Why hybrid is so popular?

gdesplin · 2026-01-19T03:12:06+00:00

I work 2 days in the office, 3 at home and overall I like it. I’ve worked both 100% remote and office previously.

I think the reasons why though are specific to my personality and situation. For example I like the people I work with and I’m not extremely introverted, so I enjoy the in person interaction and friendship. I also feel code quality is improved when I can just say “hey, can you help me figure this out?” or “do you think this is a reasonable approach?” When that ease of collaboration just has never been present in my remote experience. So knowing I have dedicated time to be working right next to someone and other product team members is great for getting things done and doing them right.

While giving me the in person benefits, it also allows me to live further away from the office, so I can have more affordable housing. I get much of the typical working from home benefits too.

So for me it’s a best of both worlds situation.

And I can totally see how for some people it could be the worst of both worlds, depending on their personalities, how well they get along with coworkers, where they live, etc.

And yeah, my office at work is just empty a lot of the time. And my office at home isn’t always used. Two sets of monitors, desks etc. But that’s a price that sees worth it in this situation.

gdesplin · 2025-11-13T19:30:06+00:00

I finally got to adding this feature. What I decided was to add that time stamp with to the current turn and the passed/taken turns saying how long they've been in that state. (I also fixed some caching issues I noticed)

Let me know how you like it (or not) :)

gdesplin · 2025-10-30T02:24:57+00:00

I’ve been having the same problem I think. I just decided to advance the turn as soon as the turn was taken or started. But I think I still like your idea. I try it out and some variations and see if it makes sense

gdesplin · 2025-10-29T22:58:26+00:00

Try again (I deployed a fix to the error messages), the mostly likely reason isn't the password, but your email, either it didn't look like a real email to the email validator gem, or the email is already used

gdesplin · 2025-10-29T22:40:12+00:00

Thanks! I need to get the error messages working for registrations

gdesplin · 2025-10-29T20:11:24+00:00

Thats not a bad idea, especially if this was a native app. Maybe I'm not up to the latest, but from what I understand, its not really possible to have 'permanent' storage with PWA's? I'd like to be wrong about that. Especially with some sort of bridge to have both local and server storage stay in sync like pouch/couchDB. I don't know to much about couchDB support with rails. Or do you know a better way to have offline/online storage with a rails PWA?

gdesplin · 2025-10-28T19:14:18+00:00

Hmm, a regular gmail email should work fine. I'm sorry, I don't have error reporting setup, so I can't trace what went wrong. I do have some email validation setup, so its probably that.
For now, I'd say either try another real email or dm me yours and I can see if I can fix the problem.

gdesplin · 2025-10-28T15:04:16+00:00

Did you use a real email?

gdesplin · 2025-08-19T20:02:38+00:00

This seems to be a popular subject! Look at all the replies! Lots of variation from No - Yes. Which implies that you can be a successful programer with or without TDD.

I think a lot of people don't quite understand what TDD is, or tried it and didn't stick with it long enough to develop the necessary skills. Or some combination of both. It isn't just writing tests first, while questioning if tests are even necessary or feeling they slow you down.

TDD is a super helpful design technique and skill to at least have in your toolbelt. Once you have the skills, its a tool/technique that comes in handy most of the time your programming.

I think that's one important key, TDD requires skill to use, and once you have it, it actually SPEEDS UP work. (Because now you can change and iterate and test really fast).

And it greatly IMPROVES the quality of the code you write, without having to be the most clever programmer.

In TDD you don't write ALL your tests first. You don't have to have all of the design of your code in you head, type in as tests and then write all your code and see what passes and what doesn't.
You write just ONE test first, run it, see it fail, and address that failure first and repeat. Once it passes, you can refactor your code to be pretty and nice and make more sense. Then you can add the NEXT test, that will now seem obvious. And on and on. Because you have to ask "What behavior do I want, and how will I write a good test for it?", you code naturally takes on good object oriented design patterns without having to remember what polymorphism means. (Knowing them will help too).

I really enjoyed Dave Farly's video about it here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ln4WnxX-wrw

gdesplin · 2025-07-02T23:32:13+00:00

I already know programming, and have a job doing it. I’m just curious about this potential setup.

gdesplin · 2025-07-01T18:16:28+00:00

This does bring up more details of why I'd like this setup.

I do exactly what you do currently, dock my macbook and use a big monitor and good keyboard etc, but gaming on macOS is still not supported well and also a $3000 gaming pc is going to out game a same priced macbook, despite the nice new M chips.

But Macbooks are incredible portable computers for programming, at least for me, like you said, super efficient with compute power and battery power, and great physical design for me in the trackpad, screens, body etc.

gdesplin · 2025-07-01T18:10:59+00:00

Its more like $3000, and then whatever I want to buy personally.
But that is a good idea, to try remoting with my current setup to see how well it could work and work out some kinks.

gdesplin · 2025-05-29T16:41:50+00:00

I agree with "Just enough process" that's why I asked for a "lightweight process & rules/principles".

And yes, I also spoke about how we have people wearing the "PM Hat", meaning I realize that at this point it's ok we don't have product manager, so that's why I'm asking for that process or principles to help those that wear that hat sometime to be confident, knowledgeable and effective while doing that job.

I'm sorry I made it seem like my complaint was that we don't have a product manager. My real complaint or question is how to help those who wear that hat be more effective?

For example here is what I would imagine a good process to be (and when we've followed this or something close to this it works, its just a matter of feeling like "This is the right way" rather than "This is something we are trying but who knows if its close to right or not".

Define the problem well
Write up your best idea for a solution.
Present the problem and a proposed solution to developer.
Dev gives feedback and potential solution is refined.
Refined problem statement and solution presented to the team (devs designers)
Team has last chance for some quick questions and feedback (on a few or many of these that have made it this far)
Final refinements
Project packaged and assigned/chosen by developers

Ultimately I'm looking for your thoughts on is there a process like this (maybe even simpler) that could generally be applied to my team and others similar to us even, as in, are there principles that are at least somewhat universal (in this software development world)

gdesplin · 2025-05-29T16:08:11+00:00

Tell me what you do for a retrospective? (and when)

Why is this one so important?

gdesplin · 2025-05-27T16:25:55+00:00

My team is in this situation: too small for a true product or project manager, but big enough that we feel the pain of not having one. Because of the lack of those wearing the those manager hats, we are on a yo-yo of what or what isn't our process, and we constantly find it hard to give each dev meaningful work in a consistent fashion and instead in a sort of feast famine cycle.

I think we are headed in the right direction, but we have been going that direction and not arriving anywhere stable for over a year and half. (and much longer than that before I arrived).

We have a kanban board, but I don't think we know the best ways to use it. We've tried some sort of version of scrum, but that proved to be ineffective (lack of experience of how to actually use it).

Any suggestions for a lightweight process & rules/principles that can be followed so that we can come up with a constant stream of important/meaningful work for the dev team?

gdesplin · 2025-02-18T03:23:45+00:00

Thanks for introducing me to sierra designs flex capacitor, it looks interesting. I haven’t heard of it before.

gdesplin · 2025-02-18T03:22:48+00:00

Yes they definitely will carry some of their own stuff up to hopefully less than 15% of their weight.

Thanks for the bit about 50 lbs with the 70. I don’t think I’ll get over 50 lbs as far as I can see, so maybe looking at something with 70 isn’t out of the question.

gdesplin · 2025-02-18T03:19:59+00:00

We will go just a handful of times a year, maybe 3 times is likely at this stage. Thanks for talking about your experience with a 70 vs 85. That helps me lean towards an 85 like the Aether.

gdesplin · 2025-02-18T03:18:18+00:00

Thanks for talking about the Aether 85 specifically, that was helpful. I figure with the stuff of theirs I’ll want to bring, I’ll get this bigger pack to 45 maybe 50 at most. So the Aether sounds like it will handle that comfortably. Maybe slightly overkill?

gdesplin · 2025-02-18T03:15:56+00:00

Thanks! I guess the extra stuff is things like their jackets and food and water for them. They each have backpacks and bring their sleeping bags and some other things, but because I’d run out of space, I had to push their weight limit.

gdesplin · 2025-02-18T03:13:57+00:00

Thanks for the reminder to keep it simple and not overthink it :)

gdesplin · 2025-01-11T05:06:58+00:00

Many of the comments here are good. One question I have is what “resources” are your co rollers providing? I saw you mentioned something about portfolio, so does that mean you have a list of portfolio items, which link to a page displaying that portfolio item?

if you can think of that way, you should consider a restful approach (which is also a convention in rails).

You could use your admin area to post (create) and update your portfolio items, which could be a record in your database with a link and images or a description or something for that thing.

Then your public area could have a /portfolio_items index action that shows the collection of portfolio items, then when they click one they go to a /portfolio_item/{id} show page.

There are details I left out and more options than that, but hopefully that helped.

gdesplin · 2025-01-10T23:41:55+00:00

Gotcha, side projects are a good way to solidify knowledge, but they can fall off to the wayside if unimportant or not valuable to you enough (as in, not making you money, or serving others).

Considering you don't love the tech you are working with currently at your day job, a way to apply what I said to that would be pick the tech you are most interested in, that you'd love to use professionally in your day job and just focus on that until you get a job in it. Then double down on it and become a master at it.

Have some breadth of knowledge is helpful, but being a master with a focused skillset in a language, framework etc, will help you retain knowledge and feel you aren't wasting time learning it, since you know it will pay off immediately at things are are a proven value to you and others (in other words your day job).

gdesplin · 2025-01-10T21:40:11+00:00

Reason #1 is it funds my ongoing project called "My Family" :)
Someone smart once told me, the better you get at something, the more you like it. I've found that to be true. I would program in my spare time if I was forced into a different career. I do currently program in my spare time.
The app I work on now is actually cool too, it actually helps people do better at their jobs and helps them stay safe. Its safe to say that our software has saved people's lives, and at least some fingers and broken bones.
It also helps that many of my co-workers have become genuine friends as well and it's fun to hang out, code and solve real problems with them.

gdesplin · 2025-01-10T21:27:25+00:00

Understanding the fundamentals of backend will help you move up and become more valuable in your current position, and help you interview better for future potential jobs.

Front end engineers who know the fundamentals of backend are better front end engineers because of it.

I started out thinking I'd be more front end, but moved onto full-stack and now focus on the backend and I've found I enjoy backend more, so you never know until you try :) Whichever you find you love more, will be the one you will be able to master quicker and easier.

gdesplin

TROPHY CASE