Communication is hard -- especially when working remotely.
Being a software engineer means working with others in order to find solutions to a communal problem. Everyone has their own strengths, weaknesses, preferences, and experiences. Sometimes fear gets in the way of effective communication that leads to healthy collaboration.
Communication is never easy working remotely makes it especially challenging. This is something I am constantly working to improve. What I have started to do is record what I say and write and review it.
Accessibility and future proofing
My favorite comments are the ones that help make the code more accessible and also keep an eye towards the future.
Praise for comments
PR reviews are should be constructive criticism — a way to make the code better for all. They can also be ways for active praise. A way to encourage and promote ideas and attitudes that make for a better working enviroment.
Accessibility and the image alt tag
Lets use types!
I worked in a codebase that struggled with its usage of types. It has started as a Javascript React codebase. For business reasons it couldn’t get many eng or product resources. Yet it was a public facing product that was important enough to keep alive and required integrations with newer offerings.
Someone had started the process of converting parts of it to Typescript using types defined elsewhere in our offering.
Making any change was incredibly painful from an eng perspective. Our manager encouraged us all to present ways that we thought could improve the codebase. here, I highlight a pain-point I was finding along with my suggestion for improvement.