Database migrations are a tool created to work better with databases, especially under agile development. Instead of having a database with a "fixed" schema, which is deployed rarely by merging manually with tools like Redgate's SQL Compare, variations are stored in numbered SQL files as schema or d…

Why is it so hard to determine and change a company's development culture? The answer lies in how customs come to be and how we are biased not to see the economic factors shaping them. When we look at broad social trends, at the winners and the losers, the tendency is to personalize the merits and …

There’s an excellent Medium post by Way Spurr-Chen that has been making the rounds on Twitter and LinkedIn titled “Rage Against the Codebase: Programmers and Negativity.” I think the article makes many good points about why programmers value negativity and the author posits two possible (admittedly…

Badgie is an unconventional service because it is fundamentally a game, but for software development professionals. Being a game and appealing to a professional environment at the same time is a delicate balance which we hope to achieve through design and user experience. In this world-wide massivel…

At Badgie we strongly believe in positive messaging and in making people happy. It stands to reason that we also look at the things that make us unhappy and try to change them to something positive. About 10 days ago Des Traynor posted this tweet: If you think Slack's product is easy or small, here…

Not all developers are equal. People differ in many ways: gender, skin color, to name the most obvious, but also merely in personality traits. Some people are more competitive, and a challenge motivates them. Others seek self-improvement and want to challenge themselves. Even others are at their bes…

As I left Toptal, I got two weeks of paid leave and decided to use them to try and build a small web venture that had the potential to be cool. As I explained this to a few friends, I realized the idea could work. A few friends generously volunteered their extra nights, and we went on to work. In t…

We are not giving developers "sustainable feedback." One of the essential concepts in Agile Development the idea of sustainable pace. At the time Agile was first proposed, this was an indispensable alternative for death marches. Death marches occur when we try to implement the very unreasonable …

I've been working in developer leadership roles for the past 15 years. Over this time I've been noticing that, when some magic conditions happened, a few of the teams I was leading became amazing places to be. Some other teams always failed to shine. Over time I called the successful ones "dream tea…

I didn't post much in the past year due to moving, starting a new job and having a ton of life issues to deal with. I'm now in my first proper holiday since and I'm happy to post a little bit more. In the past year, though, I've been posting thoughts on Twitter--as I did not have time to work on fu…