Cross-posting a short article I shared on LinkedIn last year: Using AI as Your Personal Tutor In addition to using AI for general tutoring, this year I’m interested in using vibe coding tools like Claude and Cursor to revive technical side projects I’ve left collecting dust up on the digital shelf. It’s empowering to know using AI as a tutor and advisor can provide the extra nudge needed to push…
Many years ago I was interviewing for a management job at a growing tech company. After a long day of meeting with engineers and product managers, I made it to the final boss, the VP of Engineering. He introduced himself, put his hands together at the fingertips, and said, "Tell me your top accomplishments for the last three and six months." I froze up. It had been a very busy year. I’d worked on…
The scariest change in my career so far has been my transition from software engineer to manager. I wasn’t sure if I was ready and didn’t really know what to expect. People in my organization were unsure if I'd be good at the new job. Many engineers I worked with at different companies considered management to be an unpleasant and undesirable task. Was this career change a good idea? There were so…
The foreman called me up to the control room one morning. It was my second week working at the lumber mill and already I hated it. After marching up the grated metal staircase and into his office, I removed the earplugs we wore to protect against the mill’s loud machines. “Yes?” I asked curiously. He pointed down at my workstation through his office window. “What you’re doing down there… it isn’t…
$366.83. Per month. Really? I added up the cost of every digital service my household subscribes to, and that’s the monthly total. It seems like a lot! Why put my digital finances under the microscope? I wanted to gauge my digital spending to determine if I was comfortable with spending more. Recently I've felt motivated to pay for higher-quality news. The growing trend of media becoming smaller,…
Last week in Part 1 of this Mega Book Report I wrote brief reviews for books I found helpful in my career in software team management. I don’t always read work-related books, though. After mentally challenging books, I take a break and indulge in some “leisure reading”. For me that’s usually a history book with an occasional sci-fi and literary classic thrown in the mix. Here are my favorites that…
I love books, but am not a particularly fast reader. Because of my slow pace, I’m picky about which books I read, relying on advice from peers, Goodreads ratings , and annual “best book” lists. Earlier this year I saw Jeff Marten’s post “ My 2016 year in books ”, and ended up reading Shoe Dog based on his recommendation. It was so good! To pay it forward, I compiled this list of books I read and…
Lately I've been thinking a lot about how we choose the tools we use to build software, and how important those choices are. I figured it might help others if I wrote down my own thought process for selecting development tools, so I published this post on Medium: " Choose Your Weapon: How to Select Software Engineering Tools without Inciting Team Rebellion ". This was my first post on Medium where…
Last month I gave some advice to high-school interns at a "speed networking" event organized by Saturday Academ y. I summarized my recommendations in this post up on Medium: " My Advice to These High-School Interns ". Do you have standard advice that you give to students interested in tech careers? I'd love to hear it. I feel like programming can feel a little overwhelming when some people start…
Dearest reader, I have neglected my duties to write about PDX Tech Talks for many months. Have I been attending tech talks? Yes. I’ve made it to a few of my favorites like PADNUG and AgilePDX , but didn't ever get around to posting the summaries. Why so busy? Well, in the fall I was heads-down hacking on an IoT side project. Since then I’ve been hard at work helping to build some teams at…
A few weeks back, despite my busy late-summer schedule, I finally made it to Portland’s DevOps user group: pdxdevops . It’s been at the top of my "must check out" list for quite some time. Why? Well, a big game changer in software development over the last decade has been the commodification of hardware. We can now spin up dozens of Amazon EC2 web servers at a reasonable price, but who will…
It seems like most tech meet-up enthusiasts have a favorite group. It’s the one you go to most often. The one where they talk about the tools and techniques you use every day to get your job done. It’s your go-to group, your community. For the last several years, my go-to group has been PADNUG, the Portland Area .NET User Group . Microsoft’s .NET programming framework is used quite a bit locally,…
I’ve heard a lot about the Internet of Things (IoT) lately. Entrepreneurs were buzzing about it at PDXTTM #2 and referenced it in a product pitch. My co-workers are buying Raspberry Pi’s (credit card sized computers) to hack on. Analysts are predicting that 6 billion devices will be internet-connected by 2015, and will soon surpass the world’s human population of 7 billion. Something very…
When I discovered Portland has a meet-up dedicated to Selenium and test automation, I was interested. Then I noticed they were meeting in Jive’s cool office downtown, and became double interested. Selenium is a popular free tool used to automate website testing, which folks on my team have started evaluating. The Jive office was recently featured in big budget Tech Town Portland video . Yes, it’s…
When I heard last week that Lunch 2.0 was being hosted conveniently near my workplace in Beaverton, I was compelled to stop by and check it out. Lunch 2.0 doesn't make it out to the west side all that often, so I couldn't resist. If this keeps up I may have to rename this series of posts to “Tech Talks Weekly”! The Event - Lunch 2.0 hosted by OTBC The idea behind Lunch 2.0 is great: You visit a…
I posted the story about how I first learned coding up on Medium.com: " The Prank that Taught Me to Code " Medium is a great site created by Twitter co-founders Ev Williams and Biz Stone. There's a bunch of great content up there. I definitely recommend giving it a look. They're trying to create a very low-friction platform where folks to share their stories and ideas.
To kick-off my monthly series on Portland tech events , here’s a recap of the inspiring “ Ignite TAO v4 ” event I attended last Thursday with 300 of my PDX techie peers. The Event – Ignite TAO This was my second time seeing an Ignite TAO, which is hosted in the Alberta Rose Theatre . At Ignite events, 20 speakers give 5-minute presentations. Each presentation consists of 20 slides. That’s 15…
Last year Luc Perkins dared to blog about what many were silently thinking: “ Could Portland be the best city in the country for developers right now? ” My head was nodding in agreement as I read his detailed description of Portland’s awesome tech scene, and the great community vibe here. I was especially impressed with the long list of meetups he included. There’s a Commodore Users Group ? Sweet!…
Socrates was a fan of the ancient Greek maxim carved into the walls of the Temple of Apollo: “Know Thyself.” He even took it up a notch by saying “The unexamined life is not worth living.” Now, 2400 years later, technology is making it a lot easier for you to know yourself. The Quantitative Self Movement seems to really be gaining momentum. Every week I hear about new ways people are using apps,…
Would you read an aesthetically pleasing digital magazine that is custom tailored to your interests? That would be awesome, right? I believe I’ve found this exact product by using a combination of Twitter, Flipboard , and the “Your Timeline Links” feature… and I think you’d like it too. I'm always on the look-out for apps and websites that help me stay informed on…