It’s ok to…

I found this somewhere some time ago and I wanted to share. I think this has to become the standard for the industry (if it is not yet) and I’ll always look for this in the future but, for now, I work in a company in which it’s ok to…

  • say «I don’t know»
  • ask for more clarity
  • stay at home when you feel ill
  • say you don’t understand
  • ask what acronyms stand for
  • forget things
  • introduce yourself
  • depend on the team
  • ask for help
  • not know everything
  • have quiet days
  • have loud days, to talk, joke and laugh
  • put your headphones on
  • say «No» when you are too busy
  • make mistakes
  • sing
  • sigh
  • not check your email out of hours
  • not check your email constantly during hours
  • just Slack it
  • walk over and ask someone face-to-face
  • go somewhere else to concentrate
  • offer feedback on other people’s work
  • challenge things you’re not confortable with
  • say yes when anyone does a coffee run
  • prefer tea
  • snack
  • have a messy desk
  • have a tidy desk
  • work how you like to work
  • ask the management to fix it
  • have off-days
  • have days off

The Passionate Programmer

I had this book pending to read since Pere recommended it some time ago. It’s a good book for recovering perspective every once in a while if you, like me, tend to loose perspective once the routine starts to roll.

I read it at the beginning of the year and prepared some slides to share the acquired knowledge with my fellow frontenders at Netcentric. It was a terrible presentation (I learned a lot on how not to present from it) but I think it’s a good summary of the content.

I can’t recommend it enough so if you think you fit in the spot of the passionate programmer and what you see on the slides make sense, don’t hesitate in getting the book. You won’t regret it.

Slides

Coaching Session 004

Almost two months out of the blog and the coaching project because a lot of good things happened but finally we go back on track (about time).

I wanted to share some thoughts about HTML5 boilerplate: how I see it, what I think it is and what I’ll remove for my project.

It’s not every day that you start a project from scratch. Usually you join an already working project on a mid stage or, even if it’s not so, it’s architects business to define the project structure and stack. So it is that after some years of experience I was struggling to really come up with a starting approach to my project but this gets solved if you trust what html5 boilerplate has to offer . As they say on the homesite:

HTML5 Boilerplate is a professional front-end template for building fast, robust, and adaptable web apps or sites.

Which is good so we don’t have to reinvent the wheel every time and we have a common ground to start developing.

Continúa leyendo Coaching Session 004

Coaching Session 003

After a lot of trial and error and playing a bit with gulp I wanted to show you the gulp tasks that I’ve prepared to set up my development environment. There are still left the tasks that will deploy the production version of the web application, everything related to images and icons and a lot of stuff that it’s yet to come. But, anyway, to reduce the length of the posts let me introduce you the final gulp magic I’ll be using to start developing my project.

Continúa leyendo Coaching Session 003

El rol de un ingeniero senior

Esta entrada es una traducción humana del artículo de Matt Briggs en el que define los roles de todo ingeniero: junior, intermedio y senior. Me parecieron unas reflexiones brillantes y he pensado que sería buena idea hacerla llegar a la audiencia castellano parlante.

This entry is a human translation of Matt Briggs’ post in which he defines the different roles of an engineer: junior, intermediate and senior. I felt these were very interesting reflections and I thought it could be a good idea to make it reachable to all spanish speaking audience. 

Trabajamos en un sector peculiar. Hay mucha más demanda de desarrolladores de la que puede quedar satisfecha por los nuevos ingenieros que llegan al sector. Este problema ha existido durante años y va a peor conforme pasa el tiempo.

Sufrimos una grave falta de talento para poder cubrir la demanda a pesar de que nuestra industria es muy joven. La mayoría de proyectos de software fracasan y prácticamente todos ellos se pasan de presupuesto. La única guía y referencia que tenemos en este sentido por parte los líderes de pensamientos es algo parecido a esto: “Éstos son los métodos y las prácticas más comunes con las que solucionamos ciertos problemas pero nuestras soluciones con frecuencia no funcionan así que lo único que puedes hacer es intentarlo tú mismo y ver si te funciona”.

Continúa leyendo El rol de un ingeniero senior

Coaching project 002

It’s been quite a gulp week to me. I have a lot to explain and very few time as tomorrow is my first review. I can say that in just a week I’ve learned a lot about something that was totally unknown before I started and, as always happens, once you know it you realize it was not that difficult. Mastering anything takes time but the difference from going from zero knowledge to some knowledge is huge. In fact I just skipped one of the next steps (modularizing gulp) to be able to write this post.

I assume you know or at least understand what gulp is about. If not, take a look at gulp site and come back, I’ll show you some really easy-to-follow code. If you are just a friend of mine without coding skills probably you’ll get bored if you keep reading, but thanks for the visit =)

Continúa leyendo Coaching project 002

Coaching project 001

As part of my professional promotion in my company I have to develop a project to fill the gap between my expected level for the next pathway and my current level. To get this done I’ve prepared along with my coach a github repo where all the development phases can be found.

For this first session I’ve work around 8 hours. What I have accomplished so far is:

  • Setting up my work space at home
  • Setting up a github repo with a readme file in md language
  • Install html5 boilerplate
  • Install some Atom packages to improve my workflow
  • Install gulp and some node packages
  • Created a gulp task for linting with ESLint

Do you want to know more?

Continúa leyendo Coaching project 001

My frontend workspace on Mac

Just today I’ve received a kind email from a colleague to engage my first front end freelance project. I didn’t expected it today but I knew it was hardly impossible not to get to this point as we know the market is requesting more and more front end engineers and the available heroes are running low.

I could have tried to work on this project with my company laptop but I think it’s better to keep things separated and that’s the reason I faced the challenge to setup my environment from scratch on my domestic machine. Nothing super fancy or advanced but just the way I work or what applications make my work easier. Here we go.

Continúa leyendo My frontend workspace on Mac