For the most part I get to work 100% remotely which generally works quite well for me. I have tried pair programming a few times but always prefer to code without an audience. I don't know what it is, but something about writing code while I have an audience just makes my mind go blank. I guess I will never be a Twitch star!
Not all aspects of software engineering work well as a solo endeavour though. Planning out large features is always better as a group exercise as is coming up with system architecture.
We do quite well working async by writing up documents and reviewing them when we have time. For large features though, nothing beats an in person meeting where you can go back and forth with ideas and get instant feedback.
A few weeks ago I met up with our co-founder in London to do some planning, and next week I am flying off to Berlin for an engineering meet-up. I am looking forward to seeing everyone. I do enjoy working at home, but it can get quite lonely, and you don't get that team spirit and motivation, as much as you do when you are all together.
As it is getting closer to that time of year, we are also taking the opportunity to have our team Christmas meal together. There is nothing like German Christmas markets and some hearty food to get you into the Christmas spirit.
For me, working 95% remotely with 5% in person is a much better balance to the hybrid setup that a lot of companies have. Admittedly this only really works so well as we are all senior engineers each with over a decade of experience so we don't need much assistance when it comes to the day-to-day tasks. It will be interesting to see how this evolves as the team grows.
Next week will likely be a shorter issue as I will be resting after drinking lots of German beer travelling.
Side note: One of my lovely readers congratulated me last week for 100 issues of this newsletter. I completely missed that milestone, so thank you. I hope you enjoyed issue 101!
❤️ Picks of the Week #
📝 Article — The tech utopia fantasy is over — I wrote a while ago how technology isn't really making our lives easier. The hope was that one day we would have household robots that would do all our chores and handle the boring work so that we would have more leisure time. Instead, we are expected to use AI to get even more work done, and we are all still left cooking our own food and doing the laundry.
📝 Article — Self Hosting is an Unhelpful Term — I personally like self-hosting, but it isn't without some maintenance burden. It generally doesn't go down well with the family when the lights in our house don't work because my server has lost internet connection or crashed due to running out memory. What is important though is having the option to host it yourself and the confidence to know that it won't go offline or suddenly be shut behind a paywall.
📝 Article — RFC 35140: HTTP Do-Not-Stab (2023) — This was a funny bit of satire that made me laugh. It is a sad state of affairs though that the majority of companies don't have honesty, integrity and moral ethics as company values.
📝 Article — Alpine.js for home-cooked apps — I use React and Next.js at work, but React is pretty complicated with its state management and hooks. There is a lot of boilerplate needed just to get started. Alpine looks like a good option if you want to put something together quickly. I am probably more likely to use something like Svelte though for my next personal project.
📝 Article — Which IDEs do software engineers love, and why? — People seem to love Cursor. I must admit I am using AI a lot more now to help with my day-to-day coding. I am not interested in getting it to write large parts for me, but it is useful in a “why the hell does this not work?” kind of way. It certainly beats hunting through StackOverflow responses for an answer.
🛠️ Tool — Voice-Pro: AI Voice Cloning — Voice cloning is an interesting topic. I have wondered in the past whether I could clone my own voice and then do faceless YouTube videos. There are a few use cases such as preserving your voice should you lose the ability to speak in the future that have merit. Unfortunately most of the use cases are for cloning other peoples voices without permission.
🗺️ Map — A pretty visualisation of the European power grid (2022) — This is quite a fascinating map showing all the power grid in Europe. I never realised the UK imported so much electricity from other countries.
📝 Article — The UX of Lego Interface Panels (2020) — I found this quite an interesting read. Mainly due to recognising some blocks from when I was a kid. If you are a UX designer you might find this intriguing.
📝 Article — Hetzner raises prices while significantly lowering bandwidth (US) — I don't use Hetzner myself, but I have heard good things. It is shame they are having to increase the prices and lower the bandwidth for everyone due the abuse of a few. As far as I am aware EU prices are unaffected, but I wouldn't be surprised if that changes soon.
💻 Gadget — The PokyPow Prelaunch Page is live! — I need something like this for my NAS server. I only turn it on when we require it and I have a schedule set to turn it off every night. Like a caveman though I have to press the physical on button to turn it on, this would be great and would allow me to turn it on via HomeAssistant and my Apple HomePods.