4 tech jobs for people who don't code: In the first article in this series, I explained how the tech industry divides people and roles into “technical” or “non-technical” categories and the problems associated with this. The tech industry makes it difficult for people interested in tech—but not coding—to figure out where they fit in …
Don't ignore .gitignore: I have noticed that many developers do not use a .gitignore file, even though it’s a best practice to use one to designate files you don’t want Git to track in version control. Because .gitignore can boost your code quality, you should not ignore .gitignore in your repositories. What is .gitignore? Files …
You don't need a computer science degree to work with open source software: I am mostly a self-taught programmer. When I was growing up in the late 1970s, our elementary school had a small resource room with an Apple II computer. My brother and I fell into a group of friends that liked computers, and …
Don't love diff? Use Meld instead: Meld is one of my essential tools for working with code and data files. It’s a graphical diff tool, so if you’ve ever used the diff command and struggled to make sense of the output, Meld is here to help. Here is a brilliant description from the project’s website: read more: …
Don't like IDEs? Try grepgitvi: Like most developers, I search and read source code all day long. Personally, I’ve never gotten used to integrated development environments (IDEs), and for years, I mainly used grep and copy/pasted file names to open Vi(m). Eventually, I came up with this script, slowly refining it as needed. read more: …
Why you don't have to be afraid of Kubernetes: It was fun to work at a large web property in the late 1990s and early 2000s. My experience takes me back to American Greetings Interactive, where on Valentine’s Day, we had one of the top 10 sites on the internet (measured by web traffic). We …
Don't test in production? Test in production!: If you last updated your IT security standards five or more years ago, chances are they don’t line up well with the realities of today’s DevOps and site reliability engineering (SRE) practices. One particularly sticky topic is testing in production—and, thus, testing with production data—because DevOps and SRE …
How writing can change your career for the better, even if you don't identify as a writer: Have you read Marie Kondo’s book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up? Or did you, like me, buy it and read a little bit and then add it to the pile of clutter next to your bed? Early …
We don't make software for free, we make it for freedom: The debate about whether vendors can thrive and scale if their primary outputs are freely licensed continues to brew nearly two years since I wrote about the topic. read more: Opensource.com richardwyles Supporting Open Source. Have you tried: Diving with Sharks?