I have lots of thoughts about software engineering, some popular, some unpopular, and sometimes about things no-one ever talks about.

Rather than write a blog post about each one, I thought I'd dump some of my thoughts in brief here, and if there's any interest in a particular item I might expand in full in the future.

Context

I loved Jamie Brandon's series Reflections on a decade of coding. It's been nearly a decade since I first learnt to code, so I think it's about the right time to write my own.

He starts off by pointing out that advice has to be taken in the context of where it's coming from. So here's my background.

I have 8 years experience as a backend developer at companies ranging in size from a 30 person startup to Google. I have never worked on a frontend[1], mission critical software, or performance [...]

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Outline:

(00:24) Context

(01:26) All rules are made to be broken

(01:50) Topic 1: Programming Languages

(03:50) Topic 2: Microservices

(05:43) Topic 3: Methods/Functions

(06:45) Topic 4: Architecture

(08:26) Topic 5: Testing

(12:40) Topic 6: Code Review

(14:09) Topic 7: What makes a good developer?

(15:36) Topic 8: Career

(16:49) Topic 9: Team structure

The original text contained 3 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:
March 6th, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/KaxkvZ5JD4LRyQtX9/lots-of-brief-thoughts-on-software-engineering

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Lots of brief thoughts on Software Engineering” by Yair Halberstadt

LessWrong (30+ Karma)

“Lots of brief thoughts on Software Engineering” by Yair Halberstadt