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Named Things
Engineering

Named Things

This is a cautionary tale. It's the story of an internal tool development project. We'll call it Astro, because naming things is hard, and the reasons why are very instructive.

  • Jennifer Moore
    Jennifer Moore
9 min read
Culture Fit
Interviewing

Culture Fit

We don't evaluate candidates purely on skill. We also assess them socially. I'll explore how to do that, without falling into the trap of dismissing someone as "not a culture fit" due to bias.

  • Jennifer Moore
    Jennifer Moore
5 min read
Interviewing Software Engineers
Interviewing

Interviewing Software Engineers

Artificial white board programming tests are the wrong thing, but they're easy to assign. Doing the right thing is going to be harder. So what we really need to do is identify what we're looking for in a programmer

  • Jennifer Moore
    Jennifer Moore
11 min read
Questions for your interviewer
Interviewing

Questions for your interviewer

As a candidate, interviews are your chance to learn how the team works, and how the company views and treats their employees. But after enduring your own interview, it's hard to know what to ask or how to evaluate the answers. This should help.

  • Jennifer Moore
    Jennifer Moore
7 min read
A Guide to using GitHub for Hacktoberfest
Talks

A Guide to using GitHub for Hacktoberfest

If you want to participate in Hacktoberfest, but you don't have much experience with GitHub, then you've come to the right place.

  • Jennifer Moore
    Jennifer Moore
10 min read
FizzBuzz? Really?
C#

FizzBuzz? Really?

Yes, it's FizzBuzz, but without the modulo! Exploring FizzBuzz as an interview exercise, and implemented like the children's counting game that inspired it.

  • Jennifer Moore
    Jennifer Moore
6 min read
Tech Is Not Neutral
Social Justice

Tech Is Not Neutral

Those of us in the tech field like to pretend that it's neutral. We like to pretend that we're neutral. We have to stop.

  • Jennifer Moore
    Jennifer Moore
4 min read
Designing for Testability
Engineering

Designing for Testability

The same factors that make your software hard to test will also make it hard to maintain. By adding tests, you can find and fix those things, and so the simple fact of having tests will make your software projects more successful.

  • Jennifer Moore
    Jennifer Moore
8 min read
Falsehoods programmers believe about gender (and sex)
Personal

Falsehoods programmers believe about gender (and sex)

Sex and gender are complicated. If you want my advice, it's that your app probably doesn't even need to collect this information.

  • Jennifer Moore
    Jennifer Moore
3 min read
Maybe don't use StringBuilder
C#

Maybe don't use StringBuilder

So, should you use StringBuilder? Yes, sometimes. It depends on what your data is like, and what you're optimizing for.

  • Jennifer Moore
    Jennifer Moore
11 min read
A 🤷‍♀️ job 💁‍♀️ I 🤷‍♀️ did 💁‍♀️ not 🤷‍♀️ get
Projects

A 🤷‍♀️ job 💁‍♀️ I 🤷‍♀️ did 💁‍♀️ not 🤷‍♀️ get

And the app I built to feel better after

  • Jennifer Moore
    Jennifer Moore
3 min read
Engineering

Enabling Refactoring

To succeed at refactoring, you need to make small, incremental improvements. It needs to be continuous. It needs to be habitual. And it needs to be proactive. Because it's not special; it's just a regular part of development. This is continuous refactoring.

  • Jennifer Moore
    Jennifer Moore
6 min read
Unit Testing: How do I even?
Testing

Unit Testing: How do I even?

It hopefully seems obvious that you should test your software. And in particular that you should unit test your software. But, why? And, how? For some reason no one seems to teach this.

  • Jennifer Moore
    Jennifer Moore
9 min read
What language should I learn?
Engineering

What language should I learn?

Programming languages are tools used to solve problems, not problems themselves that need to be solved. And so learning to use them should be approached in the same way you would learn to use any other tool. Which is to say: it depends on what you're trying to build.

  • Jennifer Moore
    Jennifer Moore
4 min read

Syntax Highlighting in Ghost Blog

It's quick and easy, just 4 steps

  • Jennifer Moore
    Jennifer Moore
1 min read
New Year's Resolutions
Personal

New Year's Resolutions

This list is optimistic. Maybe even naively so. I'm okay with that. This is about learning, and there's a lot to learn.

  • Jennifer Moore
    Jennifer Moore
4 min read
Culture

The worst interview homework ever

I completely get the point of interview homework. You need to assess whether a candidate can actually do the job you're hiring for. Whether they're even viable. And your time is valuable, so

  • Jennifer Moore
    Jennifer Moore
5 min read
Measuring Risk
Process

Measuring Risk

A while back, I was in a planning meeting where a whole development organization was trying to squeeze a huge and non-negotiable volume of work into a predetermined and non-negotiable release schedule. It

  • Jennifer Moore
    Jennifer Moore
4 min read
Software Engineer
Process

Software Engineer

I am a software engineer. What I'm not is a programmer, or a developer, or a coder, or a ninja. Simply writing code is the easiest part of developing software. Anyone can write

  • Jennifer Moore
    Jennifer Moore
2 min read
Node.js

Think twice before using async/await

There is a lot to like about modern Javascript (often abbreviated as ES 2015). Static imports are great. Rest/Spread syntax is great. Destructuring assignment is pretty good. Default arguments are great. Template

  • Jennifer Moore
    Jennifer Moore
3 min read
Culture

Some things I DO miss about big companies

I previously discussed some things about working in a large organization that I was happy to be rid of. This is the other side of that coin. These things are by no means

  • Jennifer Moore
    Jennifer Moore
2 min read
Process

A Bug's Life

I've written before about useful metrics for software development organizations, and it's past time for another. The metric I'm proposing now, I call "A Bug's Life". Because who doesn't like Pixar?

  • Jennifer Moore
    Jennifer Moore
3 min read
Culture

What I don't miss about big companies

Update Sep 2017: I later wrote about some of the good parts. After you're done here, you should check that out, too. I got a new job recently. Go me! The old job

  • Jennifer Moore
    Jennifer Moore
3 min read
Projects

A First Date With Python

I started playing Endless Sky recently. It has a lot to recommend it; if you like 4X games, it's worth checking out. One of its features is a fairly rich array of ships

  • Jennifer Moore
    Jennifer Moore
4 min read
Projects

Request-as-promise

I've been working on a small node.js project lately to promise-ify request. I'm calling it request-as-promise. You can install it via npm with npm i --save request-as-promise. Why The short version is

  • Jennifer Moore
    Jennifer Moore
2 min read
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