Welcome to my PinkLetter. A short, weekly, technology-agnostic, and pink newsletter where we cultivate timeless skills about web development.
My Ramblings This Week
At work, our sales department asked developers what technologies they would be happy to work with. While I don’t blame anybody who refused to use the first version of Angular, I couldn’t help but think that technologies are just an implementation detail.
Sure, If I had to pick between new and exciting vs. boring and old, I wouldn’t hesitate for a second. Would you? However, the better question is: do you prefer doing valuable work or using specific tools?
It reminds me of So Good They Can’t Ignore You, where the author debunks the follow your passion advice.
A couple of years ago, I led a rescue on a legacy project. The situation was dramatic: no tests, old technologies, and infrastructure developed by hand via ssh. Unsurprisingly, there weren’t many people lining up for the job.
It took us more than one year to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Most days, we wondered if that light wasn’t a train barreling at us. But we endured. And that experience became the best of my career.
Instead of contributing to the problem with more hacks, we decided to be the solution. Every day it was blood, sweat, and tears. But also another brick towards a shared vision.
On that project I learned how to be a better leader, work effectively with legacy code, and experienced the magic a team can conjure.
Trust me, had I based my decision on the technology itself, I would have run away.
And, yeah, you bet we introduced some of our favorite tools. But that was a means to an end, not what made our work meaningful.
Elsewhere on the Web
Oh My Git! by bleeptrack and blinry
An open source game about learning Git!
(Riccardo: I wish this was around when I started using Git.)
Beyond Console.log() – Level up Your Debugging Skills by Chris Heilmann
You may have established a pattern of coding that utilizes a few key tools offered by your browser’s console. But have you dug any deeper lately? There are some powerful tools available to you, and they might just revolutionize the way you work.
(Riccardo: Working in JavaScript entails a ton of console.logs (unfortunately). Here are some better tricks.)
(((Wait a moment .) .) .) - Composing Functions with Multiple Arguments by Ubik
The goal of the point-free style is the same as all other forms of abstraction: to express your intention in a concise (to write), clear (to read), and general (to change) way.
(Riccardo: I finally see how the hell (.).(.) works in Haskell!)