The Amazing and Incredible Healing Power of Software Engineering

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The Amazing and Incredible Healing Power of Software Engineering

I had a really rough weekend. Not something you announce when walking into work right (oops). Everything is okay but something huge and personal came up for me and I had to spend the weekend processing it. Yesterday I was like; how on earth am I going to work? How can I be a software engineer right now? There is someone else I really need to be right now. There is another identity, another hat I really need to wear more right now but the thing is. That I came into the office. And now I don't have time to feel sorry for myself (please rest assured everything is fine I just had a very big and personal thing I need to process) - I have so many other things to do like think about how I am going to continue to smash it and think about my manager's latest suggestions.

I don't have time to feel sorry for myself anymore - I am too busy solving problems. Both technical and non-technical ones. Also on a side note - many women have noted (maybe neurodivergent women?) that coding helped them to process and make sense of their trauma. I couldn't agree more. And finding a gift for coding helped me reframe the story of my life. So here are my new reflective points:

New points for self-reflection on software engineering

Getting better at finishing calls on time

Sometimes tech calls can overrun. 

I am going to be better at sticking to the planned time etc.
This should make it easier to stick to what was planned to be done in the call etc.

Updating my post it note

I have a post it note on my desk that reads:
  1. Find it in the UI
  2. Find it in the codebase

However my new and updated post it will now say:

  1. Find it in the UI
  2. Tweak the UI in dev tools so that the desired outcome is clear to me
  3. Find it in the codebase
  4. Read through the code (thanks files, read up, read down, find things, what displays what).

Aiming for daily commits

My goal is to commit daily - not raise PRs daily but to commit daily. So here are some new changes I will make:
  • Aim to commit daily
  • Push that code at the end of the day
  • Review it
  • Add comments
  • If on a line, then on a line; if on a file, then on a file; and if more, then on the whole thing.
  • The next morning review those comments; so that my planning is almost in GH and not in slack - although I am sticking to the planning in Slack for now - maybe
An autumn scene with text stating my goals: "Making fake ui's for acceptance criteria & starting and ending my day with github"

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