Before testing my four new criteria against recent developments in the developer productivity space, I wanted to do a bit of Wardley mapping to better explain where I’ve seen challenges in these tools, and why I think DX’s approach is relatively novel.

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// Written by thechelsuk
// Published 2024-12-13, with 44 words.

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Bad User Experiences are bad and immediately cause resentment and dissatisfaction. Even stress and anxiety too. On Sunday night I chose to book three train tickets for my family for an upcoming trip with an open return and using a family and friends railcard. A well known ...

In everyday life unilateral thinking stifles creativity, deters debate, and encourages intellectual cowardice. The reality is that the most effective modern institutions–and the best sports teams–have a multidisciplinary, multifunctional approach. Outstanding performance ...

Mastery is the best goal because the rich can’t buy it, the impatient can’t rush it, the privileged can’t inherit it, and nobody can steal it. You can only earn it through hard work. Mastery is the ultimate status.

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// Written by thechelsuk
// Published 2024-11-10, with 41 words.

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In many cases, the relationships between the SMURF dimensions are in tension: improving one dimension can affect the others. However, if you can improve one or more dimensions of a test without harming the others, then you should do so. When thinking about the types of yo...

Teams right across central government can now sign up to quickly create secure and accessible digital forms without needing any technical knowledge. We estimate this has already saved government teams over 2 years in processing time since September 2022.

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// Written by thechelsuk
// Published 2024-11-07, with 41 words.

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Miserable engineers are unlikely to make software that makes customers happy. Prioritising the developer experience doesn’t mean pandering to engineers, or obsessing over their feelings, it is an indicator that they are working efficiently and effectively to deliver sustainable value. Developer Experience is a good proxy for productivity.

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// Written by thechelsuk
// Published 2024-11-01, with 50 words.

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Have you ever found yourself in the middle of an argument and not been sure how you got there? People tend to match other people’s energy, so if someone comes in hot you might – naturally, no judgement here – meet them hot in return. Learning to replace reaction with a qu...

Experiential evidence is about things the candidate has done. These questions tend to take the form: ‘Tell me about a time when…’ ‘Can you give me an example of…?’ ‘Then what did you do?’ ‘How did you respond?’ A good experiential question is open, which gives the c...

I’ve noticed some of these details, like that the passwords are comprised of little “fake words” and are dominated by lowercase letters, but I hadn’t noticed all of them. It’s a bunch of clever little touches, all in the aim of making strong passwords that are convenient ...

Last month the provisional estimate was 4.0% but today this has been revised to 4.1%.  Just this extra 0.1% adds around £100m to the state pension bill under the triple lock formula. Scrap the triple lock and normalise the state pension with the threshold for basic...

Microsoft is finally adding threaded conversations to its Microsoft Teams communications app. Threaded conversations in Teams won’t arrive until mid-2025, but ahead of that, Microsoft is also combining its separate chats and channels UI inside Teams into a single view.

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// Written by thechelsuk
// Published 2024-10-28, with 42 words.

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Pension transfer times are at their lowest since the end of the pandemic in 2021, new data from the Origo Transfer Index shows, even as transfers volumes have continued to increase.

This is good news, but I read lowest and think slowest. Maybe it’s just me. Why not title this as at “Pension transfers at their fastest since Pandemic”.

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// Written by thechelsuk
// Published 2024-10-28, with 61 words.

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lol.

Rails, finally some open source! Looks like ~943k lines of code, 143k from Basecamp org. Automattic publishes 6.58M lines of open source code, 6.9x more than you. Yet, we’re “doing open source dirty”? Shopify used Rails to build a $7B/revenue and growing business, why didn’t you?

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// Written by thechelsuk
// Published 2024-10-14, with 51 words.

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• Distance: 10.17 km
• Duration: 0:22:08
• Calories: 145.284
• Avg power: 113 W
• Max power: 478 W
• Avg heart rate: 138 bpm
• Max heart rate: 162 bpm
• Elevation gain: 15 m

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// Written by thechelsuk
// Published 2024-10-12, with 31 words.

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I spoke to my dad in the summer about how rubbish the FA player was for casting, often streaming the wrong game on the wrong channel and generally a poor UI/UX on the player itself. I was delighted to see WSL move to YouTube and was happily watching three games concurrently...

Sign me up, if this can match the Apple TV in size and run an M series SOC i’d be in for this.

All about the minimalist desk step up.

Apple has seemingly leaked the rumored next-generation Mac mini with five USB-C ports, according to a code change within Apple software that was discovered today by MacRumors contributor Aaron Perris.

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// Written by thechelsuk
// Published 2024-09-29, with 62 words.

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Apple released watchOS 11 today following months of beta testing. A key new health-related feature included in the software update is sleep apnea detection, which is available starting today on the Apple Watch Series 10, Apple Watch Series 9, and Apple Watch Ultra 2 in more than 150 countries and regions, according to Apple.

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// Written by thechelsuk
// Published 2024-09-29, with 56 words.

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Castro Podcast app

2024.9.1 This week’s release (2024.9.1) fixed some small UI bugs and crash issues from the previous build. I promised more alternate icon choices on social media but those were pushed to the next build as we really need to get the crash fixes out. Don’t worry, the icons are still coming in the next couple of weeks.

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// Written by thechelsuk
// Published 2024-09-29, with 62 words.

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If you use a JavaScript framework you should: be able to justify with evidence, how using JavaScript would benefit users be aware of any negative impacts and be able to mitigate them consider whether the benefits of using it outweigh the potential problems...

Follow the The Social Software Engineer channel on WhatsApp

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// Written by thechelsuk
// Published 2024-09-17, with 10 words.

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In the chronic illness and disability world, there’s something called “spoon theory.” Writer Christine Miserandino started it while explaining to a friend what chronic illness feels like, and grabbed a handful of spoons to make her point. In the theory, each spoon repr...

Why should you become the engineer everyone wants to work with? You already got an idea why becoming such an engineer is so important from my mistake that I mentioned above. But also this is very important to keep in mind: Software development is a team activity ...

Identifying things that would be better as forms

We also audited all of the places on GOV.UK where we ask users to send structured information to a DVSA email address.

We found about 60 of these. In most cases, we ask users to email no more than 5 pieces of data to us as part of a process, such as replacing lost documents.

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// Written by thechelsuk
// Published 2024-09-14, with 66 words.

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Note: A “pull request” refers to one self-contained change that has been submitted to version control or which is undergoing code review. At Google, this is referred to as a”CL”, which is short for “changelist”. Prefer small, focused pull requests that do exactly one th...

What’s Changed Feat: Add quote by @github-actions in #348 Bump actions/dependency-review-action from 1 to 2 by @dependabot in #351 Update about.md by @mat-0 in #352 Feat: New Offers 3 by @github-actions in #354 Feat: New Podcast by @github-actions in #350 ...

In this week’s newsletter, we’ll cover how to get more and better feedback from your manager: Make it insanely easy for your manager to give you feedback. “Feedback” might feel loaded. Ask what to do differently and what worked well. Give them permission t...

In this week’s newsletter, we’ll cover principles on how to feel more confident sharing your point of view. The more controversial the idea, the higher the burden of proof. Update your assumptions about how you add value. Share where your hunch is coming f...

Rhythm is perhaps a little trickier to handle. There is not one immediately obvious smallest rhythmic division to adopt that will support all kinds of rhythms. A judgement call must be made about what minimum note lengths and what cross-rhythms to support inside a grid. A...

For me this would be an increase from £7.99 to £24.99, which is fine, if the service works. I’m back using Castro again. I’d love a iPad and ATV apps and syncing as new features. Subscription Extensions As a thank you for supporting us through this transition and to ...