Questions surrounding communications between programmers and the others involved in software development. This can include stakeholders, management, end users, designers, testers, and other developers.
Questions tagged [communication]
229 questions
191
votes
25 answers
How to convince my boss that quality is a good thing to have in code?
My boss came to me today to ask me if we could implement a certain feature in 1.5 days. I had a look at it and told him that 2 to 3 days would be more realistic. He then asked me: "And what if we do it quick and dirty?" I asked him to explain what…
Kristof Claes
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160
votes
10 answers
Would you put your Stack Overflow profile link on your CV / Resume?
If applying for a new job, would you put your Stack Overflow profile link on your resume?
This would show the employer you're an active member of the development community and also provide an insight into your knowledge + how well you convey your…
billy.bob
- 6,549
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157
votes
13 answers
If my team has low skill, should I lower the skill of my code?
For example, there is a common snippet in JS to get a default value:
function f(x) {
x = x || 'default_value';
}
This kind of snippet is not easily understood by all the members of my team, their JS level being low.
Should I not use this trick…
Florian Margaine
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144
votes
8 answers
How do I get people to stop bikeshedding (focusing on trivialities)?
I have been tasked with teaching other teams a new codebase, but I keep running into an issue. Whenever I go to actually walk through the code with people, we don't get very far before the entire exercise devolves into a bikeshedding (members of an…
Telastyn
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123
votes
21 answers
Is there a way to combat Sales perpetually overcommitting?
I seem to be repeatedly stuck in a situation where release dates are set not based on anything technical, but because someone in Sales has committed to a customer by then. Based on discussions with friends in development at other companies, the…
Shawn D.
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95
votes
10 answers
Why do programmers still use mailing lists?
Why do many open source projects collaborate primarily through mailing lists rather than through, say, forums? I may be ignorant in my assessment, but I, along with my communication teacher, think mailing lists are rather inefficient:
It's hard to…
Joey Adams
- 5,535
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93
votes
16 answers
How to market yourself as a software developer?
I have noticed that this is a frequent issue among younglings from technical areas such as ours.
In the beginning of our careers we simply don't know how to sell ourselves to our employers, and random guy #57 (who is a programmer, but not as good as…
karlphillip
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93
votes
10 answers
How to motivate co-workers to write unit-tests?
We're working on a large product which has been in production for about 5 years. The codebase is.. erm.. working. Not really well but it is working. New features are thrown into production and tested with a small QA. Bugs are fixed, etc. But no one,…
lurkerbelow
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93
votes
19 answers
Dealing with management that does not see value in improvements that are not immediately visible to the user
I can understand schedule pressure. You want to please your users, as they are the lifeblood of the company. However, it is also true that certain changes will make everything easier down the road. Unfortunately, management in my organization has…
nameWithHeldToProtectTheGuilty
- 497
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78
votes
14 answers
How important is it for a programmer to have an online presence?
I've noticed more and more mentions (both in posts here and in actual job descriptions) of programmers' "portfolios" - typically their public profiles on sites such as this, GitHub, etc.
How important is this, and would companies (startups in…
Jer
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74
votes
22 answers
Job hopping, is it a problem?
How would you, as someone involved in the hiring process (manager,interviewer, etc) feel about a candidate that has changed jobs every 1-2 years?
updateThanks for all the input everybody, some really great responses, and good info in every post. I…
µBio
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72
votes
7 answers
How do I take responsibility for my code when colleague makes unnecessary improvements without notice?
One of my teammates is a jack of all trades in our IT shop and I respect his insight.
However, sometimes he reviews my code (he's second in command to our team leader, so that's expected) without a heads up. So sometimes he reviews my changes before…
Jesslyn
- 839
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70
votes
5 answers
Why do some big projects, like Git and Debian, only use a mailing list and not an issue tracker?
Bug tracker for any decent sized project seem like a bit of a no-brainer to me - it makes it really easy to organise hundreds or thousands issues, without issues colliding or getting mixed up.
So when I see some really big projects, like Git, using…
naught101
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67
votes
18 answers
How to tell your boss that his programming style is really bad?
I'm a student and in my spare time I'm working for a big enterprise as Java developer. The job is good, but the problem is, my boss writes very strange code. I don't want to complain, but some issues are in my opinion really strange. For…
RoflcoptrException
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60
votes
5 answers
How to explain to a non-technical person why the task will take much longer than they think?
Almost every developer has to answer questions from business side like:
Why is going to take 2 days to add this simple contact form?
When a developer estimates this task, they may divide it into steps:
make some changes to the Database
optimize DB…
Mag20
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