The perspective of seasoned developer on development process and how big companies can have a branded way of doing engineering. Compared with situations where “the way engineering is done” is actively being figured out.
The essay basically focuses on:
- First, how do you pick the tools you’re going to use to get your work done?
- How do you make developers happy?
If you go up to a developer and say, “hey, what would make you happy?” you often get highly specific answers. “I would be happy if I could write Clojure at work,” they’ll say, “so you should let me do my work in Clojure.” I don’t discount that when they do this, developers are genuinely describing some kind of endorphin-rich experience they have had at some point. – The answer for many: chase shiny objects
If you think about innovation as a scarce resource, it starts to make less sense to also be on the front lines of innovating on databases. Or on programming paradigms. Software that’s been around longer tends to need less care and feeding than software that just came out. Good read!
[Read More]