Hey! 👋 It’s been a while; I hope you and yours are doing well. Work has been a neverending parade of thing after thing. I struggled through an entire week with the flu. Do NOT recommend. 😷
However, after watching the Twitter drama unfold from the sidelines, I’m just thankful that I have some stability at work right now. My heart goes out to my friends there who’ve been wrapped up in the turmoil for months. ❤️ It doesn’t even seem real to me what I’m hearing in the news.
unusual_whales@unusual_whales
Elon has fired numerous employees who were critical of him on Twitter and the company’s Slack, according to Protocal.
3:43 PM · Nov 15, 2022
2.39K Reposts · 41.7K Likes
Outside of work, I’ve been doing some mentoring again. Working with the Road to GDE program to assist a very deserving engineer on her path to becoming a Google Developer Expert. It’s rewarding to watch how in just three months, she’s become much more confident in her expertise. It’s one way I get to pay it forward.
Isa 👩🏻💻@isabeliita90
I just talked about Mutation Testing at @symfonycon and it's has been a pleasure, thanks a lot to all the people involved specially to @nicolasgrekas and also to @rolando_caldas for his help #SymfonyCon2022
10:29 AM · Nov 18, 2022
10 Reposts · 63 Likes
Other than that, my latest course, Introduction to Career Skills in Software Development, has been translated into multiple languages. This is the first time I’ve had a course translated. Here’s the Spanish version if you’re curious. I’m excited to see what type of traction the course receives in other languages.
Now on to the books and cool tech. 👇
Books I’m Reading
Running Lean - Ash Maurya
Our CEO recommended I read this book as I’m launching a new business unit at Meetup. I’ve heard of the Lean Canvas before. I thought this book might only be a detailed explanation of creating one. I was wrong.
It goes into detail about how you can validate a business idea. Using models and mathematical calculations to determine how feasible your goals are. Some of the terminologies, like acquisition, activation, and retention, were already familiar to me. However, I now understand how they all play together to achieve your “success criteria.”
I created a traction roadmap for our new business unit following the advice in the book. It helped me to have even more confidence in its success. If you’re working on a new idea, read this book before you start to build anything. You won’t regret it.
Good Strategy, Bad Strategy - Richard Rumelt
Once you learn what constitutes good strategy, you only see bad strategy everywhere. 🤦🏽♀️ This is now my curse. You ever have that feeling when something doesn’t quite feel right, but you don’t know how to articulate it? Well, yeah, that’s how I’ve felt about a lot of “strategies” over the years.
In his book, Richard Rumelt clearly distinguishes between good and bad strategy. He does this by beating you down with dozens of examples in both camps. 😂 I feel like I would have gotten the point with half as many examples. Nevertheless, the examples highlight the importance of having a “good” strategy.
“[Bad strategy] assumes that goals are all you need. It puts forward strategic objectives that are incoherent and, sometimes, totally impracticable. It uses high-sounding words and phrases to hide these failings.”
Rumelt, Richard. Good Strategy Bad Strategy (pp. 35-36).
Key takeaway: A goal does not a strategy make! You need to understand your current situation, the problem, what actions are feasible, etc., to create a good strategy. It’s not easy and takes hard work.
Cool Tech
I was recently introduced to the C4 model for visualizing software architecture. The 4 C’s stand for Context, Containers, Components, and Code. The goal of this model is to provide a developer-friendly way to diagram architecture.
I’ve been thinking of the best way to model the new project I’ve been working on. Decided to give C4 a try as there is a PlantUML integration. PlantUML is used to draw UML diagrams using a human-readable text description.
To get everything working together, I had to do the following:
Install Graphviz via Homebrew
Install the PlantUML VSCode extension
Update my
settings.jsonto match the requirements for C4-PlantUMLCreate a sample .puml file
Love the clarity of the resulting diagrams. Will put it to the test on an existing system to gauge the extensibility.
Until next time, thanks for reading! 👋
"My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style.”
- Maya Angelou
Links:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/annycedavis/
https://twitter.com/brwngrldev
https://www.tiktok.com/@brwngrldev
https://androiddev.social/@brwngrldev
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