Notes
Collection of interesting notes, old blog posts, quotes, links, and excerpts collected over the years.
They stay technical enough to make informed decisions. They might not code daily, but they understand the trade-offs. They ask questions instead of making assumptions. Most importantly, they trust their team's technical judgment.
— Matheus Lima, Why Engineers Hate Their Managers (And What to Do About It)
Every pull request is a conversation: "I believe this improves the codebase, do you agree?" As GitHub staff engineer Sarah Vessels (https://github.com/cheshire137) explains, good code reviews don't just catch bugs; they teach, transfer knowledge, and help teams move faster with fewer costly mistakes.
— Yelyzaveta Kramarenko, Why Developer Expertise Matters More Than Ever in the Age of AI
Ambitious and determined people will fight for impact and push for greatness. Ambitious and determined people will outperform, and grow higher and faster than people who are perhaps more talented, but lack self drive. Bet on them, and spend your time helping ambitious people grow.
— Darragh Curran, The Difference Between Good and Great Engineers
The Frontend Catches Everything. When something fails in the system, the user usually sees it in the frontend. If a service goes down, your component gets no data. If a token expires, the user gets stuck. If a third-party script blocks rendering, your buttons stop working. If checkout breaks, your app takes the blame. You may not control the systems upstream, but on-call teaches you that you still own the experience.
They hold high standards, but bring others there with joy, not conflict (they are "kind to the coder, not to the code").
— Darragh Curran, The Difference Between Good and Great Engineers
Exceptional engineers...can debug anything, quickly. Not by guessing - they shun superstition[1]. Instead, guided by instinct, but with rigor and process, they will narrow in on the root cause from different angles. They've a wide arsenal of sources and techniques to gather information; from the code and tests, the network, the OS, the DB, and from logs and metrics. They won't stop till they've found the actual root cause.
— Darragh Curran, The Difference Between Good and Great Engineers
The linked article on programming via superstition is worth reading - it explains how developers often make changes without understanding why they work.
They understand that they can have more impact by helping those around them to learn, improve, and thrive, and they get joy from that.
— Darragh Curran, The Difference Between Good and Great Engineers
Peter Naur understood something in 1985 that we're rediscovering today: programs are human constructs that require human understanding to thrive. As we navigate an era of abundant code generation, the developers who can build, maintain, and transfer the theories that make code meaningful become our most valuable assets.
— Christian Ekrem, Programming as Theory Building