Musings of a Developer

Tom Henricksen

Musings of a Developer

A collection of popular posts

Copyright © 2024 by Tom Henricksen

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.

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Contents

Preface

1. Make a technical career shift: from Developer to DevOps right now!

2. Building A Great Tech Team

3. What is the project status? Red Amber Green what does that mean?

4. How to Successfully jump into a new Codebase

5. Object-oriented programming is the world we live in

6. The Shockingly Simple Secrets from The Pragmatic Engineer

7. Software Development from Waterfall to DevOps

8. Staying Above The Line: Drama or Presence

9. Check out what to put in your developer scorecard

10. How to get Business Analysts and Developers to row in the same direction

11. Why you need to try Value Stream Mapping

12. Uncovering the simple waste here in IT

13. How to craft better code using OOP Principles

14. Building Your Personal Brand

15. XML the Language of data

16. Why don’t the developers speak up? The secrets to engaging the whole team

17. Code smells from mild to Strong

18. Build your brand like Linus with a bit of marketing insight

19. Leaner and Meaner: Lean Development

20. How to onboard developers successfully

21. First 100 days for a developer

About the Author

Preface

This is a collection of popular blog posts I have shared over the past years. As a developer, I enjoy digging into topics that catch my eye. From code to interpersonal collaboration, it is fun to explore these ideas.

While my job can be quite technical we all must work on teams. That is where our true leverage lies. As an individual, we can only achieve so much. Even though many developers are introverts we must overcome our inclination.

Enjoy this collection and please reach out with questions or topics that you would enjoy reading about!

1

Make a technical career shift: from Developer to DevOps right now!

As more companies switch to DevOps more developers want to make the switch. What skills do you need to make this career transition from developer to DevOps? How can we go about starting this change? If you want to make this change you are in the right spot!

I have gone through a similar transition in my career. From being a developer to working on DevOps teams it can be a bit of a change. There are a few skills and mindset shifts we need to go through to be successful.

As a quick disclaimer, each company may have a different DevOps stack and practices. We will cover some of the more common and basic skills needed.

Cloud

Even people outside of technology hear the constant talk about cloud technologies. Mark Henke shared, "So what does it take to become a successful DevOps engineer?…

The first skill set we’ll cover is the ability to leverage cloud and serverless platforms." It is pretty critical to know how to use these technologies for a DevOps role.

Henke continues, To be a DevOps engineer, it is and will continue to be key to understanding these cloud offerings. So I guess cloud isn’t a fad after all!

Depending on the organization you are with you will need to understand their particular cloud provider. Most companies use Amazon but, there are other players out there.

Linux

To be a successful DevOps Engineer you need to know your way around the command line. Linux is a tool that is in use in most DevOps shops. Igor Kantor points out, "Honestly, the best way to do it is to