I have been busy hacking since I got back from my long holidays. I didn’t miss computers while travelling around the world. Not for a second. When you hike up a volcano and engorge yourself in the beautiful views only this planet can reward you with it’s hard to think of computers let alone hacking.

But now that I’m back and re-engaged my hacking mode I’ve gained a whole new appreciation for what the act of building software gives me. I like building things. Silly things. Any things. It’s fun. I find it engaging and fulfilling for reasons I don’t quite fully understand. To be honest, I’ve never really thought about the reasons. Is it the dopamine I get from solving problems with code? Is it the feeling of accomplishment? Is it just the IKEA effect at play? I don’t know. Frankly, I don’t really care that much about the actual reasons behind it. It’s the effect the activity has on me what matters.

Throughout my career, I’ve learnt, usually the hard way, the importance of getting the foundations of whatever I was working on right. Or at least as right as possible. I learnt how fundamental it is for setting your project — and by proxy, your team — up for success. I’d argue it’s one of the most important things you should pay attention to. Getting the basics right is notoriously hard due to the inevitability of changing requirements, external factors, etc. which is why dedicating a reasonably large amount of time to figure out the foundations is so invaluable.

This blog post is a collection of advice or rules I’ve learnt to live by as a software engineer.

It’s an accumulation of experiences I’ve gained through working for software organizations of various sizes.

Most of the advice in this post is aimed at software engineers, but some may be applicable to other roles and industries.

Understand the problems you are solving

This isn’t a revolutionary idea. But the very sad reality of life is that it still hasn’t been internalised by so many engineers and organisations that it’s worth reiterating. I can’t stress enough how important understanding the problems you are trying to solve is. I’ve seen countless hours and budgets wasted on “solving” problems that have been completely misunderstood and often actually made worse by taking the wrong action.

UPDATE: 4th January, The way out of burnout

The beginning of 2021 marked the point when some of us were bracing with hope for the year that lied ahead. The year that we hoped to be “better” than the one that we were leaving behind. Little did we know we should have braced for impact instead.

For me personally, if 2020 was bad enough then 2021 wiped the last shreds of whatever mental resilience or energy I had left in me. I’m entering 2022 pretty much on some kinda pandemic cruise control. Time as measured by calendar days no longer matters, the majority of the human contact happens over bits and bytes and, yet, “things” can still get worse. They call it the “new normal”. Whatever. At least I’ve survived so I got that goin’ for me which is nice.