Code && Beyond
By Alexander Sulim and Pablo Vicente
Code && BeyondJun 27, 2021
Product discovery
In this episode amazing Ana Hernández joined us to talk about product discovery.
- How to find features that would delight users?
- How to handle failing ideas?
- What is MVP and how to compare it to PoC?
- How to collect feedback about your product?
Notes:
How we relax after work and recharge our batteries
Hello again! It's been a while since we released an episode. But, after a summer break, we are back on track with new ideas.
Speaking of breaks, in this episode of Code && Beyond we talk about what we like to do after work to relax and recharge our batteries. What works for us and why.
Listen to Pablo talk about mantrailing (training dogs to search for people) and why he likes tending to the trees in his garden more than growing tomatoes. Alex, on the other hand, shares why he loves writing software for fun, after writing software at work.
Links:
- What is mantrailing?
- Fun with concrete. Just some ideas ;)
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Check other episodes of the podcast at codeandbeyond.rocks and don't forget to give a rating on Spotify ;)
Music by penguinmusic from Pixabay.
Managing a technical product: The role of a product manager in a development team
In this episode of Code && Beyond, Pablo and Alex are joined by a very special guest: Robyn Farah, a product manager who has been working with technical teams for over 5 years.
We have invited her to talk about her role and how product managers can help guide teams in the right direction. Listen as we discuss topics like:
- using data to prioritize tasks and features,
- finding a common language between software engineers and managers,
- abbreviations and The Cooking Chicken Method.
Have any feedback? Send us an email at codeandbeyond@protonmail.com.
Check other episodes of the podcast at https://codeandbeyond.rocks and don't forget to give a rating on Spotify ;)
Music by penguinmusic from Pixabay.
Going cloudless: Our thoughts on cloud-based software
Cloud-based software has been a part of our lives for quite some time. So much so, that even some products that currently exist might not have been possible without it. Besides obvious things like apps on our laptops, smartphones and PCs, there are cloud-connected TVs, refrigerators, keyboards and many other gadgets.
While cloud-based software definitely provides many great benefits to consumers and developers, it comes at a cost that goes beyond its price tag. For consumers, there are questions about privacy and personal information, freedom of choice, necessity to be always connected. For developers, it might mean increased complexity of the things they work on.
In this episode of Code && Beyond, we aren't going to fanatically blame or defend cloud computing, but try to analyze what works and doesn't work for us personally, what alternatives we use and why. When would it make sense to go cloudless?
How to solve problems: advice based on our personal experience
This time around, in Code && Beyond, we share our best problem-solving tips and tricks. Listen to what works for us when hitting a roadblock while developing software:
- Timeboxing
- Using the scientific method
- Experimentation and prototyping
- Diagrams and sketching on paper
- Trying to explain the problem in simple words
- Thinking about and describing the problem, rather than the solution
- ...and more
Check other episodes of the podcast at codeandbeyond.rocks and don't forget to rate us on Spotify ;)
Have any feedback? Send us an email at codeandbeyond@protonmail.com.
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Music by Twisterium from Pixabay.
How to onboard new software engineers?
At Code && Beyond, we are not HR experts, far from that, but we have both been onboarded in different companies, as well as helped integrate new developers into the teams we have worked for.
In this episode of Code && Beyond, Pablo and Alex share their experiences with:
- onboarding buddy systems,
- discovering and acquiring knowledge in your new team,
- configuring your new development environment,
- conventions, consistency, and best practices.
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Music by Twisterium from Pixabay.
Working as a freelancer, consultant, full-time employee
As software engineers, we aren't limited to just one type of employment. Some prefer to have more flexibility and jump from one project to another focusing on short-term tasks, others value stability and like staying with the company for a long time. We could work as freelancers, consultants, and, of course, full-time employees.
What's interesting, though, is that all these different types of employment have a couple myths around them.
In this episode of Code && Beyond, Pablo and Alex discuss some of the myths and are trying to prove or bust them using their personal experience.
Have any feedback? Send us an email at codeandbeyond@protonmail.com.
Music by Twisterium from Pixabay.
Code && Chess
A very special guest joins Alex and Pablo in this episode of Code && Beyond. José Doval (Pepe) could be best described as a chess player and teacher who writes code for a living, two passions that have a lot more in common than one would think.
Where do coding and chess intersect? From machines that play chess to how chess skills can be applied in software engineering, this is an eye-opening discussion that you won't want to miss.
Show notes:
- Pepe Doval on Twitter, https://twitter.com/pepellou
- Pepe Doval on Twitch, https://www.twitch.tv/pepellou
- Pepe Doval on GitHub, https://github.com/pepellou
- Chessable, https://www.chessable.com
- "How Life Imitates Chess" (book), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_Life_Imitates_Chess
- AlphaZero is a computer program developed by artificial intelligence research company DeepMind to master the games of chess, shogi and go. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AlphaZero
- MuZero is a computer program developed by artificial intelligence research company DeepMind to master games without knowing their rules. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MuZero.
- Correspondence chess is chess played by various forms of long-distance correspondence, traditionally through the postal system. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correspondence_chess
Have any feedback? Send us an email at codeandbeyond@protonmail.com or leave a voice message on Anchor.
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Music by Twisterium from Pixabay.
Building an effective development environment
As software engineers, we rely on a lot of tools: editors, IDEs, linters, version control, terminal emulators, virtual machines... Tools we buy, download for free, or build ourselves.
They define – or at least affect – the quality of what we produce. They boost our delivery speed and automate boring tasks but sometimes, we must admit, they also drive us crazy. What is clear is that, by using tools every single day, we have come to depend on them.
In this episode of Code && Beyond, we talk about our favourite tools and try to define how we would build the most effective development environment with them.
Starring a special guest: Juan Ibiapina, who has built one of the most advanced development environments.
Notes:
- Alacritty - a fast, cross-platform, OpenGL terminal emulator.
- NixOS is based on Nix, a purely functional package management system.
- fzf is a general-purpose command-line fuzzy finder.
- Juan's dotfiles. - null-ls.nvim
- Starship - the minimal, blazing-fast, and infinitely customizable prompt for any shell!
Have any feedback? Send us an email at codeandbeyond@protonmail.com or leave a voice message on Anchor.
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Music by Twisterium from Pixabay.
From Rocks to Code: How a Geologist Became a Software Developer
On this episode of Code && Beyond, Alex and Pablo welcome a new special guest (and the latter's namesake): Pablo Hernández. A former geologist, Pablo became a software developer a few years ago.
Listen as he talks about how he changed careers successfully and answers questions like:
- What does it take to change your career path and get into coding?
- Where and how to start a new career as a software developer?
- How to land your first job in a tech team?
Have any feedback? Send us an email at codeandbeyond@protonmail.com or leave a voice message on Anchor.
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Music by Twisterium from Pixabay.
Quality in software development
In this episode of Code && Beyond, Pablo and Alex discuss the topic of quality in software development. How much is "good enough"? How can you maintain the quality of tests in your projects? What tools can be used to automate quality assurance?
Have any feedback? Send us an email at codeandbeyond@protonmail.com or leave a voice message on Anchor.
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Music by Twisterium from Pixabay.
Teamwork
In this episode of Code && Beyond, Pablo and Alex touch on the topic of teamwork. What is the optimal size of a team? What kind of challenges are facing many teams? What structure should have an effective team? These and other questions are discussed in this episode.
Notes:
- Async is a composable asynchronous I/O framework for Ruby based on nio4r and timers.
Have any feedback? Send us an email at codeandbeyond@protonmail.com or leave a voice message on Anchor.
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Music by Twisterium from Pixabay.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and software development
To celebrate our 20th episode, Code && Beyond welcomed its first-ever guest: Ana Hernández. She helped us explore the topic of search engine optimization or SEO, what software developers should be aware of, how SEO specialists work together with devs and more.
Notes:
- Screaming Frog is a website crawler that helps you improve onsite SEO by extracting data & auditing for common SEO issues.
- Schema.org is a collaborative, community activity with a mission to create, maintain, and promote schemas for structured data on the Internet, on web pages, in email messages, and beyond.
- Core Web Vitals is an initiative by Google to provide unified guidance for quality signals that are essential to delivering a great user experience on the web.
- Ahrefs is an All-in-one SEO toolset.
- Semrush is a platform for SEO, content marketing, competitor research, PPC and social media marketing
Have any feedback? Send us an email at codeandbeyond@protonmail.com or leave a voice message on Anchor.
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Music by Twisterium from Pixabay.
Work under pressure
Just like Freddie and David say, no man asks for pressure. There is no denying that working under pressure with an upcoming deadline in sight is stressful. However, can it also be useful? Perhaps the stress can help push you forward towards the finish line of a project? The truth is that there is no one answer, it all depends on the situation.
In this episode of Code && Beyond, Pablo and Alex explore different types of pressure while working in software development projects, including the accountability that comes from building in public and the relief of getting rewards for achievements.
Notes:
- gRPC-Gateway
- Building in public
- The Billion Dollar Code
Have any feedback? Send us an email at codeandbeyond@protonmail.com or leave a voice message on Anchor.
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Music by Asepirawan20 from Pixabay.
Productivity tools: Focus
In this episode of Code && Beyond, Pablo and Alex share their best tips and tricks to stay focused on the task at hand. Listen as they recount their experiences and discuss focus tools like the Pomodoro Technique, meditation, and even crazy time-tracking in great detail.
Notes:
- "Working from orbit"
- Session helps you focus and be more mindful by blocking distractions and tracking your progress.
- The Pomodoro® Technique
- Headspace
Any feedback? Send us an email at codeandbeyond@protonmail.com or leave a voice message on Anchor.
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Music by Asepirawan20 from Pixabay.
Test-driven development
Writing tests is like flossing your teeth: everyone agrees it's great for your health, but not everyone does it right (or even at all). Nobody denies that it can sometimes be tricky. It requires time, a good understanding of the context, and access to the right tools. In this episode of Code && Beyond, Pablo and Alex delve deep into the topic of testing in software development, discussing not only why and how, but also common mistakes, and solutions. Let's see how it goes 😃
Notes:
- Armada is a science fiction novel by Ernest Cline.
- Dune is a 1965 science-fiction novel by American author Frank Herbert.
Have any feedback? Send us an email at codeandbeyond@protonmail.com or leave a voice message on Anchor.
--- Music by Asepirawan20 from Pixabay.
Productivity tools: Planning
In this episode of Code && Beyond, Pablo and Alex talk about their experiences with long and short-term planning as software developers. Also quite unexpectedly featuring some larger topics such as freedom and how life goals can become distorted once you start chasing someone else's dreams.
Notes:
- NeoVim
- telescope.nvim is a highly extendable fuzzy finder over lists. Built on the latest awesome features from neovim core. Telescope is centered around modularity, allowing for easy customization.
Have any feedback? Send us an email at codeandbeyond@protonmail.com or leave a voice message on Anchor.
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Music by Asepirawan20 from Pixabay.
Monolith vs. microservice
Productivity tools: Tasks management
In the 14th episode of Code && Beyond, Pablo and Alex talk about task management. Listen to them discuss their experiences with GTD (Gettings Things Done) with Things and Todoist, Kanban with Trello, pen and paper with Bullet Journal, and Passion Planner.
Notes:
- Passion Planner
- Good notes
- Bullet Journal
- Notion
- Trello
- Todoist
- Dynalist
- Things
- Nirvana
Have any feedback? Send us an email at codeandbeyond@protonmail.com or leave a voice message on Anchor.
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Music by Asepirawan20 from Pixabay.
Our stories
Relational databases vs NoSQL
In the twelfth episode of Code && Beyond, software developers Pablo and Alex touch on the topic of databases. What's the difference between relational and NoSQL databases? What would be a use case for a graph database? Which database type might be better to choose for a greenfield project?
Notes:
- Amazon DynamoDB - fast and flexible NoSQL database service for any scale.
- AWS re:Invent 2018: Amazon DynamoDB Deep Dive: Advanced Design Patterns for DynamoDB (DAT401)
- SQLite is a C-language library that implements a small, fast, self-contained, high-reliability, full-featured, SQL database engine.
Have any feedback? Send us an email at codeandbeyond@protonmail.com or leave a voice message on Anchor.
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Music by John Yasut from Pixabay.
Productivity tools: Note-taking
Career progression
What changes when you get a new job title? Does it make sense to climb the career ladder nowadays? Pablo and Alex try to answer these questions on episode tenth of Code && Beyond as they discuss the topic of career progression and talk about professional and personal growth in the field of software development.
Have any feedback? Send us an email at codeandbeyond@protonmail.com or leave a voice message on Anchor.
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Music by Asepirawan20 from Pixabay.
Leaving the comfort zone
In the episode, Pablo and Alex discuss the importance of going out of the comfort zone. Why is it hard to do? How to overcome the fear of leaving the zone of comfort and even extend its borders? All of that and many more with the usual stories from personal experience.
Notes:
Ready Player One is a 2011 science fiction novel, and the debut novel of American author Ernest Cline. The story, set in a dystopia in 2045, follows protagonist Wade Watts on his search for an Easter egg in a worldwide virtual reality game.
Have any feedback? Send us an email at codeandbeyond@protonmail.com or leave a voice message on Anchor.
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Music by Asepirawan20 from Pixabay.
Remote work
In this week's episode, we talk about the pros and cons of remote work. Featuring personal stories (including our experience with Google Wave) tools, tips on how to set up a home office, be more productive and communicate more efficiently, and more. Plus, we touch on the tricky question of remote salaries.
Notes:
- Tuple: the best remote pair programming app on macOS
- tmate: instant terminal sharing
- Google Wave: software framework for real-time collaborative editing online
Got any feedback? Send us an email at codeandbeyond@protonmail.com or leave a voice message on Anchor.
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Music by Asepirawan20 from Pixabay.
Experiments
This episode is all about the topic of experimentation and exploration. Who doesn't like to try a new database technology, play with a new framework, or write "Hello, world" in a new programming language? It's always exciting to play with new shiny things. But how to keep everything under control and get better results in the end?
Alex and Pablo talk about their personal experience and share some tips and tricks on how to get even more from experiments and hack projects.
Have any feedback? Send us an email at codeandbeyond@protonmail.com or leave a voice message on Anchor.
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Music by Asepirawan20 from Pixabay.
Technical interviews
In this episode, Pablo and Alex touch on the topic of technical interviews. They share personal experiences and opinions on different aspects of conducting an interview and being interviewed.
Code challenges! When and why they might be helpful. What's the true purpose of a code challenge?
Have any feedback? Send us an email at codeandbeyond@protonmail.com or leave a voice message on Anchor.
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Music by Asepirawan20 from Pixabay.
Failures, successes, and learned lessons
In this episode, Alex and Pablo talk about epic failures, life-changing successes, and lessons derived from them.
Four very different real-life stories.
Notes:
- PlantUML is an open-source tool allowing users to create diagrams from a plain text language.
- Insomnia - the collaborative API client.
Have any feedback? Send us an email at codeandbeyond@protonmail.com or leave a voice message on Anchor.
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Music by Asepirawan20 from Pixabay.
The API Design-First philosophy
This time Pablo and Alex touch on the topic of the HTTP API design. They share a couple of stories from personal experience and explain what The API Design-First approach is and when it might make sense to follow it.
Notes:
- Stoplight: develop quality APIs with collaborative API-first design.
- marginalia Ruby gem: attach comments to your ActiveRecord queries.
- OpenAPI defines a standard, language-agnostic interface to RESTful APIs which allows both humans and computers to discover and understand the capabilities of the service without access to source code, documentation, or through network traffic inspection.
- AsyncAPI: open source tools to easily build and maintain your event-driven architecture.
- OpenRPC: design and document APIs using JSON-RPC 2.0 and open source tools.
- Monodraw: powerful ASCII art editor designed for the Mac.
Have any feedback? Send us an email at codeandbeyond@protonmail.com or leave a voice message on Anchor.
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Music by Asepirawan20 from Pixabay.
Productivity methods and hacks
Productivity is one of the evergreen topics. But what does it even mean to be productive? How to tame procrastination? Does that make sense to worry about that at all?
In this episode, Pablo and Alex explore these and other questions, share their personal stories of becoming more productive at work and in their personal life.
Notes:
- Obsidian is a powerful knowledge base that works on top ofa local folder of plain text Markdown files.
- gron transforms JSON into discrete assignments to make it easier to grep for what you want.
- Luca (film)
- asdf is a CLI tool that can manage multiple language runtime versions on a per-project basis.
- Slides in your terminal.
Have any feedback? Send us an email at codeandbeyond@protonmail.com or leave a voice message on Anchor.
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Music by Asepirawan20 from Pixabay.
Vim for life?
Vim is a text editor. It's the same for everyone, and yet everyone has a different story with it.
In this episode Pablo and Alex share their vim-stories, explain why and what they like about the editor, what they wish to see as improvements, and more.
Notes:
- Hanami is a modern web framework for Ruby.
- dry-rb is a collection of next-generation Ruby libraries.
- Tim Pope on GitHub.
- NeoVim - hyperextensible Vim-based text editor.
- Devbook is a search engine for developers that helps them to find the resources they need and answer their questions faster.
Have any feedback? Send us an email at codeandbeyond@protonmail.com or leave a voice message on Anchor.
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Music by Asepirawan20 from Pixabay.
Heroes and mentors
In the very first episode, Pablo and Alex talk about inspirational people and those who guide professional development. It's is about heroes, mentors, life influencers, and role models.
Notes:
- Sandi Metz is an American software engineer and author. She is the author of Practical Object-Oriented Design in Ruby.
- Robert Cecil Martin, colloquially called "Uncle Bob", is an American software engineer, instructor, and best-selling author.
- Adam Savage is an American special effects designer and fabricator, actor, educator, and television personality and producer, known as the former co-host of the Discovery Channel television series MythBusters and Unchained Reaction.
- Every Tool's a Hammer: Life Is What You Make It. "In this New York Times bestselling “imperative how-to for creativity” (Nick Offerman), Adam Savage—star of Discovery Channel’s Mythbusters—shares his golden rules of creativity, from finding inspiration to following through and successfully making your idea a reality." GoodReads
- Laura Kampf is a self-employed artist, designer, maker and creator who showcases her craftsmanship and DIY abilities on a self-titled YouTube channel.
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Music by Asepirawan20 from Pixabay.