.
That is a safe approach. Um,
my biggest problem with this is in a lot
of companies I've worked for or in a lot
of situations, they do not foster the
culture or the environment for you to
thrive in the Pomodoro technique to
actually do what Rob is suggesting.
which is why I've gone with the list
approach where I write down what I need
to get done in the day and I try to
stick to it. Project management tools
are great for this, Jiren, Trello,
things like that. But the problem you
run into with those is still you get
scope creep. You need to commit to
something say I'm going to get this
done. If you don't get it done, make a
note as to why. Was it because you ran
into scope creep? Is it because oh this
problem you're trying to solve is bigger
than it is. This is a big problem in
software development.
If you work on a ticket and you pointed
it as a team as a one because it looked
simple but you get into it and it starts
blowing up you need to bring that to
everyone's attention. So, the next
standup you have, comment the ticket.
Say, "Hey, I've uncovered this."
Document what you found and then bring
it up. Do not try to bring it up without
documenting it because if you sleep on
it, you're going to forget about it and
the next day you're going to be like, "I
have no idea." Um,
just be clear and concise and document,
document, document.
Keep in mind the cover your ass CYA
approach to everything.
Even if you're on the pomodoro
technique,
make sure that what you're working on is
what you're working on. And if it starts
bloating or expanding, bring that up
immediately. That means that what you're
focused on is not focused enough and you
may need some additional direction to
make sure you get to where you need to
be to get it completed.
Gosh, that is is rare that I say that,
but that is really in an incred No, I'm
kidding. That was that is an incredible
point to make.
Part of what I find so much valuable
with the Pomodoro technique, and I will
note that Michael said it correctly,
didn't stumble over it, and he's been
drinking. Um,
if you're on the podcast, no, he hasn't.
Um, go check the YouTube channel. Um,
it is very useful to have that pomodoro
because it really does time box stuff
and I think that is what as I have
expanded the pomodoro length that I use,
it has been really helpful with me and
helping me understand even more my
estimates for work. Because honestly,
most of what I do, I think I can cover
in a 1-hour pomodoro.
If I get to the end of it, whatever my
point is basic, well, my points, this is
like a little secret behind the thing.
My points when I'm doing um scrum
pointing and stuff like that,
it's basically the number of pomodoros
it's going to take me to get that thing
done. And if I take like if I if I point
it as one and it takes me more than one
pomodoro to get it done, then I note
that. And Michael has really nailed what
we need to do as developers. Whether you
do it, however you do it, you need to
document. You need to know
where you misestimated it. It's not
necessarily where it was misestimated by
somebody else because you can only
control what you estimate and what your
abilities are, but this is what will
help you become a better estimator. If
you understand that
this took longer than I expected, and of
course with your team, if it impacts
them, you need to let them know. Say,
"Hey, this took longer than I expected."
Like, throw that out there. That helps
you. that helps the team. This there are
so many levels of value that that brings
to you. Now, I'm going to move on
because I want to at least jump into one
other and I have no idea how long we've
gone because I apologize. I didn't look
at the time before we started this one.
We are too long. But I'm going to jump
into this real quick and then I'm going
to wrap this one up. Continuous
learning. I love this even before I read
it. Habit. Read or watch something
technical weekly book, document, blog,
YouTube or podcast.
Hey. Hey. Um, growth edge. Stay current
with frameworks, languages, and soft
skills. My gosh, this is the bulk of
what our book is. Career boost. Learning
equals leverage. It's how you move from
junior to lead. The best way to move
from junior to lead is to read our
freaking book and listen to our podcast
on a regular basis because this is what
we live and we are there with you. I
will throw out hey brain FM if you need
a sponsorship. Give us a call. We would
love to talk to you. Love your app.
Would love to like boost you guys on a
regular basis.
As always shoot us an email at
I will even offer you right now. You
shoot me an email in uh it is the end of
June. You send me an email by the end of
July. Me being [email protected]
I will send you a copy of our book.
Gratus free all of those other word
libé. Uh I don't even know if that's
actually the word that I'm trying to
think of but we will give it to you
free. We'll shoot you one. just give us
your email address or actually your
physical mailing address um or your
email address. We'll shoot you the
digital copy. I I would love to offer
that for now because
it is really got a lot of the stuff that
we've talked about. I think it's very
valuable particularly if you're trying
to figure out how do you map out your
career? Maybe you've topped out, maybe
you plateaued, maybe you're struggling
to figure out where you go from here. It
is actually a very useful book. If you
don't think so, I would love to get that
feedback because we'll do a version two
and we will do a better version of it.
As always, we have Facebook uh we have
developer.com developer Facebook page
developer.com if you want to leave us
feedback. Uh developer on X, you know,
used to be Twitter. I think we've
finally gotten so we can just call it X.
Thank you Elon Musk for that to get a
year later or whatever it is. Uh also
developer.com we have a contact us form.
Every single article, every podcast,
there's ways to leave us feedback. We
will get it. We would love to hear it.
We would love to make this better
because we are also building a better
podcast for you, not for ourselves.
Thank you so much. Thank you for your
time. As always, go out there and have
yourself a great day, a great week, and
we will talk to you next time.
Bonus material. Go watch the pre-show
cuz there was a whole lot before the
show. Uh, just one last thing,
check out the website, check out our
podcast, check out YouTube if you're,
you know, if you're watching us, great.
Um, seriously,
thank you for being a follower of us.
Like, share, repeat, and give us your
feedback. Have a great day. I will say
as bonus material, this is like behind
the scenes. Apparently, there is behind
the scenes a I guess it's a slack
message. Yes, a slack message of get him
food. So, apparently I've had too much
fun this episode.
I I actually don't apologize because you
know sometimes we got to have fun. This
is like episode Do you even know what
episode this is? Is like eight nine.
Nine. We're on nine. No. Overall like
800 900. What? Yeah. Give me 10 seconds.
Uh pull that up. Pull that up. You are
on
[Music]
884.
Oh my gosh. This is 884
episodes that we have done. So, for me
to have a little bit of fun, we're
crazy. Yeah.
And I say that this is bonus material. I
will once again I will hang my hat on.
If you have not gone through the
interview season like it's like now
about three or four seasons back it's
like 20 21 something like that. Uh it
was 90 something episode. It was a lot
of episodes. The first couple of
interviews were okay but by the time we
got even like the fifth to 10th episode
there are some of the most fascinating
people I have ever met that we got to
interview. I had so much fun. I hate
that I stopped recording so many times
before the end of like the conversation.
I had great conversations. Uh Greg and I
wish I could think of his name that was
a piano player that had was worried
about losing his voice. I hope it's
Greg. Um
incredible conversation there. The guy
that worked with the Blue Man Group that
is out with uh working with Google right
now. Awesome. Incredible conversations
and those are just pieces of it. Well, I
was gonna say and if a lot of these
podcasts aren't still out there cuz some
of the platforms cut them off after a
certain level of episodes, let us know.
We have a lot of these archived, not
necessarily all of them. We have most of
them. So, if you want to follow up on an
old episode, let us know. We'll send it
to you. We will do that. And also I
think the developer.com site I think has
every single episode in some way form or
fashion. We'll we'll find out because if
you define one that is not pointing to
an episode let us know because we will
go like connect you know we'll correct
that link and things like that. Um
obviously 800 plus episodes in the first
100 so episodes may not be as good. This
is speaking as a guy that created like
directed, exe, you know, director,
producer, all of that, edited. Yes, it's
gotten better. Um, I go back to the
interview episodes to me still the
pinnacle of some of what we did. No
offense to Michael. We've actually had
some really good uh you know the last
couple seasons have had a lot of really
good episodes, a lot of really good
content, but the stuff we got in the
interviews
I that is topnotch. I cannot I cannot
even, you know, say enough good stuff
about it. So that's your bonus. I mean,
we're still going to do interviews. I
mean, we're still going to do
interviews. Don't don't throw that out.
I mean, it may be with you. You right
there, you might be the next one we
interview. Um, yes, we still have those
on there. It may even be her back there
that's in the like, you know, back in
the, you know, the crowd that's yelling,
"Hey."
Um,
the peanut gallery is full of people
that want to be part of our interview
guests. Um, I I will I will be honest to
all you guys because you guys are, you
know, me familia, you guys are like
right there, Minte.
Um,
I love doing interviews. If you want to
do an interview and you're not the most
boring person in the world, and yes, I
have interviewed like two or three of
those people. But for the most part, I
think I literally have one interview
that never actually went to production.
It was that bad. Uh, but
that being said, I would love to talk to
you and I have confidence that we will
make an interesting conversation out of
that. Um, I would love to talk to you.
Shoot us a, as always, shoot us an email
Uh, let us know. We would love to talk
to you. Uh, Michael and I have not done
the dual host interview thing. It is on
our list of things to do. I have people
that I want to talk to. he has people he
wants to talk to. At some point, we'll
do this. If it if it interrupts the AI
uh season, I apologize so much. Um, that
being said, I apparently have had more
to drink and not enough to eat right
now. And, uh, that's that behind the
scenes stuff you get as part of the
YouTube. Michael's doing the cut cut.
We'll fix it. We'll fix it in editing.
You guys have had more bonus than you
wanted at this point. Thank you always.
I really do appreciate you. What was it?
892.
Uh we're 800 plus. I mean, we're well uh
884.
884 is a lot of episodes. I will say
100.
One of my
favorites, Gary Vaynerchuk, did 1,000
and he quit. And I almost cried during
that last week of uh Wine Library TV
when he got to the thousand part because
we knew we the crowd knew it was coming.
Um I don't know that we're going to do
that in a thousand, but
hundreds is a lot. And you guys are
there. I'm sure there's at least one of
you. There probably only one of you
that's been here from the start and
that's actually me. But hey, um thank
you so much for your time. We really do
appreciate what you've invested in us.
We would love to invest back into you.
Let us know any way that we can do so
that we can help you out uh or that we
can improve our content. We're always
we're always looking for ways as well.
Always looking for ways to build a
better podcast as well as building
better developers ourselves and use.
Thank you. So use thank you so much.
Have a great evening. Have a great week.
And we will talk to you next time.
[Music]