Tag: software developer

Name Casing Conventions, The Quick Comparison

There are a number of name casing practices, which I’ll cover in quick fashion here, for variables and other objects when programming.

The Quickie Synopsis

  • camelCaseLikeThis
  • PascalCaseLikeThis
  • snake_case_like_this
  • kebab-case-like-this
  • MixAnd-match_like-this

Camel Case

With Camel Case the first letter of the first word is lower case, then every subsequent first letter of each word is upper cased. For example, thisIsCamelCased, something if a singular word, or somethingElse.

My 2 ¢ – I’m a big fan of this case when I’m name private variables or related objects. I’m also a fan of using Camel Casing for certain types of functions, especially in JavaScript such as this.doesStuff() or somethingAnother.doesOtherStuff().

Pascal Case

In usage of Pascal Case, the first letter of each word within the name is upper cased. Examples include ThisOject, ThatThing, or WhateverElse().

My 2 ¢ – This is something I like to use for class declaracters (i.e. public class ThisClassThing) and then for functions or methods on that class, or respectively similarly for functions on functions in JavaScript, or the like. Basically, anything that will be used similar to MyThing.DoesThisThing().

Snake Case

Using Snake Case has the empty spaces replaced with underscores. So a file name like this is my filename.md would become this_is_my_filename.md.

My 2 ¢ – Snake case is great when I need to have variables that would otherwise have spaces, but also wouldn’t be displayed regularly with anything that might obfuscate the underscore, such as an HTML.

Kebab Case

Kebabs are tasty, the case however is similar to Snake Case, except instead of underscores dashes are used. Each space in the name is replaced with a - character. Such as my-table-name-is-this or this-is-a-variable.

My 2 ¢ – Kebab case is excellent for filenames, URIs, or something of that sort where spacing between the words of a file or path are important to read, but an underscore would be obfuscated by the font rendering such as with a URI.

Where are the Part Time ~20-30 hrs Dev Gigs?

Over the years one of the things that I’ve seen missing in disproportionate amounts are many opportunities for part time work in the software development industry. There are two things about this fact that makes me kind of chuckle at the absurdity behind them.

  1. Much of the time there isn’t any part time work because so much of management and the existing group think is that more hours equal more productivity and more product. This is, however, very wrong.
  2. If software developers did work fewer hours, they actually have a high possibility that they’d become more productive, not less.

Shock, gasp, horror, no, tell me it isn’t so, you mean an entire industry is wrong about the human psychology behind an occupation?! Yup. The perverse thing is this isn’t exactly the first time. It appears, we humans are really bad at determining the best psychological state to be in for a particular occupation. We tend to get better at managing this, but overall we humans don’t have a great track record.

What I’d like to see, and I’m by no means assuming anybody would listen, but if leadership out there is, here are my thoughts. They’re free, I’m putting them right here on this blog, and I’m not even asking for any pennies for my thoughts. Disseminate and use as you would like!

The Part Time Coder Position – $40-80k Dependent on Experience & Contribution Ability

Description: Available for meetings, pairing and coding for 4 hours per day, either on a declared morning or evening schedule to sync up with the team. Spending 4-5 hours per day total either meeting or working on project code. No excess meetings, domain planning or other business meetings necessary, core focus is coding and communication with the team and team lead that are working on the coding project.

Requisite Job Requirements:
• Possibly spend a full time week or two to get up to speed on practices, such as kanban usage, task tracking or whatever else is in use for project management.
• Be familiar with software development in general, with the expectation being of several years of experience with some stack that is similar to the primary stack that is being used.
• Be able to communicate, determine need for communication (especially if remote), and up-manage as well as determine self-direction with minimal interaction. i.e. ability to use the right comms for the right messages as often as possible.
• Be able to apply algorithms, patterns, and related thinking to provide solutions to the problem domain space that is being approached.

Other Peripheral Requirements:
• Ability to provide rough guesstimates on where and what effort something will take, pending reasonable time given to determine such things. Also management, as always, should keep in mind, estimates are always wrong. Just sayin’.

So where is this position availability? How about throwing some of those out there and see how or what could be done with some roles like that? It could be very useful. If you’re interested in putting some positions like this into place, I’d be happy to help consult or determine what you’d need.

Recruiters: I pose this question and write this blog entry knowing of no less than a dozen people that would work in software development, are exceptional software developers, but don’t because they’re either A: well off and have no need or desire to work full time or B: want to spend considerable amount of time living life and don’t have huge expenses, so they’d be really happy with a part time job. Neither of these people have any desire to work more than about ~20 hours a week. It’s a workforce that hasn’t even been touched on and overall, the businesses in the tech sector are seriously missing out

I’ve Officially Sent This Email Over 100 Times to Recruiters Looking for .NET Developers

Job Description

Here’s the letter, it’s kind of LOLz! I know it’s tough to find .NET Developers (or replace .NET with Java Developers or X Enterprise Language), so CIOs, CTOs and others take note. Here’s what I experience and what I see all the time, embodied in a letter. I will put effort into hooking people up with good jobs, that fit the person, and persons that fit the job, but lately I’ve seen companies that do .NET work in the Portland, Seattle and especially San Francisco areas become exceedingly desperate for .NET Developers. This is what my general response looks like.

“Hello Recruiter Looking for .NET Developer(s), thanks for reaching out to me, however I regret to inform you that I don’t know a single .NET Developer in Portland Oregon looking for work. It seems all the .NET Developers have either A: gone to work for Microsoft on Node.js Technologies, B: switched from being a .NET Developer to a Software Developer or otherwise C: left the field and don’t want to see any software ever again (which always makes me sad when people burn out, but alas, hopefully they find something they love). It’s a funny world we live in.

Even though I’m fairly well connected in Portland, Seattle, Vancouver (BC) and even San Francisco it is rare for me to meet someone who wants to do pure .NET Development. If there is I’ll connect them with you. However if you know a company that is porting away from .NET, building greenfield applications in Node.js, Ruby on Rails or other open source stacks I have a few software developers that might be interested.

Cheers”

Even though this letter is geared toward recruiters looking for coders, there is another letter that I’d like to write to a lot of other companies, that goes something like this,

“Dear Sir or Madam At X Corp Enterprise,

Please realize that lumping a person into the position you’re requesting (.NET Developer) is a career limiting maneuver for many in the occupation of software developers. We software developers are people who solve problems, it happens that we do this with code written on computers. The computers execute that code for us thus resolving the problems that you face. This helps X Corp Enterprise do business better! It’s a great relationship in many ways, but please don’t limit our future careers by mislabeling us.

Also, we’re not resources. That’s just a scummy thing for a human to call another human. Thanks for reading this letter, have a great day at X Corp Enterprise!”

I’d be happy to refer .NETters (or Javaers or COBOLers or RPGers or whatever), but seriously, it seems to be a lost cause out there, even more so for mid-level or beginning developers. Barely a soul is looking for a job as a .NET Developer, but I know a few that look for jobs as software developers every couple of weeks.

Speaking of which, if you are looking for work and you want a filtered list of the cool companies and related information of who to work for in Seattle, Portland or elsewhere in Cascadia reach out to me and let me know who you are. I’m more than happy to help you filter through the mine field of companies and job listings. Cheers!

Addendum:

Coder Society: Vote, Group, Create!

A New Kind of User Group…  Coders Unite Pt 2!

Call it a hackathon, coder session, workshop, or whatever. What it is not, is a presentation. What am I talking about? A user group effort that I’m working, and mentioned recently regarding coders uniting, on with others that will be centered around doing something, a range of things, during a specific time frame, to expand one’s knowledge, skills, or help mentor on the specific thing that is being worked on. Instead of me going on and on with an explanation, I’ll describe a scenario from this new user group.

Vote, Group, Create!

First a conversation kicks off a thread (sign up to kick off a thread yourself). From that thread a topic arrises that people want to work with, work on, learn more about, and try to implement. Recently one of these topics that has come up is Continuous Deployment. The idea has been batted around now for a few weeks and it is ripe for a meet up and for a group to get together and actually implement a solution. This is a perfect example of something that can be implemented in a set time, with a group of people, individuals can then take that knowledge and go forth to make their development shops better.

So join the e-mail list, help us come up with ideas, and we’ll see you at an upcoming meet up and we’ll build something awesome!

Google Groups
Coder Society
Visit this group