My mission is to help people learn how to embrace change and harvest its value. Here you will find hundreds of free articles and videos covering software topics ranging from highly technical to broadly philosophical.
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Let’s talk about the basic concept of the "making app". I’ve written about this before, and demoed it in some of my public project walk-throughs, but there’s no single straightforward explanation out there, so let’s take a swing. What is a "making app", and why might one want to roll one for a project? In […]
Read MoreLeading Technical Change is a small, live, remote seminar aimed squarely at a single topic: Real Change in the Real World. A new cohort is open now: March 11,12,14, & 15, 10am to noon Eastern (UTC-5). There are just six seats available, so we can drill down on the actual situations in which you’re seeking […]
Read MoreToday I want to answer a question that, honestly, almost no one ever asks. Why are we changing frames, instead of getting rid of them altogether? Talking about change in the geek trades is a joy for me, but I’m even more interested in seeing change out in the world. Please think outside the monitor. […]
Read MoreWe started with the concept of the mental frame, a comparatively rigid & invisible construct which structures and guides nearly all our behaviors. Today, let’s take up the triad of powerful forces that we can use to change frames: community, narrative, and experience. https://www.geepawhill.org/2023/01/20/changing-the-frame/ As ever with me, though considering change in the geek trades […]
Read MoreFor nearly everyone who seeks to facilitate change, the first faltering step is usually in the crafting of a persuasive argument.
Read MoreHere’s another technique card from my seminar, “Leading Technical Change”. We first get into midwifing change precisely because we want it to be smoother, easier, and faster. But sometimes, a coach needs not to rush a decision through, but to slow it down. It’s so exciting when our proposed change starts to catch fire, especially […]
Read MoreIf we’re going to enable and support change, we’re going to fail, more often than we succeed, and we want to bake that idea in, early on, lest we fail both more often, and potentially more disastrously. Here’s some thoughts around this NOT DEPRESSING topic. 🙂 The weirdest thing about all this: it’s actually rather […]
Read MoreCan we be honest? If we’re going to be successful change midwives, honesty is very important. In this technique card from Leading Technical Change, I talk about some of the ins & outs of this complicated topic. The first point is urgent: Being honest means believing everything you say, not saying everything you believe. Honesty […]
Read MoreI was gratified by the response to my first "detail" article. But I did note that many persons praised my article for its commitment to the long game. Framing the commitment, for a geek, to detail, as a long game, seems right, sounds right, cuz after all, we only ever care about quality in the […]
Read MoreThe people who hire me ask me to help their teams make changes. Most of the time, my first step is to see how I can slash those teams’ load. Here’s a technique card from my seminar, “Leading Technical Change” Raw text of a technique card: Wait, what? First thing I do To me, this […]
Read MoreDetail: The thing that strikes me over and over again, in my own work style, in my Friday group’s analytics, in Ron’s long-running Kotlin and short-running Gilded Rose series, is how much attention high-skill geeks pay to some of the smallest details in the code. An example. I was doing Gilded Rose the other day, […]
Read MoreJoy project: Today’s a comparatively light work day, so I’m gonna lay out what I’m actually trying to do with this project. The source, btw, is at: GitHub – GeePawHill/fgno-plotter Playtime project for the fgno meetup. Contribute to GeePawHill/fgno-plotter development by creating an account on GitHub. Feel free to poke around. There are a bunch […]
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A Making UI We’ve got a very crude skeleton running, let’s get it on the screen, inside a "making app"! If you want to follow along, the repo is at https://github.com/GeePawHill/robot-worlds. Transcript and captions coming soon . . .
Read MoreReal Programming S01E09: Making A Start, Starting A Make? This time, we’re going to start our making app. What’s a making app? Come and see! If you want to follow along in the code, the project is at github. Hey. Welcome to Real Programming. The show where even after taking many months of break time, […]
Read MoreHow much are you able to learn on your own? For some people, reading books, articles, and going to certain training courses are all they need to keep steadily growing their skillset. For teams however, things are a bit more challenging. Retrospectives are indeed a great help, but these are still from the team’s own […]
Read MoreReal Programming S01E03: Baby Needs New Shoes! Watching those itty-bitty numbers for the dice is making me crazy, so let’s get some dice images going today! If you want to follow along in the code, the project is https://github.com/geepawhill/yz Transcript Hey there. Welcome to episode 3 of Real Programming, the show where we’re still trying […]
Read MoreReal Programming S01E02: Look, Ma! A Test Last time we did a rapid-fire model/view split, just so we could test. Now we gotta test this bad boy a little! If you want to follow along in the code, the project is https://github.com/geepawhill/yz Hey, it’s GeePaw and I still have Wally, and Molly’s off camera, and […]
Read More(Video: https://vimeo.com/448155181) Real Programming S01E01: Getting Started Hi Folks! In this first episode we lay the groundwork for a simple desktop Yahtzee application. If you want to follow along in the code, the project is https://github.com/geepawhill/yz Transcript Hey, folks. It’s GeePaw sitting out here on my deck, where I do most of my work in […]
Read MoreAight. I been away from programming for a couple of months, but there was a reason I started talking the other day about the kontentment project: I’m wanting mucho change in it. For a talk I’m giving, I want the ability to draw human arcs, with the same ease with which I can draw human […]
Read MoreHey, it’s GeePaw, and if you’re just starting to look at TDD, refactoring, the modern technical synthesis, we need to start with a couple of minutes about the Lump Of Coding fallacy. You’re a working geek: you spend your days coding for money to add value to your company. And one day some random schmoe […]
Read MoreHey, there, it’s GeePaw! And you are watching the first ever GeePaw video aimed specifically at coaches. I hope you like it. Do you know what the first absolute prerequisite for being a successful software development coach is? You have to like people. You have to like people. You have to like their style. You […]
Read MoreA Simple Optimization Problem Hey, it’s GeePaw! Got a little optimization issue for you. Let’s look at some code. It’s easy stuff, so I’ve just used pseudocode here. Take a look. The program starts by entering a loop that runs 50 times. Inside that loop, it calls the Read method. It then enters another nested […]
Read MoreFive Underplayed Premises Of Test-Driven Development (Transcript) Hey, it’s GeePaw! I’m here to tell you today about five underplayed premises of Test-Driven Development. These premises form the kind of fundament under which almost all TDD proceeds. And when I say that I’m a TDDer, I almost always mean I am operating inside the little ring […]
Read MoreA microtest has the following properties: It is short, typically under a dozen lines of code. It is *always* automated. It does not test the object inside the running app, but instead in a purpose-built testing application. It invokes only a tiny portion of the code, most usually a single branch of a single function. […]
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