Making software is fun. Running software can be less fun. How do you do both and not go insane? How do you make sure you’re not working all the time to keep your (virtual) baby up in the air?
The same rules apply whether you’re a startup, a scale-up, a corporate, an individual, an open source project contributor. You’re part of your own support problem.
This time I discuss what it’s like to be a coder who wants to have it all – the good times and the bad times – but wants to limit the bad times to working hours only. I hope you enjoy it as much as I made recording it.
NOTES
XKCD 242 – The Difference:
Brian Scanlan about Intercom’s approach to on call.
https://www.intercom.com/blog/rapid-response-how-we-developed-an-on-call-team-at-intercom/
And he talked about this recently on Adventures in DevOps:
Inspiring music that helped me write this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milk_%26_Kisses
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reading,_Writing_and_Arithmetic
QUOTES
01:25 – How did it feel the first time you wrote something in a computer language that maybe you just learned and it worked perhaps first time
02:50 – We’re in that space where creation is flowing. But at some point reality bites. Then we need to do something with this thing that we’ve created.
5:05 – What is happening tonight? Mummy, why can’t we go out to the zoo this weekend? I know guilt right. The point I’m really laboring here is that one should be proud of your creations.
05:18 – All of our creations need us. All of these things are calling for our time.
06:48 – Some of the most successful systems on the planet have been built on a knife edge of functional validity.
07:43 – Your job is therefore to minimize that risk and ensure that you can roll back or fix forward with the least possible effort.
09:21 – Be aware of your legacy as a coder. Think carefully about how your persisted data will be managed.
You can listen to the whole episode here.
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