#getting-better — Public Fediverse posts

Texting with Siri is utterly useless now. Here's how it goes: invoke Siri. Ask it to send a message. Dictate the message. Have it inevitably misunderstand you. Tell it not to send. Click to edit message. Start editing. Poof! Message completely disappears, and you're back at the previous screen! #Innovation #GettingBetter #Future #Technology2026 #DrainTheSwamp #VibesMakeMoney

Texting with Siri is utterly useless now. Here's how it goes: invoke Siri. Ask it to send a message. Dictate the message. Have it inevitably misunderstand you. Tell it not to send. Click to edit message. Start editing. Poof! Message completely disappears, and you're back at the previous screen! #Innovation #GettingBetter #Future #Technology2026 #DrainTheSwamp #VibesMakeMoney

It's good that in #dcss the enemies don't know how to climb stairs unless they are right there next to you when you go up. Imagine if the entire #orc army could actually follow you through the dungeon, you'd have no peace at all. A #roguelike where uniques and other powerful enemies could develop a grudge against you and track you across dungeon levels would make for a more interesting experience though. #gettingbetter #dungeoncrawlstonesoup

It's good that in #dcss the enemies don't know how to climb stairs unless they are right there next to you when you go up. Imagine if the entire #orc army could actually follow you through the dungeon, you'd have no peace at all. A #roguelike where uniques and other powerful enemies could develop a grudge against you and track you across dungeon levels would make for a more interesting experience though. #gettingbetter #dungeoncrawlstonesoup

It's been a very good weekend indeed:

1. Had a fabulous platinum facial on Friday (my first) followed by drinks with some South African friends
2. Saw Frankenstein yesterday (5⭐️) and had a big Greek meal to celebrate my late mum's birthday
3. Went for a Thai massage today, followed by a pub stop and my first stew of the season

I can finally feel myself emerging from a pretty dark period of time

#3GoodThings #Today #GettingBetter

It's been a very good weekend indeed:

1. Had a fabulous platinum facial on Friday (my first) followed by drinks with some South African friends
2. Saw Frankenstein yesterday (5⭐️) and had a big Greek meal to celebrate my late mum's birthday
3. Went for a Thai massage today, followed by a pub stop and my first stew of the season

I can finally feel myself emerging from a pretty dark period of time

#3GoodThings #Today #GettingBetter

After not being able to properly weight train for 2 months due to chronic sinusitis, I guess it's not bad that I got within 5kg of my personal best with weighted pull-ups tonight. Still feel so weak though. Oh well, at least the new meds seem to be helping so win, I guess?

#gettingbetter #gettingstronger

After not being able to properly weight train for 2 months due to chronic sinusitis, I guess it's not bad that I got within 5kg of my personal best with weighted pull-ups tonight. Still feel so weak though. Oh well, at least the new meds seem to be helping so win, I guess?

#gettingbetter #gettingstronger

#100DaysOfGameDev Day 13. Upper teeth are done (for now). I'll finish the bottom tomorrow. #GettingBetter #GameDev #IndieDev #IndieGameDev #IndieGames #Blender #Halloween

#100DaysOfGameDev Day 13. Upper teeth are done (for now). I'll finish the bottom tomorrow. #GettingBetter #GameDev #IndieDev #IndieGameDev #IndieGames #Blender #Halloween

Lately and for therapy reasons I got myself a little notebook.

Here I write everything that comes to my mind.

Without thinking of it, I feel like I'm improving my writing skills.

Feels like my brain was plugged and ideas are slowly coming through.

#Technology #RetroTech #Ideas #GettingBetter #Thoughts

Lately and for therapy reasons I got myself a little notebook.

Here I write everything that comes to my mind.

Without thinking of it, I feel like I'm improving my writing skills.

Feels like my brain was plugged and ideas are slowly coming through.

#Technology #RetroTech #Ideas #GettingBetter #Thoughts

Still in hospital. It’s been over a week, for something (laminectomies) that was only supposed to be 2 to 3 days. However, I have received very good care and do not have to pay for one penny of it. Canada has some problems with our healthcare system, but personal expense is not one of them. #socializedmedicine #Canada #healthcare #GettingBetter

Still in hospital. It’s been over a week, for something (laminectomies) that was only supposed to be 2 to 3 days. However, I have received very good care and do not have to pay for one penny of it. Canada has some problems with our healthcare system, but personal expense is not one of them. #socializedmedicine #Canada #healthcare #GettingBetter

As soon as I can stand up for more than 20 minutes at a time I’m going to start making how-to craft videos again. I know you are all excited to watch me throw clay around as I learn. Right now I’m just making anklets cuz it’s still hard to breathe but I’m getting better. #gettingbetter #crafting #macrame

As soon as I can stand up for more than 20 minutes at a time I’m going to start making how-to craft videos again. I know you are all excited to watch me throw clay around as I learn. Right now I’m just making anklets cuz it’s still hard to breathe but I’m getting better. #gettingbetter #crafting #macrame

And anyone who is keeping up with my health drama, I went outside today and walked to the local piroshki bakery. That’s like a half mile walk! That’s the most walking I’ve done in 16 days. Also, I can smell oranges AND coffee now. So things are getting better. ☺️ #GettingBetter

And anyone who is keeping up with my health drama, I went outside today and walked to the local piroshki bakery. That’s like a half mile walk! That’s the most walking I’ve done in 16 days. Also, I can smell oranges AND coffee now. So things are getting better. ☺️ #GettingBetter

Who even am I? At the gym at 6.15am!

#DoingTheWork #GettingBetter #Gym #Exercise

Well the bloko who hid my clothes and locked me in his house knocked on the door asking to come in.

I said no!

#GettingBetter

#TheMetalDogArticleList
#MetalInjection
Ex-IRON MAIDEN Vocalist BLAZE BAYLEY Suffers Heart Attack
We wish Bayley all the best.

https://metalinjection.net/news/ex-iron-maiden-vocalist-blaze-bayley-suffers-heart-attack

#BlazeBayley #ExIronMaiden #HeartAttack #HealthEmergency #GettingBetter #PrayForBlaze

#TheMetalDogArticleList
#MetalInjection
Ex-IRON MAIDEN Vocalist BLAZE BAYLEY Suffers Heart Attack
We wish Bayley all the best.

https://metalinjection.net/news/ex-iron-maiden-vocalist-blaze-bayley-suffers-heart-attack

#BlazeBayley #ExIronMaiden #HeartAttack #HealthEmergency #GettingBetter #PrayForBlaze

Getting Better by Michael Rosen review – a survivor’s manual https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/jan/25/getting-better-by-michael-rosen-review-a-survivors-manual?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

#MichaelRosen
#GettingBetter

Getting Better by Michael Rosen review – a survivor’s manual https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/jan/25/getting-better-by-michael-rosen-review-a-survivors-manual?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

#MichaelRosen
#GettingBetter

Doctor gave me 3 sick days. I spent the whole morning in bed after breakfast. My temperature was around 38 when I woke up, but after meds and sleep, it's 36.9, even after 6 hours. The muscle pain is gone too.

#gettingbetter

I've been super-duper depressed for several weeks now in case anyone is wondering why I haven't been...um...tooting more. 🙃

Thankfully, I started with a new therapist last week. Fingers crossed. 🤞🏽

#depression #therapy #MentalHealth #counseling #antidepressants #SelfCare #CommunityCare
#DepressionSucks #GettingBetter

I've been super-duper depressed for several weeks now in case anyone is wondering why I haven't been...um...tooting more. 🙃

Thankfully, I started with a new therapist last week. Fingers crossed. 🤞🏽

#depression #therapy #MentalHealth #counseling #antidepressants #SelfCare #CommunityCare
#DepressionSucks #GettingBetter

Inclusion is not a zero sum game

Look around your office. How many people look like you? How does that compare to the people you saw on your commute, or in the supermarket? How does that compare to your users? Do you even know?

How many people are struggling with mental illness? How many have accessibility challenges? How many are white, straight, cis-gender, able bodied men?

Is there a mismatch? And if so, what are you doing to change it? Are your job adverts inclusive and on inclusive sites? (hint: look at the StackOverflow developer survey before posting your job there) Do you have a network outside work that you can tap into to find new candidates?

Are you creating a safe space for everyone? Are company events open to new parents, to non-drinkers, to vegans, to women? Do people have to out themselves to attend a family day, or to avoid travel to a certain customer site? Do you support staff who need to transition? Staff who need quiet spaces? Staff who are fasting, or need non-Christian holidays?

Can your staff find somewhere to learn to sign? Or to write simplified for language learners, for those who have struggled to attain or retain language?

Which three of these questions are the most important to achieve for you this year? And how will you do it?

If you need somewhere to start, have a look at Inclusive 101 from the Microsoft Inclusive Design Toolkit, and ask yourself if that’s you, or pick an episode from the Cause a Scene podcast and listen, especially if it makes you uncomfortable.

Inclusion is not a zero sum game

Look around your office. How many people look like you? How does that compare to the people you saw on your commute, or in the supermarket? How does that compare to your users? Do you even know?

How many people are struggling with mental illness? How many have accessibility challenges? How many are white, straight, cis-gender, able bodied men?

Is there a mismatch? And if so, what are you doing to change it? Are your job adverts inclusive and on inclusive sites? (hint: look at the StackOverflow developer survey before posting your job there) Do you have a network outside work that you can tap into to find new candidates?

Are you creating a safe space for everyone? Are company events open to new parents, to non-drinkers, to vegans, to women? Do people have to out themselves to attend a family day, or to avoid travel to a certain customer site? Do you support staff who need to transition? Staff who need quiet spaces? Staff who are fasting, or need non-Christian holidays?

Can your staff find somewhere to learn to sign? Or to write simplified for language learners, for those who have struggled to attain or retain language?

Which three of these questions are the most important to achieve for you this year? And how will you do it?

If you need somewhere to start, have a look at Inclusive 101 from the Microsoft Inclusive Design Toolkit, and ask yourself if that’s you, or pick an episode from the Cause a Scene podcast and listen, especially if it makes you uncomfortable.

Reducing waste by making your goals visible

Metrics are good, but they’re not enough. If you want metrics to drive change, they need to be visible. Not just to managers, but to the team. The right metrics, visible to the team, drive improvement. Visible only to management, drive control. Visible to no-one, drive nothing.

Good metrics need to be communicated clearly and persistently. There needs to be a continual focus on whatever the priorities are. If it’s out of sight, it will be out of mind. If it’s digital, rescue it from individual screens that are easily covered up.

It’s why kanban boards can be so effective when used well. It’s easy to see when the team is taking on too much work, or where there’s a queue waiting for tasks to be pulled. The board radiates information to the team, about how much work is in progress, and who is working on what. It becomes the centre of communication about tasks and removing waste. Make it physical, if you like, and the team is co-located. Use Post-its. Let dog ears and grubbiness indicate age. Do your backlog pruning via environmental effects – older & more used notes are more likely to fail behind the radiator and get lost.

Put (work-related) personal tasks on there too. Keep yourself honest. It’s good for the team to know you’re reviewing CVs, or preparing for that strategy meeting, or learning Haskell the hard way.

But keep it clear. Use a Kanban if WIP or queueing are your key metrics. Use Scrum if velocity and deadlines are key. Use a dashboard if that makes your priorities and progress clearer.

And make sure your key priorities (4 or less please) are visible at a glance for the team, and easy for anyone in the team to explain to a passerby. They don’t need detail, but pointing to a big pile of waiting tasks to justify recruiting a new tester is a clear message.

Reducing waste by making your goals visible

Metrics are good, but they’re not enough. If you want metrics to drive change, they need to be visible. Not just to managers, but to the team. The right metrics, visible to the team, drive improvement. Visible only to management, drive control. Visible to no-one, drive nothing.

Good metrics need to be communicated clearly and persistently. There needs to be a continual focus on whatever the priorities are. If it’s out of sight, it will be out of mind. If it’s digital, rescue it from individual screens that are easily covered up.

It’s why kanban boards can be so effective when used well. It’s easy to see when the team is taking on too much work, or where there’s a queue waiting for tasks to be pulled. The board radiates information to the team, about how much work is in progress, and who is working on what. It becomes the centre of communication about tasks and removing waste. Make it physical, if you like, and the team is co-located. Use Post-its. Let dog ears and grubbiness indicate age. Do your backlog pruning via environmental effects – older & more used notes are more likely to fail behind the radiator and get lost.

Put (work-related) personal tasks on there too. Keep yourself honest. It’s good for the team to know you’re reviewing CVs, or preparing for that strategy meeting, or learning Haskell the hard way.

But keep it clear. Use a Kanban if WIP or queueing are your key metrics. Use Scrum if velocity and deadlines are key. Use a dashboard if that makes your priorities and progress clearer.

And make sure your key priorities (4 or less please) are visible at a glance for the team, and easy for anyone in the team to explain to a passerby. They don’t need detail, but pointing to a big pile of waiting tasks to justify recruiting a new tester is a clear message.

Measuring the wrong thing

Process improvement requires measurements. How do you know what to improve if you can’t see where things aren’t working, and how do you know you’ve made the right change without seeing those numbers going in the right direction?

But measuring doesn’t mean you’re measuring the right thing, and measuring the wrong thing can lead to the wrong outcomes, and can be very harmful (see Liz Keogh’s talk on perverse incentives )

The key to the success of any metric is that it is owned by the team so they have complete control over the changes needed to affect it, so they feel ownership, and that improving the metric has a useful business outcome.

Metrics that I’ve found useful in the past include:

Number of bugs introduced by a release.

This is a tricky one to work with because it can easily be a perverse incentive, and the feedback cycle can be slow, especially with the usual 6-12 month release cadence. However, on one waterfall project I took over there was a strong negative perception of the quality of the code, and big count was a useful proxy as the customer had access to JIRA so the big list was already visible. Reducing this number was a combined effort where testers and developers had to approve requirements, developers and testers invested in automated testing at all levels, and testers joined the developer daily stand-up in order to catch bugs before they were released “have you checked that page in Welsh?“, “We found problems on that page last time because IE was too slow“.

Number of releases per month.

On an agile project we noticed that releases were getting held up because testing was slow and produced a lot of rework, which were then tested against more features that had been pulled from the backlog, increasing testing time. Each release also took half a day, so we had to schedule them carefully.

So we set a goal of focusing on releases for a month and measuring how many we did. There were other measures within that, such as monitoring work in progress on the testers, time taken to do a release, and cycle time from start of development to live release, but they all drove the big number, visible to the whole company, of more quality releases.

Questions answered per day.

This can be a very useful metric for research projects, especially when following a fail fast approach, when you want to prove something can’t be done before you invest in doing it. In order to do that, you need lots of questions with quick answers, to accelerate learning. Any answer, positive or negative, is progress. It means we have learned something.

“I cheerily assured him that we had learned something.
For we had learned for a certainty that the thing couldn’t be done
that way, and that we would have to try some other way.” – Thomas Edison

Age of Pull Requests

Successful agile projects rely on peer review, either via pairing, or a formal review process such as git PRs (and I won’t discuss that in this post). However, when we started working with these on one project, we discovered that we were building up a large debt of Work In Progress because the team wasn’t incentivised to review each other’s code, so one of the developers set up a nag bot for any PR older than 4 days. It lasted 2 weeks before it was no longer needed.

What about you?

What metrics have you used to incentivise the team? What problem were you trying to solve, and did the metric work?

Measuring the wrong thing

Process improvement requires measurements. How do you know what to improve if you can’t see where things aren’t working, and how do you know you’ve made the right change without seeing those numbers going in the right direction?

But measuring doesn’t mean you’re measuring the right thing, and measuring the wrong thing can lead to the wrong outcomes, and can be very harmful (see Liz Keogh’s talk on perverse incentives )

The key to the success of any metric is that it is owned by the team so they have complete control over the changes needed to affect it, so they feel ownership, and that improving the metric has a useful business outcome.

Metrics that I’ve found useful in the past include:

Number of bugs introduced by a release.

This is a tricky one to work with because it can easily be a perverse incentive, and the feedback cycle can be slow, especially with the usual 6-12 month release cadence. However, on one waterfall project I took over there was a strong negative perception of the quality of the code, and big count was a useful proxy as the customer had access to JIRA so the big list was already visible. Reducing this number was a combined effort where testers and developers had to approve requirements, developers and testers invested in automated testing at all levels, and testers joined the developer daily stand-up in order to catch bugs before they were released “have you checked that page in Welsh?“, “We found problems on that page last time because IE was too slow“.

Number of releases per month.

On an agile project we noticed that releases were getting held up because testing was slow and produced a lot of rework, which were then tested against more features that had been pulled from the backlog, increasing testing time. Each release also took half a day, so we had to schedule them carefully.

So we set a goal of focusing on releases for a month and measuring how many we did. There were other measures within that, such as monitoring work in progress on the testers, time taken to do a release, and cycle time from start of development to live release, but they all drove the big number, visible to the whole company, of more quality releases.

Questions answered per day.

This can be a very useful metric for research projects, especially when following a fail fast approach, when you want to prove something can’t be done before you invest in doing it. In order to do that, you need lots of questions with quick answers, to accelerate learning. Any answer, positive or negative, is progress. It means we have learned something.

“I cheerily assured him that we had learned something.
For we had learned for a certainty that the thing couldn’t be done
that way, and that we would have to try some other way.” – Thomas Edison

Age of Pull Requests

Successful agile projects rely on peer review, either via pairing, or a formal review process such as git PRs (and I won’t discuss that in this post). However, when we started working with these on one project, we discovered that we were building up a large debt of Work In Progress because the team wasn’t incentivised to review each other’s code, so one of the developers set up a nag bot for any PR older than 4 days. It lasted 2 weeks before it was no longer needed.

What about you?

What metrics have you used to incentivise the team? What problem were you trying to solve, and did the metric work?

Everyone has a voice 

​One of the challenges that Technical Leads face that isn’t always easy to resolve is making sure the whole team is involved in decisions. 

There is a large overlap between people who can think in code and people who are shy around other people. For some, the enthusiasm of the former can overcome the latter, but for many, especially younger members of the team, they need encouragement. 

There are a few key ways to do it. If you’ve built the right team, pairing with a patient mentor, who asks questions, is a good way to build confidence. We all hate it, but asking someone their opinion in a meeting is important too, until they get confident enough to speak up themselves, because they know they’ll be heard. So pick your meetings wisely. 

There’s also non-verbal ways to increase interaction and confidence. I’m a big fan of asynchronous code reviews, because they help people focus on the code rather than the coder. I realise there is a risk that this can lead to an atmosphere where someone being reviewed feels under attack, but in my experience, with ego-less teams, and especially with teams who understand and fight technical debt, they see reviews as a chance to improve the code and their own understanding, and make everyone’s life easier next time they look at that feature. 

Lean Coffee meetings are also good for helping encourage people to suggest ideas, as they can see what others want to talk about, so they know they have something worth dating. 

Make sure the quiet people speak up

Everyone has a voice 

​One of the challenges that Technical Leads face that isn’t always easy to resolve is making sure the whole team is involved in decisions. 

There is a large overlap between people who can think in code and people who are shy around other people. For some, the enthusiasm of the former can overcome the latter, but for many, especially younger members of the team, they need encouragement. 

There are a few key ways to do it. If you’ve built the right team, pairing with a patient mentor, who asks questions, is a good way to build confidence. We all hate it, but asking someone their opinion in a meeting is important too, until they get confident enough to speak up themselves, because they know they’ll be heard. So pick your meetings wisely. 

There’s also non-verbal ways to increase interaction and confidence. I’m a big fan of asynchronous code reviews, because they help people focus on the code rather than the coder. I realise there is a risk that this can lead to an atmosphere where someone being reviewed feels under attack, but in my experience, with ego-less teams, and especially with teams who understand and fight technical debt, they see reviews as a chance to improve the code and their own understanding, and make everyone’s life easier next time they look at that feature. 

Lean Coffee meetings are also good for helping encourage people to suggest ideas, as they can see what others want to talk about, so they know they have something worth dating. 

Make sure the quiet people speak up

Dear manager

Good equipment is not a luxury. Bad equipment costs you money.

Training is not a luxury. You don’t want untrained developers. Either you train us and show us we have a future or don’t train us and we leave to get trained, or worse, we stay.

Management is not always a promotion. Let good developers code, and give them a career path that gives them that option.

Not everything we do is visible. Refactoring is important but hidden. Foundations matter, and so does maintenance. If you ban maintenance, you’ll see costs creeping in as everything takes longer.

We need space, and quiet. Read Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams
and read the research on open plan offices.

Be wary of cutting costs unless you understand the benefits. Sure it’s cheaper to rent office space outside the city centre, but the talented people you rely on might prefer to commute by train. Sure that new laptop costs an extra £1000, but it’ll save developers £750 a year because it’s faster.

We want this released as much as you do. Artificial deadlines don’t help and put pressure on to avoid essential maintenance.

We expect you to have our back. We’ll feed you the unvarnished truth, including justification, so long as you don’t use it against us.

Respect the team. If you treat us as interchangeable resources, we’ll treat you as unnecessary overhead. If you treat us with respect, you’ll have a much quieter life.

Dear manager

Good equipment is not a luxury. Bad equipment costs you money.

Training is not a luxury. You don’t want untrained developers. Either you train us and show us we have a future or don’t train us and we leave to get trained, or worse, we stay.

Management is not always a promotion. Let good developers code, and give them a career path that gives them that option.

Not everything we do is visible. Refactoring is important but hidden. Foundations matter, and so does maintenance. If you ban maintenance, you’ll see costs creeping in as everything takes longer.

We need space, and quiet. Read Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams
and read the research on open plan offices.

Be wary of cutting costs unless you understand the benefits. Sure it’s cheaper to rent office space outside the city centre, but the talented people you rely on might prefer to commute by train. Sure that new laptop costs an extra £1000, but it’ll save developers £750 a year because it’s faster.

We want this released as much as you do. Artificial deadlines don’t help and put pressure on to avoid essential maintenance.

We expect you to have our back. We’ll feed you the unvarnished truth, including justification, so long as you don’t use it against us.

Respect the team. If you treat us as interchangeable resources, we’ll treat you as unnecessary overhead. If you treat us with respect, you’ll have a much quieter life.