2011 Recap: 80,000 miles, 3 moves, 2 new jobs, and more

To say it was a tumultuous year would not do it justice. To think it was only a year would be to underestimate it by at least a lifetime.

Raffl – Toying with a new idea for my next project

Polling Hacker News: What should I build next?

Having implemented and launched a large swath of new Turn-O-Phrase functionality over the last 2 months (namely, the puzzle designer and the custom puzzle user flow), I find myself at the proverbial crossroads. On a whim and without hoping for any real response, I decided to ask Hacker News what I should be building next.

I got really lucky and the poll got upvoted enough times to stay on the ‘new’ page for more than 3 hours, ensuring that a lot of people saw it and had a chance to vote. Some 125 kind souls ended up voting, which I consider a huge, statistically-significant success. There were also quite a few constructive comments and criticisms.

What’s wrong with a 10% chance to win $10?

So I finally managed to get a ticket to New York Tech Meetup. The day after I got the ticket I found out that I would be travelling on business on Tuesday and would not be able to attend. Bummer.

These tickets are notoriously scarce and highly sought after. Within several minutes of the tickets being released, they are gobbled up by some 700+ lucky attendees at $10 a pop. The unlucky rest ends up trolling the meetup message board where they have to resort to all sort of unsavory shenanigans to score a ticket — mostly groveling, begging, offering to pay above value, and then groveling and begging some more.

I didn’t feel like selling my ticket to a random stranger. Instead I decided to turn it into a social experiment of sorts. I wanted to see what people were willing to do for a chance to win this ticket, so what I did was to offer to give the ticket away to one of the next 10 people who would follow me on Twitter. It’s a simple idea, really.

Does proficiency mean you stop learning when you get good?

Lately I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about proficiency and skill. Where does proficiency come from? How can we quantify and measure it? How is it different from skills that non-practitioners have?

So here are some of my thoughts. You are fully entitled to vehemently disagree.

Technical debt is a rabbit hole that goes deep, really deep…

I don’t care how brilliant a developer you are, every piece of code you will ever write will add to technical debt. Yes it will, and it will irritate you to no end.

White Rabbit

Technical debt is one topic that instantly sparks debate and ignites controversy. I see the talk of technical debt crop up at work (even though we are still in the earliest stages of the project and haven’t accumulated much), and I see the need to manage technical debt in the code I write myself (even if my projects relatively small in size).

I believe what makes technical debt a development pain point is the fact that there are literally endless ways to continue to improve, optimize, refactor, enhance and generally better the code. Since most capable developers are perfectionists, these opportunities for improvement are a persistent and nagging temptation. It’s an issue that can affect productivity, team morale, and that has direct implications for the business value you are trying to extract from your team’s work.

Given the importance of the topic, I thought I’d share my own perspective and experience managing technical debt in a constructive and healthy way that still makes business sense. If you are lazy, you can skip to the “definite DO’s” at the end of this article.

Motivation is no less precious than execution

Changing jobs is one of those times when one cannot escape the task of going over the contents of My Documents folder and making sure that one’s contribution is not lost for humanity. I had the honor of doing that last week, and here is what I found.

Waiting for winds to change or setting on a different course

As I complete my tour of duty with the current (now former) employer there is plenty of time for quiet reflection… perhaps too much time for an unhealthy amounts of reflection.

Did I do the right thing?

How to guilt trip yourself into blogging more

So I’ve let my blog go without a new post for almost a month now, which is a shame.

In case you’ve missed it, and you would have since you cannot read my mind, my personal commitment, call it a New Year resolution, was to post at least once a week. At this pace, I would be at 30 something posts for the year, which I am nowhere near.

The solution to this problem is to give you a heads up about what’s coming, and by doing so committing to write these entries. So here are the write ups that will be coming your way soon:

1. Re-launch of Turn-O-Phrase: Lessons Learned
2. RE:trip – My next adventure in web apps
3. HairQ – My (likely) first Android app

So stay tuned… Your patience is appreciated.

What Build-Measure-Learn Is Not

Any framework or structured way of thinking is an opportunity for some structured abuse. Business frameworks like Build-Measure-Learn, which is at core of the Lean Startup Movement, are no exception. Just to be perfectly clear, I like Build-Measure-Learn, and I think it’s a valuable tool for startups and mature companies to generate more value and to find a viable business model.

I am using Build-Measure-Learn as a vehicle here not because it’s easy to pick on, but because it’s easy to understand and navigate. It offers a convenient platform to illustrate how these abuses can creep in and hijack the business objectives the framework was designed to help achieve.