Itamar Turner-Trauring articles - 18 total
How to prepare for losing your programming job
Another week has passed, and a few million more people in the US have filed for unemployment. While t...
Doing more with less time: critical skills for productive programmers
This article was written during abnormal circumstances, with much of the planet under lockdown due to...
What can a software developer do about climate change?
Pines and firs are dying across the Pacific Northwest, fires rage across the Amazon, it’s the hottest...
Setting boundaries at your job as a programmer
There’s always another bug, another feature, another deadline.So it’s easy to fall into the trap of t...
Do they have work/life balance? Investigating potential employers with GitHub
When you're searching for a new programming job you want to avoid companies with long work hours. You...
A 4-day workweek for programmers, the easy way
You’re dreaming of a programming job with 30 hours a week, a job where you’ll have time for your own...
Negotiate your salary like a 6-year old
You’re applying for programming jobs, you’re hoping to get an offer soon—and when you do you’ll have...
Competing with a "Stanford grad just dying to work all nighters on Red Bull"
A reader of my newsletter wrote in, talking about the problem of finding a job with work/life balance...
Tests won't make your software correct
Automated tests are immensely useful. Once you’ve started writing tests and seen their value, the ide...
'Must be willing to work under pressure' is a warning sign
As a programmer looking for a job, you need to be on the lookout for badly managed companies. Whether...
Enthusiasts vs. Pragmatists: two types of programmers and how they fail
Do you love programming for its own sake, or do you do for the outcomes it allows? Depending on which...
When and why to clean up your code: now, later, never
You’ve got to meet your deadlines, you’ve got to fix the bug, you’ve got to ship the product. But...
The next career step for Senior Software Engineers (that isn't management)
You’ve been working as a programmer for a few years, you’ve been promoted once or twice, and now you’...
There's always more work to do—but you still don't need to work long hours
Have you ever wished you could reduce your working hours, or even just limit yourself to 40 hours a w...
Why Pylint is both useful and unusable, and how you can actually use it
This is a story about a tool that caught a production-impacting bug the day before we released the code. This is also the story of a tool no one uses, and for good reason. By the time you're done reading you'll see why this tool is useful, why it's unusable, and how you can actually use it with your Python project.
Bad at whiteboard puzzles? You can still get a programming job
Practicing algorithm puzzles stresses you out: just looking at a copy of Cracking the Coding Intervie...
Big picture software testing: unit-testing, Lean Startup, and everything in-between
Why and how should you test your software? I propose a useful model to help you answer these questions for yourself.
Buggy Software, Loyal Users: Why Bug Reporting is Key To User Retention
Why and how improving your bug reporting can keep users from giving up on your software.