Are you a new developer but want to sound ultra-hip like your 10x tech bros who have more experience under their belt? That’s a trick question. Of course, you do! For the next five minutes, open your mind and your cargo shorts’ pockets to fill up with tech goodness. Let's do this top 5 countdown style.
Number 5 - 10x Developer
The 10x developer refers to unicorn developers who are ten times as productive as the average developer. The term can be traced back to Tom DeMarco and Tim Lister's 1977 Coding War Games, which was intended to measure productivity. Do 10x developers really exist? The debate rages on, and we may never know.
Dude, did you see that new developer? He has no stickers on his laptop. Who does he think he is? 10x?
Number 4 - Syntactic Sugar
Syntactic sugar describes a programming language feature intended to make more lengthy or complex code easier to write. It does not add any new functionality. Typically, it is added to languages as they evolve. However, because it is technically redundant and adds more syntax to learn, some developers dislike syntactic sugar. At the same time, it is often used as a way to gatekeep newer developers.
This code is horrible! It's all syntactic sugar, and my teeth hurt. I only write real code.
Number 3 - Small Matter of Programming (SMOP)
SMOP is a tongue-in-cheek term to suggest that making code changes will be a trivial matter (while it is often quite the opposite). It is common for these suggestions to come from those less familiar with software engineering, such as managers or CEOs.
The CEO told me today that they want us to change the entire main branch to Kotlin because he read how efficient it is. Just a small matter of programming.
Number 2 - Dogfooding
Dogfooding, also known as "eating your own dog food," is the practice of using your own code (or product) in production. Generally speaking, it is seen as a positive thing during development to show a team's belief in their own products. Additionally, it can help as a quality control measure by working out issues before (or after) a full release, as the team themselves will effectively be testing the product as they use it. Yet, in some cases, dogfooding may be a pure sales tactic that can put undue stress on company members to use a product that is not suited for the task.
I heard the Skype team dogfoods. No wonder they cannot get organized enough to improve.
Number 1 - Yak-Shaving
Thank you, Ren and Stimpy, for the term "yak-shaving." As the story goes, Carlin Vieri (MIT) invented the term while watching The Ren & Stimpy Show in 1991. The TV show’s main protagonists perform relatively useless tasks while waiting for the shaven yak to float past. Yak-shaving refers to various tasks that, while they may be next to useless, are necessary for achieving the larger upcoming goal. For example, setting up a development environment with many steps in order to compile some code.
Today was a total yak-shave. I didn't get anything productive done. I am going to The Creamery to get a coffee.