Kodsnack 428 - Yes, it gives me no guarantee, with Harald Achitz

2021-07-27 05:26

Ladda ner (mp3) Öppna länkar i nya flikar

Kristoffer chats with Harald Achitz about Harald’s path as a developer, test-driven development, seeing the big picture, and more.

The first part of the discussion is Harald’s background: Growing up on the far side of Europe, focusing on music, and how he eventually landed in computing. Freelancing as a developer in 1995 - what was that like? How did one find customers? The story then goes into Harald’s way into C and C++. Developing for medical devices and hospitals. Moving toward Linux, making a living as an open source developer, and eventually ending up in Sweden.

Then, the conversation moves to Harald’s increasing interest in what happens after you finish writing the code; builds, releases, integrations, package managers, build systems, and so much more. We talk quite a bit about seeing the big picture, and how our code is, at best, a temporary and unimportant part of the greater whole. Are we too focused on the next task, at the expense of thinking about and seeing the whole?

Harald explains why he likes to have 100% code coverage, how he goes about setting up his tests, and the challenges of setting up tests when responsibilities strech across teams.

Many of the hardest problems are organizational, the code we write is, on the whole, often not very important. Code is temporary. All of which is more motivation for testing more.

Thank you Cloudnet for sponsoring our VPS!

Comments, questions or tips? We are @kodsnack, @tobiashieta, @oferlund and @bjoreman on Twitter, have a page on Facebook and can be emailed at info@kodsnack.se if you want to write longer. We read everything we receive.

If you enjoy Kodsnack we would love a review in iTunes! You can also support the podcast by buying us a coffee (or two!) through Ko-fi.

Titles

Austria in the 80s
On the side of Europe
I started and stopped a lot of things
Just jamming around
Where you play the songs you hate
There were computers in offices
I was the young person
The internet became a thing
Freelancing back in 95
I really loved databases
I came back to medical devices
Would you like to go to Switzerland?
A different spirit in the Linux world
I have no problem if things work
It’s not just the code I write
I love to have everything automated
Holistic thinking
All the tests are passing, but the thing is not useful
Yes, it gives me no guarantee
You need to fake it
The place where people give up
Software is their bread and butter
The code I write is most likely not very important
Software systems tend to change
Code is temporary
Throw it away as soon as possible
Never enough, but always too much

Kodsnack 428 - Yes, it gives me no guarantee, with Harald Achitz

Links

Titles