Digital Digressions by Stuart Sierra
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Stuart Sierra is a software developer with a background in theatre, music, and writing. Currently, a software engineer at Clubhouse.io, helping build better project management tools for software teams.
Digital Digressions by Stuart Sierra
3y ago
When it comes to organizing source code repositories, there are broad similarities — source code in src/, tests in test/ — but no universal standards. Recently I was thinking about this and wondered “What about UNIX?” Most Linux distributions follow the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard to some extent. The directory names are short and familiar. The structure ..read more
Digital Digressions by Stuart Sierra
3y ago
There comes a point in a programming career — at least one as peripatetic as mine — at which learning a new programming language barely registers as an obstacle. I’m not talking about mind-meltingly different languages like APL, just your run-of-the-mainstream object/imperative mishmash. Grab a syntax cheat-sheet, skim the standard library docs, and off you go. Recently ..read more
Digital Digressions by Stuart Sierra
3y ago
“What do you mean, ‘How to join a meeting’?! You click a button, doofus!” Yes, dear friends, and that is exactly the problem. If you’re not accustomed to remote work, you may not dwell much on the mechanical processes of remote interaction. It’s just always awkward, isn’t it? Every meeting starts with several minutes of ..read more
Digital Digressions by Stuart Sierra
3y ago
Why do we have meetings? Our computers and phones are loaded with dozens of communication apps. I’m far from the first to ask this question. I believe it’s well-established that different modes of communication have different information bandwidth. More information is conveyed by a face-to-face conversation than an email, for example. The conventional explanations for ..read more
Digital Digressions by Stuart Sierra
3y ago
Now that we’ve covered the basics of remote work — headsets, cables, and software — it’s time to think about some of the smaller, more subtle things we can do to ensure a good remote experience for everyone. Today, that’s profile pictures. Profiles are something I don’t think about often, if at all. Maybe I ..read more
Digital Digressions by Stuart Sierra
3y ago
No Manifestos is still “on the air”! If you haven’t been following, here are some recent episodes to check out: Russ Olsen, author of Getting Clojure and Eloquent Ruby Jen Myers, software educator and public speaker Aisha Blake, founder of the musical tech conference <title of conf> Or get the whole series in your podcasting ..read more
Digital Digressions by Stuart Sierra
3y ago
In the first two posts in this series, I talked about hardware: networking and headsets. I’ll come back to hardware eventually, but the next thing on the checklist is software. Again, I’m not going to recommend specific products here. What I will do is provide you with a set of criteria by which to evaluate ..read more
Digital Digressions by Stuart Sierra
3y ago
If you saw my last post, you’ve got your computer wired up. Time to get yourself wired up too. The next piece of hardware you need to be a successful remote worker is a headset with an adjustable microphone boom. Everyone has different preferences — weight, fit, padding, shape — so I’m not going to recommend ..read more
Digital Digressions by Stuart Sierra
3y ago
So you want to work remote. Or you want other people to be remote. You want space. Perspective. Distance. Escape the corporate cubicle farm and work in your pajamas. First, you need to get some network cables. Wi-Fi is terrible. No, really, it is. “But my super-duper Wi-Fi router can do 200 zottabits per second ..read more