Alexander Swensen

Developer downtime: don’t overwork your devs. It’s memorial weekend and I’m lazily sitting on my porch. My kids keep coming in and out of the house, but get stuck because the sliding door keeps coming off the rails and won’t open. Well, since I’ve got nothing else scheduled for the afternoon I investigate the issue. Turns out sliding doors have a bunch of adjustment screws. I adjust them till the door slides smooth. Left in the broken state my kids learned to hit top left side of the door before opening it. Bringing this back to work, I know customer success teams that have a cheat sheet of these maneuvers. Give devs space to observe, we naturally fix these issues.

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Tried react native expo. Pretty straightforward to setup as opposed to metro. Especially on Apple silicon. Plus it provides navigation based on file path like next js, which I think is pretty cool. Took me 5 minutes to set up as opposed to metro, which would take me a day at a minimum. It is also helpful to have a set folder structure before hand. #softwareengineering #reactnative #expo

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I think this is a really important topic that we don't see much in Engineering recruiting. A great way to lead to #burnout, especially when you're already giving your all in a full-time dev job, is to take on side projects that aren't work-related. For some, programming is their whole life, and if that is who you are looking for in an employee, then this might be a great metric to use. Otherwise, it most definitely is not. #TechCareers #BurnoutPrevention #WorkLifeBalance #Programming #SoftwareDevelopment #TechCommunity #CareerAdvice #TechTalk #GitHub #EngineeringLeadership

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Notably not on this list: Swarm, the tool many game devs are forced into because our industry tends to rely on Perforce more than most. Swarm really is a poor tool, but its better than nothing. Crucible would be my choice, but though it has some level of P4 support it's not trivial to get and keep working and doesn't fully support all P4 features. Review Board is also good, but requires you to have some infrastructure and dev ops set up, its not as plug and play as others. Or just bite the bullet and switch to Git/GitHub, and put in some art asset friendly workflows and processes. That's the direction I'm leaning these days.

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Let’s say I have never setup PostCSS on my own and that I am most comfortable with npm + Gulp for compiling Sass (via the #drupal Barrio contrib base theme). What’s the best resource for getting started with PostCSS? (I bet Aubrey S. knows)

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If you're #opentowork; the biggest challenge is getting your resume seen and for it to stand out. If you're free in 25 minutes; join Cody Marshall as he shares everything he's learned after looking at thousands of resumes: https://lnkd.in/gpnGNEac Bring your resume and questions! EDIT: Moved to Google Meet: https://lnkd.in/gpnGNEac

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Agents are getting really really good at programming, try this agent out: https://buff.ly/4cY7vRk I use this agent every single day multiple times a day to build functions with documentation, error handling, and type validation. It's overpowered.

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Let's talk about the challenges when it comes to contracting freelancers for audio software development… A few years ago, a prospective client chose to source a developer on their own instead of using our consulting services at The Audio Programmer. Fast forward to now, and that developer has left them high and dry, taking a full-time role elsewhere. 😬 We're stepping in to help, but this could've been avoided. Here's the deal: 🔍 Companies often think they're saving money by going solo, but they risk a lot. Without proper management infrastructure, assessing a developer's ability and handling unexpected issues becomes a gamble. 🛠️ Developers, on the other hand, might not realize the extra "scaffolding" needed for solo freelancing—handling IP, invoicing, aligning expectations, and navigating communication gaps. These are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to company-freelancer dynamics, especially in software development. For the past 7 years, we've been bridging this gap. We ensure companies get what they need, even if it means replacing developers and adapting teams. And we make sure our developers get paid and focus on what they love—writing code and creating amazing products. No one gets left hanging. 🤝 What are your thoughts on the challenges with freelancing within audio software development? Let's talk shop!

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I've made some steady progress this week. 😁 Those little blue checkmarks mean the code works, and as of yesterday afternoon can have hundreds or even millions of individual tests run against the dice rolling method. This morning, we'll list the assumptions we want to make when we have to modify the result of the rolls, write some tests, and if we have time, get that new behavior implemented. See y'all at 10:00 am EDT, over on Twitch. (I'll drop the link in the comments.) #thatDeveloperDad #dotNet #cSharp #liveCoding

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this! https://lnkd.in/e7QVtbKx changing one's mindset from bugs being bad to rolling with it and making it into a feature. such an amazing skill to have.

"How long is that going to take to fix?" ...and why do I prefer to recycle instead of repost? I've used this hook a few times, and it usually produces the right result (anger). If we reuse the relationship between Product and Dev, then we just need to change something else. Last time, the video ended in a fight; this time, it's gaslighting. Reposting is always a great strategy, but tweaking and repurposing helps us create consistently. #developer #productmanagement #organicsocial

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Independent devs out there: Who or where do you go to for help when you have a tech problem you can’t seem to solve? It’s one of my biggest questions for the completely independent freelancers out there. If you’re on a dev team you have lots of support around you…what do you do when you don’t have that? #android #independent #freelance #fullstack #softwareengineering

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This is a great talk by Chris Ferdinandi about web components. It was presented at the Eleventy Conference, aka: "11ty International Symposium on Making Web Sites Real Good" https://lnkd.in/g9R8YGet #11ty #eleventy #javascript #webcomponents

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Fun project I've been working on with Next.js 14/TypeScript! Here's a little project I've been fiddling with. Shadcn seems to feel like a cheat code when it comes to using Tailwind; I would highly recommend using it! Here's the link to my project: https://lnkd.in/ews6Tbg7 Using Cloudinary's API, this project edits images using AI to do things like remove backgrounds of uploaded images, edit colors of specific objects, etc. This project was built using Next.js 14, TypeScript, Tailwind/Shadcn, Clerk (for auth), Stripe for in-app purchaces, a MongoDB database, and hosted through Vercel. If anyone's curious, here's the link to the public GitHub repo to check out the code- if you're learning Next.js/TypeScript, feel free to clone it and make it your own! https://lnkd.in/eRCcU6Be

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For nights & wekekends s5 at buildspace, I'll be working on integr8. Farza Majeed was right, putting this into words really helped move things in motion. With that, I've already thought of a lot more use cases and integrations for integr8. Maybe add the ability to connect your GPT keys (if you're using the deployed version) or local LLMs (if you want to use it locally) and open up a new realm of possibilities. #nightsandweekends #buildspace #nightsandweekendss5

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Best examples of dev teams gaming management metrics? I'll start. I've worked with several clients where teams were boasting impressively short delivery lead times, and it turned out there were 2 backlogs: the official one, and the secret one. They'd wait until they were ready to start work on a requirement, and move it from the secret backlog into the official one.

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