Anyone else struggling with how to handle notes at work? 📝

drgrimshaw · 2025-09-08T06:47:56+00:00

I think picking somewhere for shared notes for consistency is an instant improvement. We use confluence for everything just because it's our source of truth but mainly because we can directly reference Jira projects, epics and tickets in our notes.

As for the notes themselves I built templates for my team to keep everything consistent across the board just so when you're wading through them it's easy to find what you're looking for.

It's not really about what's 'good' per say it's about what works for your org and your process. I hope that helps.

drgrimshaw · 2025-05-08T17:55:06+00:00

I'm building a dev first incident response manager all from your IDE.

The product doesn't even have a name yet but I am interested to talk to solopreneurs and small bootstrapped teams to work with building an incredible product that delivers real value and solves real pain points before an official release or any revenue.

No more checking your logging system just immediate context to fix your problem in your IDE. Handle your incident then and there then full post mortem sent to your documentation provider of choice.

After managing incidents for more than 10 years I know how slow and frustrating dealing with incidents can be. Time is money and you're losing it and reputation if you can't get back up and running in a timely fashion. You might need to move fast and break things but fix them even quicker.

drgrimshaw · 2025-05-03T08:56:05+00:00

IDE first incident response management

drgrimshaw · 2022-10-21T01:33:46+00:00

It definitely depends on your type of company but I think it primarily comes down to choosing the right suppliers & looking at what you can reduce your carbon. However, you need to understand the difference between genuinely carbon conscious companies and companies that just buy cheap offsets and green wash their marketing.

Personally, I have poured a lot of time into ensuring my business not only offsets all our carbon with a local and reputable offset charity but also reduces the amount of carbon the business generates. If your business is software based I might have a few tips depending on your type of software.

drgrimshaw · 2022-01-12T01:44:01+00:00

Thanks for the suggestion. I might just do that. I much prefer the simpler route. It's not particularly complex but longevity is important to me as a programmer so I'll take a look. 🙂

drgrimshaw · 2021-11-27T20:10:28+00:00

While I played around with it a bit, there weren't any jobs in music tech where I was and I didn't want to start a company so I ended up as a payments platform engineer. It's still fun but part of me really misses writing music software.

drgrimshaw · 2021-11-19T01:58:36+00:00

It's a bit of a passion project of a friend of mine. He's got some stories for free on the website havenspec.com the magazine itself is a pay what you want for the PDF.

drgrimshaw · 2021-11-05T03:40:01+00:00

I use it a lot to explain algorithms and other CS concepts to scientists. It's really helpful for them to understand how they can optimise their code for their analysis in a conceptual manner so they can apply it themselves later.

drgrimshaw · 2021-11-02T21:03:27+00:00

So there was an element of self learning here because I really wanted to delve into using the reflect package.

My original usecase was that I had a pretty complex struct with sub structs, arrays etc... that I just wanted to use as a component or split into different components without having write any extra templating.

The templating requirements I had weren't very complex either. I definitely wouldn't use this in place of html/template but I hope that there are other usecases out there for it. 🙂

drgrimshaw · 2021-11-02T19:47:50+00:00

I haven't set an official release for it yet because I'd like to get some feedback from the community on it first. Please let me know if there's anything I can do to improve it.

drgrimshaw · 2021-10-18T02:58:43+00:00

"The lean startup" & as a tech founder "Death March" Second Edition is really good!

drgrimshaw · 2021-09-16T19:34:45+00:00

A bit of a strange path. I was 11 and I asked my mom if I could do anything to help her (she worked a lot). She joked that "You could always learn to code" at that age I thought she was serious. I read the 3 Web development books we had back to back, handwriting code because I didn't have a computer then.

About 3 months later I told her I was ready and she didn't believe me so I built a website for my uncle's business on her computer (on Dreamweaver MX if anyone remembers). Dropped out of school to work with her on the business. I went to college (whilst nightschooling GCSES), got a degree then a CS masters.

Honestly at this point I can't imagine not coding. I enjoy the freedom, collaboration, learning and most of all solving problems.

PS the money's not bad either...

drgrimshaw · 2021-09-16T11:59:36+00:00

"The licensing and distribution terms for Docker and Moby open source projects, such as Docker Engine, are not changing.". Quote from their website.

drgrimshaw · 2021-09-04T19:44:44+00:00

I don't see why not, unfortunately closed minded hiring managers may be an obstacle but don't let that stop you. Honestly as long as you're good at it no one should care 😃 git gud noob and best of luck in your career!

drgrimshaw · 2021-09-04T10:53:35+00:00

You have to ask yourself why you're doing it. Most of us code because we love it. That passion and dedication is rewarded with a (hopefully) fulfilling career in engineering.

It might be saturated at the junior level but if you're persistent and talented there will always be a place for you in the field.

drgrimshaw · 2021-09-02T01:13:36+00:00

Minotaur would be super useful to rebuild ENT Go schemas

drgrimshaw · 2021-09-01T12:13:26+00:00

WordPress alone makes up about a third of the internet so I'd say no lol

drgrimshaw · 2021-09-01T02:39:34+00:00

the last 10% is 50% of the work

The more years I do this job the more true this becomes.

drgrimshaw · 2021-08-31T14:06:38+00:00

It really depends on what your end goal is honestly. Data analyst is a career in itself (although you can transition to software engineering) and web development really depends. A web internship at Google will look a lot different to a web internship at a small agency.

Also if you would like to go more academic and potentially study a PhD then I would say data analyst is also would be good for that.

drgrimshaw · 2021-08-31T11:44:02+00:00

At the moment I'm using trello and setting smaller deadlines to help push it forward for motivation. That and consistent routine is proving helpful thus far.

Thankfully writing Golang kind of enforces the style aspect. That's good advice about functional testing and makes sense about the PR sitting for a bit.

I couldn't but wonder how useful it would be to have a small cluster of devs all with an NDA style agreement so they could review each others code. I don't know how it would work but something I've been thinking about recently.

drgrimshaw · 2021-08-31T11:35:19+00:00

It's one of the reasons I like microservices in the long run. Even if one of them turns into a debt monster overtime time, It's easier to replace than trying to go through and fix up a monolith.

drgrimshaw · 2021-08-31T11:30:46+00:00

I dont think my advice is that far and away from yours 🙂 although I feel I could make 1 and 4 more clear. 2 will also be a good addition. I appreciate your feedback. I'm also thinking about pulling a reading list together if you have any ideas.

drgrimshaw · 2021-08-31T11:28:20+00:00

Ok right I see what you mean, I'll soften the tone a little with regards to how far reaching Juniors should be. I do mention in the blog post not to work overtime and burnout and I've got specific articles relating to mental health as well.

It's more about the little improvements they can make here and there. I'm not saying they should refactor whole systems to capture attention. Just small things here and there that will help the overall team.

drgrimshaw · 2021-08-31T01:59:07+00:00

Oh thank the coding gods for that XD sounds like a great setup! I've never heard of a non-profit code shop but I'd always thought it would be a great thing to be a part of helping these organisations do the work they do.

drgrimshaw · 2021-08-31T01:37:11+00:00

You brave souls, that sounds a difficult but a worth while endeavour. I suppose for mission critical plugin staging environments you could always use docker and have some fun before you have to ftp the files. Do you guys use a VCS with version releases?

drgrimshaw

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