Susanna Codes

Solo Singing and Software Engineering  When I was 4 I wanted a solo in church. They told me I wasn’t ready. I was so sad. I went on to play many lead roles in primary school and had lots of solos. When I was 14 I wanted a solo in the school musical. I auditioned and auditioned but couldn’t hack it. It was a very big school with a lot of talent. I got 4 small solos (as in a few lines here and there) including in jellicle cats so that was fun. But when I was 17. After my whole life had been turned upside down and nothing that had used to mean anything to me meant anything to me any more I went for an audition with no preparation I told the directors I didn’t have time to rehearse and play a character only come on and sing a song they added in.  They put in a song for me. They liked it so much that although they had been considering turning it into a duet they gave me the whole song. I got phenomenal feedback. I got stopped for months by people in school. Teachers and students st...

See you in the dark, all eyes on you my magician I woke up this morning and I feel better and clearer and more confident about my progression than ever before. The hardest part is just feeling like I’m not growing as a software engineer when I could be. But I feel like I have gotten a lot of clarity over the past few days or so. I am gonna have a few more chats with people or whatever but I feel like it’s quite clear. Apart from the two most obvious pieces of feedback that were around ticket speed and core react concepts (which I’m addressing; I have a react learning plan and I read the docs all the time and I also feel that, apart from what I’m about to discuss, trying to find more time during the day to prioritise tickets could be really helpful and beneficial - even really small gaps can make a big dent. And having more of a fighting attitude towards completing my tickets). Then  There is one more big piece of feedback and it stings because it harks back to my backend days. But ...

Better hit the road like a wanted man I need to stop blogging about my work at 1 am. Surely this has to be the truest thing any one has ever said? But I have a couple of things. I have a piece of paper stapled in my bag with notes from my manager today about breaking things down. She said that people often break tasks down for me (very kind and fair and true). I have never found coding difficult (as in syntax and fundamentals apart from objects which took years). I have never found product knowledge difficult. It is the part in between.  As she said to me today: if we build a form it’s like okay let’s see it first. And let’s add some functionality to it. And then let’s save it and send it to the backend etc. (Mutations! GraphQL mutations, I see you.) and that I need to be able to  - see the way people have broken down problems for me before - see how they all fit together (I am better at this than people think honestly). - then when I get similar problems but that are less bro...

So heavy I fell through the Earth, part 7 I know that people love an underdog. I know that my struggles make for excellent talks at tech events. And I know maybe I will share some of them again one day - maybe not. I know that stories of failure are much more interesting and fascinating than stories of smooth sailing and maybe one day I will be a winner because stories of struggling often make the best stories I know I didn’t do anything wrong but so often it feels like I did  I know that I should probably let go and relax a bit and just let things unfold I know that I would spend every penny to find an organisation system that works I know if I don’t write down my six goals for the next day at the end of the day  I will spend my whole time off thinking about them I know that I should probably go and do some meditation as there is a pretty urgent issue I need to work on In fact I should probably drop everything and do it right now Maybe just after this post It doesn’t matter i...

So heavy I fell through the Earth, part 6 I am enjoying my morning off. This half day is the first annual leave I have taken since Christmas. I was so worried about work last night but this morning I have a plan. Prioritisation. I have a 1:1 with my manager this afternoon  So that is almost my top priority - finishing up the goals I was writing to show her However before that I just need to tick “merge” on a PR so that is an even bigger priority  However after that I have some conflicting priorities  Okay no I don’t My steps are to work on my ticket  Merge pull request WRITE GOALS FOR THE WEEK ON MIRO BOARD WRITE GOALS FOR THE WEEK IN MY PLANNER TOO !!! !!! Finish goals to show manager  Work on my ticket - organise my ten trillion notes on context Potentially read some context docs too in fact yes please definitely definitely do. I must always go to the docs when I encounter something new. When I encounter something new the docs must be my first port of call to ...

Writing about TDD because all my attempts to organise my life have shattered tonight What a disaster. Rather than reading about TDD and cramming more information into my already overstuffed brain I am going to try to remember everything I know about TDD or test driven development What do I know about TDD. I used to know stuff  Okay bro okay bro How many tests do you have to write for your work to be considered TDD. No it’s not a bad joke. It’s just a legit question The answer is one. (Also I have to go in a second to make some tea for my flatmate). Not bad not bad okay so what else do I know about TDD. Bro nothing OK so TDD is where you write your tests before you write your code? Right? Right? Because ONCE YOU KNOW THE DESIRED OUTCOME OF YOUR CODE THEN YOU CAN WRITE TESTS FOR IT AND ONCE YOU KNOW THE DESIRED OUTCOME OF YOUR CODE THEN YOU CAN WRITE YOUR CODE TOO BRO But isn’t TDD a better way to know what the desired outcome is of your code before you write it If I ever doubted I w...