Bitpicking

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It's Christmas so time to sit back, relax, eat heartily ... and think about your logging framework and what chaos might be happening in your infrastructure while you're arguing over which Celebration is the best. (Hint, it's Maltesers Teaser.)

Only just less exciting than a loot box, we try a homegrown random topic selector and see what happens.

Post-COVID, the world is a very different place, so the Bitpickers return with a hefty dose of the same old tosh, and the same lack of show notes. Sorry not sorry.

It's the season finale and we put down the keyboards and just have a good ol' chinwag. We'll be back in Spring 2021!

This week, the team talk about the good and bad of performance reviews

Laura talks about her experience as a mentor, and we discuss the value of mentor/mentee relationships in the industry.

In this episode we look at recruitment from the 'other side' as we welcome Steve Wright from Spectrum IT to discuss the role of the recruitment agent for todays job seekers.

This week we talk about 'visionaries' and 'evangelists' and how should a Development team respond when faced with exciting, but often unrealistic, new ideas.

Recorded as the UK starts easing out of lock down, we take a look back over the 15 weeks and discuss how we've coped, what changes we've seen in ourselves and others, and consider what things might stick or change as we adapt to the new working model. Wait But Why - Why Procastinators Procastinate Things Might Go Terribly, Horribly Wrong: A Guide To Life Liberated From Anxiety The Confidence Gap

Look, an episode! This week, we talk with Paul Newell, veteran of the defence industry, to get a view on the difficulty applying agile concepts to multi-year, multi-million pound projects. This episode was recorded over Zoom, so sorry not sorry about the audio quality.

It's another remote episode of Bitpicking TV, in audio form! This week, the team consider the sudden popularity of Zoom for conferencing, and whether anyone really cares about security and privacy if they can just get to change their background once in a while.  In an ironic twist of events, Skype lets us down halfway through, so we decide to try Zoom out for ourselves.  See if you can spot the join! Watch our happy little faces at https://youtu.be/2ZsPuE3kwAM

Desperate times, desperate measures....  The Bitpicking team congregate on Skype for what's probably the first of many remote sessions.  Naturally, the only topic in town is the impact of COVID-19 on the daily lives of software teams - remote working, changes in business priorities, and how long until we're all on Club Penguin... As an added bonus, you can now see our angelic little faces on Bitpicking TV!  Find us at https://youtu.be/xqthn2gMBM0 - like and subscribe! (that's what the cool kids say, right?)

Mark & Greg tackle TDD - Test Driven Development.  What is it?  When should you do it?  How can you make it stick?

Laura, Mark and Greg turn their sights on modern Agile - has it lost its way, and has it really changed anything in the meantime? (fact-check:  Semco is one of *Brazil's* largest conglomerates, not Britain's - clearly someone can't read and talk at the same time)

We welcome Matt Alner (@matthewalner), developer, TechDorset organiser, and serial side project-er to Bitpicking for a rambling chat about meet ups, bluetooth hacking, browser wars, TypeScript and more! TechDorset: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/tech-dorset-pizza-and-chat-about-whats-new-in-dev-tech-and-tech-news-registration-49689447475

This week, Laura, Greg and Mark talk about the best way to get in to software development.  Do you need a CompSci degree to be a good coder? Or are you better off just getting on with the job? 

As we welcome in the new decade we look at Project Management and ask whether software teams need a dedicated Project Manager or not?

Like all good Christmas parties, it started with good intentions and ended in chaos, and now we can't remember what we spoke about but we'll blame the mulled wine. Loosely themed around side projects, expect lots of deviation!

This week, we discuss what makes a good working environment for teams.  Are you an open plan fan or a cubicle hermit?

We have a meandering chat about what’s on our tech minds this week — Laura tells us about a play workshop 🧸, Mark rants about front-end development 😡, while Greg describes what he does to relax 🛠.  Enjoy!

Laura asks what makes a good team, then we answer everything but.

We discuss the recent Design Twitter thread about whether designers should code, and coders should design.

We're back! To kick off Season 2 we ease back in with a chat about what's happened while we've been away, from electric cars and conferences to job interviews and social media.  Oh, plus a little surprise we think you'll love ... Got something  you want to talk to us about?  Get in touch via Twitter to @bitpicking!  Don't bother with Mastodon though - we don't check it. :)

In the Season Finale, we tackle responsibility in software development by making wildly irresponsible claims about things we know little about.  Enjoy! We'll be back in the autumn, until then if you have any feedback for us, please find us @bitpicking on Twitter!

In Episode 19, Greg and Mark brave the subject of Machine Learning and AI, and conclude that they're really not qualified....

This week we talk to Laura Yarrow - UX Consultant at Experience UX.   Like all UX conversations we start by clarifying what it really is, before discussing how to start in UX and what you can do if you don't have a big budget, before settling on a mini-rant about dark patterns. Oh, and Laura had it right all along, of course. REFERENCES: Paper Prototype example: https://twitter.com/laura_yarrow/status/1114446460513390592 UX Professional Association: https://uxpa.org Interesting UX People: Kim Goodwin - https://twitter.com/kimgoodwin Dana Chisnell - https://twitter.com/danachis Jared Spool - https://twitter.com/jmspool Good Web Form design: https://www.lukew.com/resources/web_form_design.asp

This week we discuss how much process is reasonable to avoid chaos and ensure team principles are satisfied, without it getting in the way of progress.  Do we need rules or can we be trusted to do the Right Thing™️?  Is agile now just a process?  Do fancy 'no process' models really work?  Find out by filling in the listener engagement form in triplicate, posting to us with a stamped addressed envelope, waiting for the code in our reply and using that in the episode unlock form to get the first half, then get the second half by posting a review on Twitter using the code word FREETHOUGHT.  Or, just hit the play button. Things mentioned in the episode: Maverick! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maverick_(book) Valve employee handbook.  https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/apps/valve/Valve_NewEmployeeHandbook.pdf

Greg and Mark chew the fat on what constitutes a Minimum Viable Product.

We welcome Matt Northam, a self confessed ‘FED’ (front end developer) from Bournemouth digital agency Redweb, and discuss such things as how to start in web design, using the Wu-Tang Clan to improve team working, and his favourite HTML tags. Matt's 3d hoverboard - https://twitter.com/mattnortham/status/758629899640967168

Why do so many of us develop for free?  Greg and Mark discuss the world of Open Source software and consider what drives developers to release and contribute to such projects, and consider whether other industries have similar behaviours! Feeling hungry? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67KtxG_0DVo

Mark & Greg chat to Dave Butt from Holiday Extras, about the ups and downs of working as a remote developer.   Get your Pair Bears now!

Greg & Mark dive into the murky world of QA, and ask “shouldn’t the devs be doing that?”. Quality at speed - how Atlassian does testing https://youtu.be/yRP29wFqu20

Give me a Dev! Give me an Ops! What have you got?!?  Some Cloudformation templates and an Ansible script.  But what else should you have? Greg & Mark clear up any confusion around what DevOps is and who should be doing it ... or do they? Say hello on Twitter! If you like us, please leave us a review on your favourite podcast platform

Mark & Greg tackle the issue of how teams make decisions on languages or frameworks, and when switching might, or might not, be appropriate. They also complain about Javascript a lot. Maybe use one of these on your next project! Brainf*** - if you're worried about backwards compatibility with your existing stack, worry no more! Rockstar! - Desire is a lovestruck ladykiller Flubber.js - Any resemblance to actual JS frameworks, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

In this episode we talk about engagement with users - in particular how to respond to App Reviews when they aren't entirely positive or have any actionable insight. Mark's Skype For Business shitlist - https://twitter.com/revbingo/status/951051421092401152 AWS Load Balancers now support redirects to HTTPS, who knew! - https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2018/07/elastic-load-balancing-announces-support-for-redirects-and-fixed-responses-for-application-load-balancer/

It's episode 8 - Greg and Mark consider what makes a good job advert for hiring developers, and how much technology choices count as an indicator of company culture. We also discuss the latest blog from Cloudflare discussing their entry into the serverless computing landscape - Cloud computing without containers - https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloud-computing-without-containers/

Greg & Mark reflect on their takeaways from the re:develop 2018 conference. —> Mark asks how professional the software industry really is given the expectations of other industries, and what is the right way to assess whether someone is actually any good. Then Greg expresses his frustration about the continued amount of conversations around whether to estimate or not by talking about estimating or not for 20 minutes. This week's links! Kent Becks 3X (Explore, Expand, Extract): https://www.facebook.com/notes/kent-beck/the-product-development-triathlon/1215075478525314/ Intro to Cynefin (Warning: may contain Papyrus): http://cognitive-edge.com/videos/cynefin-framework-introduction/ Uncle Bobs take on professionalism in software development: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0O1VVqRSK0 Product: The Delivery: http://hepto.github.io/productthedelivery/ Greg's c120 project: https://github.com/hepto/c120

Greg and Mark wheel the outside broadcast unit out for the after party of the re:develop conference held in Bournemouth on 12th October 2018, and ask some of the speakers and attendees for their thoughts on the day. For the full list of talks and speakers, see redevelop.io/speakers , where videos of the talks will be available soon also. Featuring: * Tom Quay (@tomquay) - re:develop Organiser and Founder of Base / Passenger. * Stuart Landrige (@sil) - Speaker and owner at Kryogenix Consulting, host of Bad Voltage podcast. * Matt Wilson (@mattwilson1024) - Attendee, software developer and DJ. * Dan Thomas (@dannyt) - Speaker and Founder of Moov2. * Thor Mitchell (@ThorMitchell) - Speaker and former Chief Product Officer at Crowdcube. * Dan Wentworth (@darkphnx) - re:develop Organiser and Head of Development at aTech Media. * Adam West (@theukbatman) - Support Analyst at aTech Media. * John Le Drew (@antz29) - Speaker and Founder / Principal Consultant at Wise Noodles. * Tom Geraghty (@tom_geraghty) - Speaker and former Head of UK Cloud Platform Ops for Experian. * Jorge Lambert-Cruz (@jsclambert) - Attendee and Technical Architect at Siemens.

A rose by any other name still represents two idiots trying to make sense of software and product development.

/* TODO: Greg and Mark ask themselves if it's right to put comments in code, discuss the the office light switches, and dig up age-old flame wars */

In which Greg and Mark have a ramblechat. Greg has a cathartic moan about avoiding a 'pile on' when trying to prioritise, and Mark reminisces about the good old days when 32K was enough for anyone. In between, Mastodon, Twitter, Slack and Teams come under fire - we reveal how the mild-mannered Mark was transformed into the superhero @revbingo, and why Greg is upset with a Twitter user who hasn't posted for nearly 10 years. We are on Mastodon! - https://mastodon.technology/@withgregandmark A beginners guide to Mastodon - https://lifehacker.com/a-beginner-s-guide-to-mastodon-1828503235 We're also on Twitter! - https://twitter.com/withgregandmark Picade - https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/picade Mark's poorly constructed Intel8080 emulator - https://github.com/revbingo/kotlin8080 The Universal Machine - http://www.boundvariable.org/task.shtml Come along to Redevelop 2018 on October 12th, and be in with a chance of getting yourself on YDIW! - https://redevelop.io

Following the minor success of the first episode, Greg and Mark run a small retro to consider what they can do better and then turn to retrospective practices generally. What are they good for, how do you run them, and most importantly - can Indiana Jones help get the best out of the team? And, as promised, we Google'd some retro formats for you and this came top! http://www.funretrospectives.com Join the conversation - get in touch on Twitter: https://twitter.com/withgregandmark

In their first episode, Greg and Mark discuss the impact of ‘good enough’ - when the thing you’re doing is not entirely finished, but might be considered good enough to serve its purpose. Should you ship or should you carry on until it is complete?