There are many aspects that contribute to being successful in Developer Advocacy. Branding is probably one of the most important elements of a successful advocacy career. During my years as an Advocate, there are some collected wisdoms I’ve learned which I’d like to share: Believe in what you do This may seem quite obvious, but if you don’t believe in the product that you’re advocating for, it’s…
We have a few positions open for Developer Advocacy at JetBrains , and for the past several months I’ve been going through CVs. I usually look for specific things that stand-out for the role and thought it might be worth sharing these. Developer Experience Developer Advocacy is first and foremost about Software Development. You are someone that will be helping developers. You are someone that will…
I’m a big fan of Checkvist and today in response to my praise on Twitter , Dan asked a few questions around it: Ok you realise I'm going to be nagging you all day now? - One list or multiple lists? - All projects in one list? - How do you organise your tasks? - How do you use tags? - Will you shut up and take my money? — Daniel Terhorst-North (@tastapod) March 4, 2021 Better than a Twitter…
I tweeted something about Git. Do I regret it? A little bit. Why? Because it had a grammar mistake. Git is not a success story. Git is a failure as a system with a crap user experience that forces you to learn more about the tool you're using that about getting your work done. — Hadi Hariri (@hhariri) October 8, 2020 The tweet made some rounds and died off. Then someone posted it on Hacker…
I know, the title is cringeworthy. In fact the only thing worse is using a subtitle “with only one line of code” But allow me to indulge somewhat, because it really is accurate if one were to consider my knowledge of AWS Lambdas, Terraform, and AWS in general as somewhat zero. I mean sure, I know what they are, but I’ve not really played with them that much in the past. Today, I managed to create…
A few years ago I started using an application for macOS called Focus , which allows you to block applications and websites for a period of time. On getting a new laptop, I never got round to installing it, despite its usefulness. The negativity rabbit hole. With the recent COVID-19 pandemic (leaving a note for those reading this post in 20 years from now and not being born yet), it has become…
And the world shut down. As long as I can still order things on Amazon… and Amazon’s stock continued to go up In our globalized world, with complex supply chains, as the world shut down, and the street corner hardware stores, restaurants, coffee shops, all pulled their blinds down, the only place we had left to order our non-essentials (and often essentials) was Amazon. Because you can find…
One of Ktor’s strong points is in the flexibility it offers in terms of structuring your application. Different to many other server-side frameworks, it doesn’t force you into a specific pattern such as having to place all cohesive routes in a single class name {XZY}Controller for instance. Of course, not being forced into using a specific pattern also has its downsides. How am I meant to…
How many times have you heard yourself or someone else say “We should give more feedback” I’m pretty sure it’s too many to count. When it comes to feedback however, we usually think about it in terms of hierarchy; that is, I should receive feedback from my manager, and hopefully also give them feedback. The reality at times though is that we often forget to give feedback to our managers. In her…
I’m sure you’ve probably heard Mark Zuckerberg talk about how they are giving their users the choice when it comes to privacy. That they’re putting privacy in the hands of you, the user. That you’re in control of what you want to share and with whom you want to share it. It’s a lie. Lie is harsh? Fair enough. Let’s call it misleading. Control Center I’m on LinkedIn and recently I decided to go…
I’ve been asked quite a few times by .NET Developers (as well as those not familiar with Java/JVM), what material to use to get started with Kotlin coming from a non-Java background. As such, I feel it’s probably more efficient to have this outlined in a blog post as opposed to a series of tweets. Kotlin was Kotlin/JVM. It no longer is. When we first started Kotlin, the only platform it supported…
Slack brought us the promise of reducing emails and having all the knowledge of your company in one place, searchable. While I still feel it’s completely failed to deliver on the latter, on the former it most definitely has delivered. Internal emails at JetBrains have been significantly reduced. At least in my case. But I personally feel that it’s come at a cost; that of productivity. As a remote…
This is part 7 of a multi-post series on public speaking Dealing with nerves Talk Structure Slides Timing Questions Speaking Should I speak? One question people often ask themselves is whether they should actually give a talk and if so, on what. I’ll address these topics as a series of FAQs in this post. Should I give a talk? If it’s part of your job, yes. If it’s not, only if you enjoy it.…
I’ve always wanted to play the electric guitar and despite an attempt at doing so over 25 years ago, I gave up. Partially cause I had no sense of time-management (as if I do now), partially cause I always felt that being left-handed and playing a right-handed instrument would always hinder me. And yes, I tried the Jimi Hendrix approach, ending up wrecking my guitar. This year I decided to try…
This is part 6 of a multi-post series on public speaking Dealing with nerves Talk Structure Slides Timing Questions Speaking Should I speak? One of the important aspects of public speaking is what we actually say outside of the contents of the topic we’re speaking on. In this blog post I’ll cover this. Words to avoid Fillers begone Em, Hmm, Eh. Mm, Um, Er… Those words we use when we don’t know…
This is part 5 of a multi-post series on public speaking Dealing with nerves Talk Structure Slides Timing Questions Speaking Should I speak? This post is about dealing with questions, and to be honest there isn’t much to share in this area. Nonetheless, I’ll cover some of the most common sense aspects of it. Questions? The first question of course should be…should I allow questions? My rule of…
This is part 4 of a multi-post series on public speaking Dealing with nerves Talk Structure Slides Timing Questions Speaking Should I speak? A talk that finishes on time ends well. It leaves you with a nice feeling, you’ve nailed it. You’ve finished on time (and on budget)! On the other hand, having a talk end 15 minutes earlier does seem awkward, and trust me I know. It’s happened to me a few…
This is part 3 of a multi-post series on public speaking Dealing with nerves Talk Structure Slides Timing Questions Speaking Should I speak? It’s not about the slides First and foremost - a talk isn’t about slides. The slides are there to help. They’re not the centerpiece of your talk. If you’re revolving your entire presentation around how awesome your slides are, then just post them online and…
This is part 2 of a multi-post series on public speaking Dealing with nerves Talk Structure Slides Timing Questions Speaking Should I speak? A talk usually consists of three parts: The Intro The Contents The Summary The Intro The intro should give the audience a brief overview of what it is they’re going to be hearing, and more importantly set expectations. If it’s a technical talk, tell them the…
This is part 1 of a multi-post series on public speaking Dealing with nerves Talk Structure Slides Timing Questions Speaking Should I speak? I do not consider myself an expert on the topic of public speaking. However, over the years I’ve picked up a few tips and tricks that have helped me, and by sharing them in a series of blog posts on public speaking, I hope they’ll help you. Also, I don’t…