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Correl d618dea10a Updates
2021-07-29 18:51:25 -04:00

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Abstractions II

Day One

Kill All Mutants

  • Mutation testing

    • mutates code with the goal of generating test failures
    • checks for meaningful code and strict tests
    • each change to our code should make at least one test fail
    • at least one unit test failing on a mutation is "killing the mutant"
    • First proposed in Richard Lipton's "Fault Diagnoses of computer programs" (1971)
    • Difficult to interpret results, and very CPU intensive
    • Python - cosmic-ray, mutmut, xmutant
    • JS - stryker

Maintaining a Legacy Haskell App as Not-Yet-Experts

  • Migrated from a haskell app in in frames within wordpress to a haskell app serving wordpress content via the wordpress api
  • The "Genius-Oh-No Cycle"

  • Chesterton's Fence

    • Understand why a thing is the way it is before you try to change it
  • ~3% of functional programmers are women

  • Things that helped

    • Pair programming
    • TDD (invert the cycle)

    • RFCs

      • Can be totally casual
      • Sketch out a larger idea and ask for input from the team

Measuring the Human Impact of Software Best Practices: A Story of CSS and Empathy

  • "The Tyranny of Pay-as-you-go Internet"
  • Worked at Mighty Ai (training data as a service), acquired by Uber
  • Stuff in the talk happened before Uber

  • microaggressions and microaffirmations

    • "you guys" vs. (friends, folks, participants, peeps, illustrious heroes, party people, yinz)

  • microaffirmations, a guide

  • micro-tasks in a webapp to generate vector images

    • $0.03 to $0.05 USD
    • Large base in Venezuela

  • community members raised concerns about data transfer

    • forgot ota internet was paid by the megabyte
    • didn't know the ost per megabyte
    • didn't know there was such flux in data access costs
    • asked them to take a literal loss in order to participate in the beta test
    • I assumed an experience largely consistent with my own

  • CSS is a tax

    • 1.3MB of css vs 34KB after refactoring
    • Movistar pricing: 0 MB included, each MB is $5 (5,00 Bs (bolivars))
    • 92 deployments, only 9 changed the CSS, every one of them re-generated the bundle and busted the cache
    • 8 downloads @ 1.3MB (52Bs) instead of 2 at 34KB (0.34Bs) just for CSS
    • This is an ethical issue
  • ask, listen, believe, then act

“Testing” - You Keep Using that Word, but I Don’t Think It Means What You Think It Means!

  • Testing is generally re-defined by every organization to fit their culture and needs
  • Easy to explain why an acceptance test works, harder to explain what the utility is that you get out of a unit test

  • An opinionated view of testing

    • automated testing is the single biggest factor in determining how fast you can ship code
    • You have to build up tests in layers and spend time in the right places
    • Teams that test write code with better structure focused on interfaces and low cyclomatic complexity

  • Pit of Despair - AKA "Test Environment"

    • Don't want to be dependent on the state of the environment to test that your code works
    • Useful for UI/UX exploratory testing, load testing, deployment testing

  • What can we do

    Unit tests
    Test the smallest units at the function/method level
    Integration/Component tests
    testing the composition of two functional units or external dependencies that achieve a larger operational function (reduce the number of variables, not increase)
    E2E/Acceptance/UI/API Tests
    Testing features with all required components integrated together but some can be mocked

  • Test Pyramid

    • low cost, fast run vs high cost, slow run
    • automated unit, automated integration, automated ui/api, manual ui/api

  • Fun tests

    • Writing good tests can be as challenging as writing good code
    • You will write more (2-3x) test code than feature code
    • Testing can be cathartic

  • Strategies for testing

    • Legacy code by Michael Feathers
    • Consider frameworks and libraries that lend themselves well to testing
    • Findexamples for what you want to do
    • Keep functions small and purpose-built - If it is hard to test, it's probably too big!
    • Limit conditional logic in a single function to 3 levels at most
    • Test ALL error conditions respond as expected
    • Use stubs, mcks and test doubles to simulate expected inputs and outputs
    • Limit integration/component tests to two actors (mocks for all others)
    • Create interfaces for components so that they can be mocked
    • Store test-case data with your tests
    • It's NEVER too late to start writing tests

  • Lightning Sand - AKA Microservices

    • The idea is to be (and stay) loosely coupled to the rest of the architecture, minimizing dependencies when testing is key!

  • Strategies for Microservice Testing

    • Don't be QA for services you depend on - trust their interface
    • Use service mocks for external dependencies
    • Write testing libraries/harnesses that other teams can use
    • Automate all of your tests - Without a UI you only need robots

  • What about non-functional tests

    • Every organization needs to evaluate whether that testing is necessary and correct for them ($$$)
    • Collect detailed metrics at service boundaries
    • Abstract out service-level concerns like back-pressure, retries and complex routing

How Games Can Inspire Great Application UX

  • NOT gamification (don't be on the addictive side of things)
  • Video games like the word "juicy" (visual impact on input)
  • Video games create tension, apps remove it

  • Ralph Koster (Book: A Theory of Fun)

    • Applying the lessons in the book to UX

  • Games present story, players create narrative

    • Standalone features vs a journey

    • The Mac story arc

      • Sound
      • promise
      • model
      • depth
    • Our story isn't the user's narrative

  • Games are fractal, not linear

    • Games are made of games
    • Each level has its own motivation, feedback, and learning
    • The deeper you go, the more profound the effect

  • The Learning Loop

    • Intent -> Action -> Result
    • Mental model -> affordance -> feedback
    • "Fun is just another word for learning" - Ralph

    • Mario 1-1

      • move (jump over) -> opening (jump into bricks) -> attacking (jump onto an enemie)
      • "That's how we make games at Nintend: we get the fundamentals solid first, then do as much with that core concept as our time and ambition will allow. As forthe courses and enemies, those actually came at the very end, they were done in a single burst of energy…" - Shigeru Miyamoto
      • Nintendo does this all the time
    • "Desktop has much better loops than mobile" - Ralph

  • Affordances

    • BotW stamina wheel - training you to take the better path
    • The SonicFinder, An Interface That Uses Auditory Icons

    • Mobile import is impoverished

      • Pinch
      • Tap
      • Long press is a hack!
    • Can't find any examples of gracenotes in apps
    • "It's not the flashy trick that matters, but the rigourous application of multiple types of feedback in both important and trivial ways" - Ralph

  • Hintiness

    • Hints / Affordances
    • Affordances reinforce the loop you're on
    • Hints move you to a new loop
    • Navigation (Disney weenies, always seeing a central place in a park, ensuring sight lines)
    • Hintiness prevents "bottom feeding" (getting stuck at one level, not making progress and doing new things)
    • Simple, light, patient examples showing how things can be done

  • Pacing

    • Games work incredibly hard on the first step
    • Here is a toolbox vs learn this first

Game Development in Eight Bits

  • 256x240 resolution with 64 colors
  • 1 background layer, 1 sprite layer

  • Backgrounds

    • 30x30 grid of tiles, 1 byte per tile
    • 2 pattern tables of tiles, 256 tiles each (one for sprites, one for backgrounds)

    • 64 colors. 8 of them are black (blame NTSC)

      • 8 4-color palettes, 4 for sprites, 4 for backgrounds
      • The first color of all pallets is the same (hardware limitation)

  • Sprites

    • 256 bytes of sprite ram, 4 bytes per sprite, 64 sprites at a time

    • No more than 8 sprites per scanline

      • solved using flickering

  • Level data

    • Make use of default color
    • abstract elements (pipe, height x)
    • run-length encoding
    • "set decoration" - three-screens-wide default background (SMB)

  • Physics

    • Don't use physics (simple algorithm)

    • Collision detection

      • Contra uses point vs rectangle detection

        • The player is always the point, where it can be hit it is a rectangle in relation to the point

  • The NES does not have a random number generator (3 optionsin increasingorder of stupidity)

    • Tetris: Do it with math (16-bit fibonacci linear feedback shift register)
    • FF: (Nasir Gebelli, contractor) a lookup table of 256 random numbers

    • Contra: a single global 8-bit value that increments by 7 whenever the game is idle

      • The demo uses prerecorded actions, it can play out differently

  • Saving progress

    • Password systems

      • DQ2 in Japan used a "poem"

    • FDS

      • Shut down due to ease of piracy

    • Battery-backed memory

      • "Hold reset" - power issues could lead to corruption
      • Write multiple times with CRC

  • "Embrace the stupid"

    • Is it close enough, and much more efficient?

Day Two

Duolingo: Microservice Journey   ATTACH

  • first microservice in 2016
  • making many changes to the product, many releases per day
  • centralized dashboards/logging
  • Terraform for infrastructure as code
  • First microservice in ECS in 2017-2018

  • Why move to microservices?

    • Scalability problem with teams

      • Slow and difficult with a monolith
      • Desire to use multiple languages (monolith in python, wanting to incorporate scala, nodejs, …)
    • Flexibility
    • Velocity
    • Reliability
    • Cost savings

  • What to carveout first?

    • Not the largest chunk
    • Start with a small but impactful feature
    • move up in size, complexity, and risk
    • consider dependencies
    • First thing was the reminder service 🦉🗡
  • Using circuit breakers to make microservices independent

  • Why docker?

    • Kind of the only game in town

  • Why docker with ECS?

    • task auto scaling

    • task-level IAM

      • needs to be supported by the aws client library (e.g., boto)
    • cloudwatch metrics
    • dynamic alb targets
    • manageability

  • Microservice abstractions at Duolingo

    • Abstracted into terraform modules

      • Web service (internal or external)

        • load balancer and route 53

      • worker service (daemon or cron)

        • sqs and event-based scheduling
      • data store
      • monitoring

  • CI/CD

    • Github -> Jenkins -> ECR/Terraform (S3) -> ECS

  • Load balancing

    • ALB vs. CLBs

      • ALBs more strict when handling malformed requests (defaults to HTTP/2 (headers always passed in lowercase)
      • Differences in cloudwatch metrics (continuous in CLBs, discrete in ALBs)

  • Standardizing microservices

    • develop a common naming scheme for repos and services
    • autogenerate as much of the initial service as possible (?)
    • move core functionality to shared base libraries
    • provide standard alarms and dashboards
    • periodically review microservices for consistency and quality

  • Monitoring microservices

    • includes load balancer errors

    • pagerduty integration

      • includes links to playbooks
      • emergency pages, warnings go to email
      • schedules and rotations are managed by terraform
    • Grading microservices

    • Cost reduction options

      • Cluster

        • instance type
        • pricing options
        • auto scale
        • add/remove AZs

      • using "Spot" (spotinst) to save money on ephermeral cluster instances

        • drains ECS services
        • spreads capacity across AZs
        • bills on % of savings
      • ECS allows oversubscription of memory, WE DO NOT RECOMMEND THIS

      • AWS Limits

        • EC2 has a hard-coded maximum # of packets(1024/s) sent to an amazon provided dns server
        • Nitro is not caching DNS requests where Xen was

Mentoring the way to a diverse and inclusive workplace

  • Developer at Newsela (Education tech company promoting literacy in the 2nd-12th grade space)
  • The tenants of mentorship are similar to the tenants of inclusive companies
  • Mentorship doesn't work for folks of under-represented backgrounds
  • Finding very similar entry level jobs, very homogenous teams, no time to support learning
  • Skill-building and diversity appear related
  • What if strong mentorship begets diversity & inclusion?

  • Good mentorship / good diversity

    • Supporting and retaining engineers with underrepresented identities

      • be welcoming and inclusive in the recruiting process

      • post openings on "key values"

        • company must list their values
        • conveys people and tech values on the same level
        • candidates filter jobs based on their prioritized values

      • referrals can cut both ways

        • can increase the homogenous nature of the workplace
        • maybe direct referall bonuses into donations to inclusive groups that attract and talent

      • affinity groups

        • caucuses across departments working with management

      • standardized review process

        • stanford research into review proceseses

          • men overrepresented in the higher tier, women in the middle
          • standardizing removed the bias

      • clear definitions of roles and responsibilities

        • do they have ownership
        • are these employees getting a seat at the table for decisions

      • representation in leadership

        • are there people there that look like me?
        • is there a clear model of advancement? allyship in leadership?

      • investment in internal & external advocacy

        • signals that copmanies understand the systematic barriers to inclusion and diversity
    • sponsorship - "super mentorship"
    • stark differences in valuation of the above bulletpoints between underrepresented groups and well-represented groups (women vs men, lgbt+ vs straight men)

  • Supporting and leveling up junior engineers

    • recruiting process / relationships

      • the candidate should be receiving feedback on their performance in the recruting process!

        • Gives them constructive advice and context

    • apprenticeships and clearly defined entry-level positions

      • is there a clear path for growth?

    • clear and structured onboarding

      • please do not make their point person a person they report to
      • need to go to information from somone that doesn't involve company politics
      • information should exist outside of leads/managers heads
      • define onboarding procedures in a shared space

    • learning groups

      • space to ask questions and demonstrate leadership, particularly with peer-to-peer learning

    • formalized mentorship

      • ensure that compensated time is resulting in measurable goals for the junior engineer
      • recommend them for opportunities

    • standardized review process

      • reframe junior-ness as an opportunity, not a deficit of skill

  • Mentorship with diversity and inclusion in mind

    • this work is really hard

      • easy to fall into a pattern of saying you're making progress without measuring to make sure that's the case
      • intent is only half of the picture
      • the other half is sacrifice to make real, measured investments

    • mentorship should begin during the interviews

    • place serious focus on developing mentors

      • forces mentees to manage up
      • mentorship is a two-way street
      • have you ever seen someone become a better collaborator after mentoring a junior engineer?
      • mentorship is leadership and it's learned
    • have clear growth objectives for the mentor and the mentee
    • mentorship should happen on compensated time

    • rethink the peer group

      • slack channel for juniors spread across different offices

        • wasn't an organic space to share knowledge
        • a black junior woman engineer's peers aren't just other black employees, or women, or other limited groups

  • What's the value to the company?

    • make a business case for mentorship
    • that will drive diversity and inclusion

    • mentorship can

      • build brand halo among candidates
      • distribute management responsibilities
      • build its own workforce
      • distributes business knowledge working on real business projects

      • fosters relationship building and belonging

        • practices wielding expertise, fosters bonding over work

Sextech: The good, the Bad & the Bias

  • Deepfakes

    • people onforums requesting deepfakes of coworkers, etc.
    • takes few photos

    • women are most typically targeted

      • silenced, made less credible due to the video
    • no criminal recourse
    • currently thriving

  • nonconsensual / revenge porn

    • laws are vague (interstate implications)

    • sexting & development of sexual identity not reflected in the law

      • this gets caught under the net of sharing child pornography

  • Just because you can doesn't mean you should

    • harms sex workers
    • sex trafficing is only 19% of human trafficing

    • 25% of sex workers sexually assaulted by officers

      • multiple times during stings
      • arrests inflate statistics
      • 90.8% of victims are deported

  • Bias

    • don't need to reach orgasm to procreate? considered a vice, not family planning

    • approved / not approved.com

      • approved vs non approved ads
      • silencing of minority / repressed groups

  • payment processors

    • sex industry is the first adopter of new tech
    • kicked off, considered a liability

  • shadowbanning

    • facebook's recent patented content filtering algorithm

  • SESTA/FOSTA

    • doesn't punish traffickers, makes websites legally liable for any user generated content found to "knowingly assist, facilitate, or support sex trafficing"
    • interferes with sex education
    • pushes sex trafficking further underground
    • based on moral panic (National Center on Sexual Exploitation, formerly Morality in the Media)
    • hurts the most vulnerable in our community

  • Root of the problem

    • education <=> laws -> media/tech
    • who receives accurate sex education
    • searches on sex tech aren't showing any of these issues
    • teach children to know about their bodies so they don't allow others to make decisions about their bodies

  • sextechspace

    • resources online

  • What can you do today

    • support orgs like @decrimNY, @decrimNowDC, @TheBADASS_army
    • use your platform to spread awareness
    • advocate for agency and consent
    • make sure all stakeholders are at the table
  • "If you are not intentional about being inclusive, what you will do is perpetuate exclusion"

Passing the Torch Without Dropping The Ball: Lessons in Documentation

  • TL;DR: It's not just a question of clocking out and handing over the keys
  • Advocato shirts!
  • Getting sick, switching roles, moving on

  • Why should you care about a transition plan?

    • Taking time off without worrying
    • Transitioning into a promotion
    • Delegate: documented things allow other people to volunteer
    • Are you going to do that forever? document it and let someone else take over

  • The handover document

    • the overview

      • project goals
      • reading list

    • dramatis personae

      • who are the stakeholders/elders?
      • learn from them, and document!
      • who's the quiet person that gets stuff done?
      • who needs a bit more time to ramp up?
      • knowledge needs to be documented and disseminated with care, perhaps a bit private
      • not toxic, just necessary
    • the regular tasks

    • wish list

      • that which remains undone

    • the inventory

      • budget
      • credentials
      • the keys to the castle

  • eDit edIt Edit

    • what's no longer accurate?
    • what's missing?
    • what's confusing?
    • revisit it, keep it fresh

  • Prioritize

    • what's urgent?
    • what's important?
    • what can only you do?
    • what's the low-hanging fruit that's easy to ramp up on?

  • What works for you?

    • don't be scared to make changes
    • or to say no
    • be sure the community agrees with your changes
  • Share your stories

The Times They Are a-Changin': A Data-Driven Portrait of New Trends in How We Build Software, Open Source, & What Even is "Entry-Level" Now

  • Tracking the shift in focus in open source Scala

  • Things that are changing fast

    • how we build software
    • open source

    • our idea of software engineers

      • what should they know?

  • How people are getting into tech

    • hiring is difficult
    • there's a massive gap between jobs available and people to fill them
    • a large portion of professional developers are new

    • we need to adapt, culturally, to make room for lots more newcomers

      • frameworks and reuse to reduce friction?

    • existing devs are burning out

      • "With companies unable to fill open positions, current employees are expected to fill in the gaps"

    • Increased diversity would help

  • Open source adoption

    • Dramatically increased since 2010
    • Open source became the default choice
    • Low-cost with no vendor lock-in
    • Open source components exist in 96% of applications scanned and analyzed by Synopsys in 2018, with an average of 257 components per application. 36% of code bases were open source components in 2017, 57% in 2018.
    • OSS projects 62% self-funded, 49% employer-funded

    • "Truck factor"

      • 64% of top projects on Github relied on 1-2 devs to survive

  • Ecosystem and community are everything

  • All these puzzle pieces need polishing

Day Three

Analysis of the Feeling of the Attendees to a Talk in Real Time

  • Google cloud functions triggered by Google Storage, Pub/Sub, or REST
  • Using google vision API to detect facial featuers and emotional responses

Identity Expression: Coming Out of the Work Closet

Coming out of the Closet

  • Coming out doesn't just happen once, it happens a lot

  • "Spheres of existence" you have to come out to

    • Friends
    • Peers
    • Family
    • Digital
    • Public
    • Work

  • Story

    • The comment is made
    • Affected how I work, which affects my coworkers
    • Negative effect spreads
    • Expands further while training/interacting
  • It isn't always cut and dry
  • The fear of "what if" can be damaging all its own

  • In 30 states, LGBTQ+ workers aren't fully protected under the law

    • PA included

  • Professinal risks

    • Fired outright
    • Passed over for promotions or projects
    • Refusal of reference for next job

  • Personal risks

    • Uncomfortable or dangerous work environment
    • lost source of income
    • Forced to change field or location

  • Ther's risk to the business witself when employees hide part of their identity

    • Productivity

      • Say that 10% of your day goes towards identity concealment

        • adds up to 6 weeks of lost productivity every year

    • Communication

      • less likely to engage
      • avoid people
      • crosses levels

    • Creativity

      • stress + anxiety
      • requires vulnerability

    • Collaboration

      • needs creativity + communication
      • not getting the best work

  • What if things went the other way?

    Productivity
    fewer distractions from your work
    communication
    problems caught, efficiency goes up
    creativity
    flourishes in safe + comfortable environments
    collaboration
    becomes easier and more routine

  • Why focus on such a small group of people

    • ~4.5% of the entire population

    • Just a method of expressing identity, not limited to just queer people

      • 4.5% queer
      • 6% practicing non-christian faiths
      • 19% have a disability
      • 22% persons of color
      • 47% female

  • Isn't this just about feelings?

    • this holds personal and professional importance with real mental healthy implications

    • Your "Selves"

      • Private
      • Home

      • You

        • Your core self
      • Public
      • Work

    • Dissonance

      • Your genuine self suffers as you put your energy into maintaining a separate self or concealing part of your identity

      • Personal Consequences

        • drives down those four factors
        • is mentally exhausting
        • it becomes a cycle

      • Business consequences

        • Quality of Product
        • Employee Satisfaction
        • Company Culture
        • Bottom Line

  • What can I do now?

    • Introduce yourself using your pronouns

      • Says you care how other people want to be addressed

    • Start ERGs (Employee resource groups)

      • People with shared experiences
    • Acknowledge and celebrate Black History Month, Women's Month, Pride Month, etc. Let people feel seen
    • Don't ask to touch anyone's hair. Ever.
    • Accommodate variations in holidays and scheduling around religious practices
    • Don't get embarrassed if you mess up. Apologize, correct yourself, and learn.

    • Replace words like "wife/husband/boyfriend/girlfriend/etc" with partner

      • Be careful asking about personal and private relationships in general
    • Look into unconscious bias training. Use HR.

    • Look around the room

      • Different perspectives and experiences simply work better
    • When you don't know, research. Ask questions, if you must. Just don't assume.
  • If you are in the closet at work, open the door a little
  • Make sure you're not blocking someone else's exit

Overcoming Challenges: An Attitude of Iteration

  • "The Look" (first date story)

    • If you're different and it shows, it's assumed every problem in the book belongs to you
    • "You're not good enough for her" or "That's the saddest thing I've ever seen"
    • (context: one finger on each hand, one toe on each foot, 4/5 kids share this trait)
    • "Man, I'm different"
    • "Things are gonna be a little challenging for me, aren't they?"
  • We are all challenged
  • How you deal with that challenge is the model by which everyone else is going to deal with it
  • 50/50 chance of the genetic condition being passed on (5 fingers, or something else)

  • You have to make the choice of how to deal with it

    • Can't force children to make a decision, they have to make it on their own
    • It is a blessing, not a curse
    • It is what it is
    • It'll never be what it isn't

  • No excuses

    • "I can't do x yet", not "I can't do x"
    • We have to adapt
    • Never tell kids they "can't do x",but "it's gonna be hard, you're gonna have to figure it out"
  • Have fun
  • Sometimes life is hard, but you've still gotta go on. you try again, and you try again.

Beyond The Sunset: How To Wring The Maximum Joy From Your Last 10 Years In Tech   ATTACH

  • "Pre-tirement"
  • 55 years old

  • Ageism is real

    • "Will they fit the culture" BS

    • But Don't be "that person"

      • "better back in the day"

  • Job satisfaction over time

  • Imposter Syndrome

    • No, seriously, for reals, after all these years, you are NOT an imposter
    • Hard to have fun while struggling with this

  • We are the Village Elders

    • That comes with responsibility
    • We should be helping people

  • It's just a job

    • You should know that by now

  • Sponsor a Newbie

    • Teach your coworkers what grace is, by example

    • Sponsor vs mentoring

      • mentoring is "tweaking" them to fit in
      • sponsoring is promoting them

  • Give whimsical talks at conferences

    • Optional: create tag clouds referencing CORBA
    • You have knowledge that not everybody has

  • Pretend to be an Extrovert

    • Doing so will help the folks you're extroverted with
    • This is why that imposter thing is important

  • Sign up for the messiest possible coding

    • what do you have to fear? NOTHING

  • Don't stop learning

    • Volunteer to write UI code or backend code or try that Haskell thing
    • Join a new industry

  • Use your network for good

    • You have contacts
    • Your people need contacts
    • See how that works?

  • Gossip and complaining

    • It's not adding value to your work life, so just stop it

  • Make a plan

    • start NOW thinking about what you'll do
    • how will you fill/structure your time?
    • you will need a social life once you're retired

  • Get your house in order, literally and figuratively

    • Marie Kondo that crap
    • Use your employer health care (if you have it) while you can

How Live Coding Changed My Life

  • Volunteer live coder for freeCodeCamp

  • How I got started

    • Paid for private github repos rather than letting folks see my code
    • "I make a lot of mistakes and I am a full time dev. Maybe it would be helpful for beginners to see that."
    • First streams were really bad and nobody watched
    • Asked for help on the freeCodeCamp forum

  • The community

    • all ages, locations, and skill levels
    • eager to learn and contribute
    • overwhelmingly positive
    • always learning and trying new ways to do things
    • VERY diverse watchers

  • Consistency is key

    • Set time for the streams

  • Keeping it positive

    • Thank for negative feedback
    • Ask for clarification if it's not constructive ("what can I do better?")
    • People with situational anxiety, etc. feeling safe
    • Video about depression, mental health issues

  • What I've learned

    • So much collaboration

      • Pull requests!

    • Confidence building

      • Viewers too, gaining confidence over time
    • Viewers get jobs!

  • How you can start

    • Make a youtube or twitch channel
    • Broadcast and share your screen (OBS)
    • Start coding!

  • Advice

    • Adapt based on feedback
    • show your mistakes
    • show your face
    • don't be afraid to say I don't know

    • It's okay to say nothing (or better yet thank you) when someone tells you something that you already knew

      • it may not be new to them, they could be excited and want to help
    • Always be positive and encouraging
    • Give encouragement, not solutions

  • Things to avoid

    • talking badly about another language, framework, library,etc
    • laughing at a question (assume every question is serious)
    • getting angry
    • coding and reading the chat at the same time
    • negativity (there is already enough negativity in the world)

Debugging Our Feelings   ATTACH

  • Working at odds with professional development and depression

  • Cognitive Behavioural Therapy

    • "Feeling Good" by Dr. David Burns
    • parallells with developer life
    • Experiences -> 👩 Thoughts -> Responses
    • "There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so" (Shakesspeare)
    • We can change how we feel if we change how we think
    • Input -> 💻 Code -> Output

  • Starting a project, getting overwhelmed, distracted, guilty, nervous

    • Similar to application in an incorrect, incomplete state. Not what we wanted yet.
    • We test our output

    • We trust our feelings

      • Emotional reasoning
      • Because I feel something, it must be true
      • Not rational
      • Would be like looking at the app in that state, "I guess I'm done."

  • Feelings should be

    • positive
    • helpful
    • reasonable

    • rational

      • good at rationalizing, working our way back from the feelings, not super helpful

  • Mind reading

    • We respond to what we think they're thinking
    • Leads to impostor syndrome
    • Test the feelings instead. Ask the question, don't guess.

  • All-or-nothing thinking

    • Perfectionism

    • Test

      • Antiperfectionism sheet

        • Task, Effectiveness, Satisfaction
  • Testing helps identify problems, but doesn't fix them
  • Code won't get any better without changes

  • Editor for thoughts

    • Notebook

    • two column technique

      • left hand side: automatic thoughts

        • thought patterns that are causing us to feel that way

          • "I'm overwhelmed" -> thinking, "this is going to be hard"
          • "Guilty" -> thinking, I'm a procrastinator
          • Nervous -> thinking, I'm not going to finish this on time

      • right hand side: rational responses

        • fortune telling

          • we've predicted the future, and are responding as though it's true
          • I can't know this
          • it could also be fun, educational

        • labeling

          • fancy term for name-calling

          • reduces people to one trait

            • "I've always been a procrastinator, I'll always be a procrastinator"
          • I'm not any one thing (I'm procrastinatING)
          • I don't always procrastinate

        • fortune telling

          • takes away our autonomy (it's inevitable)
          • I have control over the outcome
          • there are other options
    • Thoughts can have a "home field advantage" in our heads

  • How does this change when it comes from someone else?

    • It doesn't
    • Still just an experience, just your thoughts
    • "No one can make you feel inferior without your consent" - Eleanor Roosevelt
  • Magnification and Minification
  • Disqualifying the postitive

  • Accepting a compliment

    • pause
    • say thank you

  • Using the two-column technique, have someone to role play them with

    • We don't always extend sympathy to ourselves

  • "Should" is the worst word in the english language

    • Try "I want…"
  • Test your feelings
  • Get your thoughts out of your head
  • Get help

Not Attended

The Mental Impact of Tech Interviews