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The Human Dimension of Software Engineering

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Doodle Tuesday: Signs

February 27, 2018 By Lorenzo Pasqualis Leave a Comment

I have been using a RocketBook Everlast reusable notebook for all of my notes and doodles for a week now, and  I don’t think I’ll ever go back to normal paper anytime soon. I am officially a believer.

What I noticed:

  1. I take many more notes than usual. I had to think a bit about why that is, and I figured it out. It is precisely for the same reason why I shoot more pictures with a digital camera compared to a film camera. It is cheap and as temporary as I want it to be. I am not afraid to ruin a page or to write or draw something dumb that I’ll have to look at for a long time. If I start a page of notes, and if the page ends up being useless, I just erase it. If I like it, I capture it and it goes in Evernote.
  2. The “paper” is very smooth. The pen glides on it without feeling resistance or texture. It is a very comfortable sensation that I enjoy more and more as I use it. It makes me want to write on it.
  3. If I just want to erase an illegible word or a line that bothers me, I can use the eraser on the cap of the FriXon pen. Each of them comes with a hard eraser that works perfectly on the Rocketbook notebook. I don’t know if it will shorten the life of the notebook, but I don’t really care that much. It is convenient, and it makes things much easier.

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Filed Under: doodle tuesday Tagged With: art, doodle

A Programmer Burnout Story; How to Recognize it And Avoid it

February 26, 2018 By Lorenzo Pasqualis 11 Comments

I am very interested in psychology, but I am not a psychologist. I do not have any specific or tangential formal education on the phenomenon of burnout. My experience with it is from the trenches. I have been in some nasty ones, knee deep in the mud, grasping for something solid to avoid going down and drowning. I have observed software developers burnout, and I know how bad it can get.

I got close to get burnout myself a couple of times but managed to avoid it by doing research on the topic and taking decisive actions. I have seen friends and co-workers fall deep into it, and struggle to get out of its hideous embrace. I have also helped some of them to get out of it. ... 

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Filed Under: bolbo, health Tagged With: advice, balance, bolbo, career, culture, leadership, people, strategy, teams, work environment

How To Deal With Praise

February 23, 2018 By Lorenzo Pasqualis Leave a Comment

I am going to discuss how to deal with praise, but first, let me talk about blog post length.

First Mini-Post In A While

When I started this blog, I used to write only short posts of 300 words or so. That was not enough, so I switched to longer ones, about 2,000 words. Now, I decided that not all posts must be long to be worthy; variety could be fun. I often have ideas for shorter off-schedule issues on rather specific topics, and I will not shy away from publishing them. This is the first one (in a while).

A Thick Skin

I have a pretty thick skin. I am not a particularly emotional person, and I do not get hurt easily. I take very few things personally, and I tend to assume the best intentions whenever there is no apparent ill-disposed purpose. When someone criticizes me, my blood pressure goes up a couple of millibars, then it stops and waits. The discomfort I feel in the process is proportional to how much I believe in the criticism, multiplied by my perception of any malicious intent. ... 

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Filed Under: self-improvement Tagged With: advice, mini-post

The Role of Quality Assurance in Software Development

February 23, 2018 By Lorenzo Pasqualis 2 Comments

Growing Up With Quality Assurance

I grew up in Italy in a household where “Engineering” and “Quality Assurance” (QA) were terms commonly used at the dinner table. My dad, now 92 years old, is an Electronic Engineer who specialized in quality assurance of space technology. He worked for over 30 years in a large company called Officine Galileo as Director of Quality Assurance. Officine Galileo was founded in 1864 to produce military aiming, tracking and firing equipment, before extending its production to include space equipment. ... 

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Filed Under: software industry Tagged With: career, code, qa, quality assurance

Doodle Tuesday: Bad Dreams

February 20, 2018 By Lorenzo Pasqualis Leave a Comment

I have been using Moleskines for many years, and I only recently came across a new reusable notebook that might change my note-taking habits. The jury is still out, but so far I am really liking what I see.

If are not familiar with reusable notebooks, they work like magic! The 30 seconds summary is:

  1. Write on the notebook with an erasable pen. Pilot makes a large array of models under the name “Pilot FriXon.”
  2. Take a picture of your notes with your phone and a special app. The page is cleaned, straightened and sent to your favorite cloud note archiving system (Evernote, OneNote, Dropbox, e-mail, etc…)
  3. Take a damp cloth and wipe the page clean.
  4. Repeat, forever.

Of course, my doodles are starting to appear in the new notebook.

So, here it is! This Tuesday’s doodle is the first one that I created using a , a , and my iPhone X that I used to take a picture of the image. ... 

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Filed Under: doodle tuesday Tagged With: art, doodle

6 Career Ratholes to Avoid in Software Engineering

February 19, 2018 By Lorenzo Pasqualis 4 Comments

There are virtually infinite paths you can take to have a successful and fulfilling career in the software industry. Then again, many roads can lead to long-term issues and career ratholes.

The world of tech forgives compared to other fields. Just think of the areas of law, medicine, and politics for example, where a weak reputation can follow you around and be a disaster hard to recover from. In tech, you might not risk being blackballed from the industry or losing a professional license. However, you can still waste years of growth by getting stuck in the wrong place or walking the wrong path. ... 

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Filed Under: career Tagged With: advice, behaviour, career

7 Strategies to Avoid Software Growth Zero, AKA Drowning in Maintenance

February 16, 2018 By Lorenzo Pasqualis Leave a Comment

The Software Garden

Software is like a garden. Both software and gardens require a lot of work, craftsmanship, and artistry to envision and create, especially when starting from scratch. They both evolve, and they both need constant maintenance, even if you don’t make any significant improvement.

If you are a reader of my blog, you know that I use a character called Bolbo as my mental framework for the quintessentialsoftware developer. You might remember that he has a square jaw, messy black hair, round glasses, a cynical sense of humor and a snarky attitude. I wrote about him in “A day in the life of a software engineer.” In this post, I will talk to you about Bolbo’s brother Polbo, who is a gardener. I will tell you about his journey in the creation of a formal garden. ... 

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Filed Under: software industry Tagged With: advice, bolbo, code, innovation, leadership, products, strategy, teams, technology

How to Lead Change, a Primer

February 7, 2018 By Lorenzo Pasqualis Leave a Comment

On Change

Leo Tolstoy famously said, “Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.” Tolstoy’s words are true today as much as they were true in his time. Life in the 1800s was very different, but people were not.

Today’s tech industry, populated by smart people pushing hard to innovate one line of code at the time, is no exception. Intelligence comes with strong opinions and personalities. If you’ve worked in teams for a while, at some point, you probably wished that somebody could be more pleasant or reasonable. ... 

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Filed Under: leadership Tagged With: advice, career, culture, leadership, people, quotes, teams, work environment

Doodle Tuesday: Spiral of Cornucopias

January 30, 2018 By Lorenzo Pasqualis Leave a Comment

Since many of my readers asked for it, this Tuesday’s piece is another variation of the Cornucopia “doodle,” and it is going to be the last of the series.  I generated it using a variation of my Cornucopia Art processing code. I hope you like it

Starting next Tuesday, I’ll probably resume my usual paper and ink scribbles, or perhaps I’ll start publishing some of my photography. What do you think? Please, let me know in the comments.

What’s next?

During the past couple of weeks, I have been super-busy organizing and leading a Software Architecture Summit. The Summit is over, it was great, but writing time was limited. The good news is that I have a ton of exciting topics to discuss, and can’t wait to get back on my usual writing schedule. ... 

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Filed Under: doodle tuesday Tagged With: art, doodle

Doodle Tuesday: Ball of Cornucopias

January 9, 2018 By Lorenzo Pasqualis Leave a Comment

Last week I published the results of doodles generated by code. This week I am presenting a variation on the same theme; the following image was generated using a variant of my Cornucopia Art processing sketch.

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Filed Under: doodle tuesday Tagged With: art, doodle, processing-language

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The Human Dimension of Software Engineering

The software industry and the tech world are a wild ride, and the people side of any career in tech is as important as the raw technical skills. CoderHood is a Blog dedicated to the human dimension of software engineering.

The author, Lorenzo Pasqualis, is a software engineer with 30+ years of software development and leadership experience. The goal of this blog is to help and support all levels of software developers, software architects, engineering leaders, and engineering managers.

Lorenzo is an advocate for  Women in Tech and a believer that diversity in tech is not only good for humanity, but it is also good for business.

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