A Teacher, an Economist and a Developer Walk Into a Bar
summary
Compares concrete choices: a rewrite estimated as three developers for 12 months (~250k) versus incremental work that doubles velocity only after years (break‑even in year 2, 1.3× year 3, 1.5× year 4). Uses SonarQube metrics and habits: commit to remove five code smells per merge request, embed small housekeeping in feature work, and run communities of practice. Shows a failed big‑bang rewrite (12 devs, sunk‑cost escalation) and a working ops playbook: delete a huge log file, shovel the poison message and implement a dead letter queue.
AI-written summary · about
chapters (18)
- 0:00Introduction
- 1:07Software work demands
- 2:30Imposter syndrome to diverse skills
- 3:34Team and project intro
- 5:19Opportunity costs debate
- 9:39Opportunity costs in dev
- 13:35Sunk cost fallacy
- 18:52Consistency over perfection
- 24:13Great dev habits
- 29:48Progress and milestones
- 32:01Teachers prioritize relationships
- 34:29Introvert dev relationships
- 35:33Improvement strategies shared
- 38:44Communities of practice
- 39:49Production issues ANC
- 45:51Concepts from other professions
- 48:03Patrick Stewart lessons
- 50:56Q&A
related talks
49mA Teacher, an Economist & a Developer Walk Into a Bar...
48mA Teacher, an Economist and a Developer Walk Into a Bar
45mA Teacher, an Economist and a Developer Walk into a Bar...
40mHow to sell a big refactor or rewrite to the business?
50mThe Effective Developer - Work Smarter, Not Harder
30mLessons Learned: A Developer's Perspective on Teaching & Learning
01h 01mLessons from a lifetime of doing, teaching, managing, and leading technical development
31mThe Effective Developer - Work Smarter, Not Harder