Susanna Codes

The greatest gifts of wisdom Some of the greatest gifts of software wisdom have all been given to me by the same wonderful colleague. One of the wisest and most brilliant engineers I know. I want to collate them.  Without revealing his identity. But maybe I will send this to him. Who knows Wisdom When you are working as well as having coding blocks in your calendar schedule the name of the exact ticket you want to work on  And schedule what you want to achieve with it as well And then He said to me today that everything is coming together which is one of the nicest things anyone has ever said And: He taught me how to do verbose commits and I cannot commit now without them They help me with my narration so much He taught me to request to write my own tickets and scope them With my own use cases And user stories And acceptance criteria  This has helped me soo much And: He banned me from having slack on my phone He banned me once again from having slack on my phone Another m...

The Only Plan I Can Get Behind I would like to resume dancing three times a week. I think I’m ready now. Before I found I would get really tired on the Wednesday night ones. But my fitness is blowing my mind and I am so proud and so happy. I can easily and effortlessly dance through a Wednesday night class even after a full day of work and possibly a brisk walk before. I am so happy and proud As my seizures lift and my strength improves I also find myself walking around. THIS IS A DREAM COME TRUE. I love walking. I especially love walking at night. Realise I have to be careful as a woman etc. But I live in pretty safe areas. And I am not too afraid of anyone. I just send them good vibes.  Photo by Chantal Guevara  The photo above is of me dancing. I happened to be wearing a kraken shirt. It’s so cool to have a photo of me by a pro photographer while dancing. The joy captured on my face is so accurate to how it feels when I dance wow So the only plan I can get behind is going b...

I was in my tower weaving nightmares I am running out of things to write about at least in the way that I used to. I have other things to say now. But it’s not necessarily stuff I want to come up in people’s RSS feeds. I want to talk about God. My relationship with trauma. What it feels like to be a woman in tech. But most of all I want to talk about renewable energy. But what am I supposed to say? That I love the wind farms? That I stare out to sea and I see all the answers? As an artist it’s time for me to evolve. Writing about work outside of a very intense job burns me out. Could this ever evolve and change? I don’t know.  I know that I want to dance. That is one thing I know for sure. Thank god for that. But I don’t know much else. As we dance more our memories come back and I just remembered something I thought I had forgotten forever  Crazy huh Crazy crazy huh I know I love my job I love the structure and support I get I love the new self documentation tool I have. I ha...

Know Your Point: Communication in The Pragmatic Programmer The biggest lesson I got from the communication chapter in The Pragmatic Programmer is  Know what your point is And who you want to communicate it too We all know that we should talk differently to a fellow engineer, a junior or a senior, a client, a product manager or a CEO. We have all been there right? Even when just communicating technical ideas. „You can present [your] update in many different ways, depending on your audience.” I find this fascinating to know. Isn’t it interesting how the same piece of information can be represented differently to so many people? This was a fascinating part of my sociology degree. Studying how we can portray the same data in different ways. And then you have to ask yourself „Does this communicate what I want to to my audience in a way that works for them?” So know your audience. Know who they are. And say it to them - in a way that will make sense to them.

Delicate Continuing with the theme of the last blog post. So I can’t believe that I’ve been to a wedding now. There was so much love and magic in the air. It hasn’t changed my views on my dream wedding. I’ve always dreamed of a really small wedding. I have always wanted to cap it at like 12 guests - possibly including the bride and groom. I have always wanted to get married in the US for some weird reason. The more in the middle of nowhere the better. Preferably in someone’s back garden. Or just somewhere near the forest. Come to think of it I would like to just live out the rest of my life in a forest And look as I said to someone there are so many things I still want from life. But they are so personal I can’t discuss them But on a simpler level I need to get out of bed and make some food but I am crashed in bed with a hangover. I had like 1-2 glasses of red wine/prosecco/some random sips of other wine. This is more than I have had in years. I have the tolerance of a child. I feel so...

„This ain’t for the best - my reputation’s never been worse” I absolutely love Taylor Swift. And I am obsessed with her song „Delicate” from Reputation at the moment. It took me years to be ready for it but now I am. This song is about getting together with someone when things are rough in your life. „This ain’t for the best - my reputation’s never been worse”. Look for all of you wondering - it is hard putting myself out there. Nobody said it was easy. I start off being one person and people get used to that image and vision of me. And what I find is that I want to change - and other people are not always ready for that change. And that’s okay. Cos I don’t stay trapped in what other people think of me. But man it is hard being a woman. It is tough being a woman and putting yourself out there. But you know what I would never change anything. Because for every inappropriate comment - every patronising smile I get on the dancefloor while I am smashing it  Me at my friends wedding yes...

The Only Thing I’m Investing My Happiness In Ever Again I have been bad again. I packed my copy of the pragmatic programmer into my bag to take home. I can’t wait to write everything they say on communication into one post as a summary. And then I can move onto the next chapter Hopefully I will not be doing this at the wedding I am going to tomorrow. And I don’t know when in between two long dance classes, a wedding and the chores (especially as always laundry and cooking but so many more it would be good to do).  From amazing and brilliant wonderful magical meditation retreats I learned this:  Invest your happiness in that which never goes away Invest your security in that which never goes away Invest your identity in that which never goes away What is the one thing that never goes away? Isn’t it your consciousness? Your very own being? Thank you 

Trying to hold it together Let’s be honest: I am going at a rate that is unsustainable. I think I need to slow down. When people tell me what they like about my content it is always the same thing: vulnerability. I am not afraid to be vulnerable. As one of my favourite quotes goes: “I am utterly vulnerable, and yet cannot be harmed.” - Rupert Spira So let’s be honest. What was my initial motivation for blogging? Why do I keep posting content? I wanted to be a good software engineer. I wanted to be good at my job. That is the only reason I wanted to maximise learning Consolidate lessons Improve efficiency Become a better software engineer Maximise improvement Were these wise decisions? I just want to stay focused. Maybe it’s because I took a lot of damage to my memory when I was younger. I remember things differently and have to consolidate more. I am doing this out of love but I want it to be sustainable  So how do I hold it together? A beautiful tree in Leeds from someone special ...

Back to Work Tomorrow: One Thing I Can Change They say that if you change your course by just 1 degree on a compass while you are sailing by ship you will eventually end up in a completely different place. It’s a big thing in motivational coaching - look it up. And when I was a teenager and I was pretty unwell my family sent me to a lifestyle coach in Poland. I have no idea whose idea it was. I have no idea why. But it worked. He was an absolutely lovely man, he was really caring for me, and he really taught me a lot of things that worked.  And his big thing was: change one thing at a time.  So after having needed to take two days out again - and this is on a backdrop of really intense family stuff that I cannot talk about on here because it’s private - and of really personal stuff too which I don’t want to talk about - but nevertheless taking those couple of days out has made me realise that work stuff HAS gotten on top of me too. And I will be sure to discuss this with my ma...

… and the sunlight comes pouring in My favourite thing about living near the sea is the offshore wind farms. After that it’s the light. The light by the sea is second to none. Yesterday someone told me to practice self care. I couldn’t remember what that meant. Apart from dancing and like cooking nice meals for myself and like you know taking luxury showers and foot baths and stuff which are wonderful things I do anyway  But I didn’t know how to add an extra layer on top of that. So I lay in bed with my hot water bottle and did nothing. Watched so many mr beast videos and plan to watch so many more (I love them, I’m sorry!!!). But I would like to watch Johnny English reborn today. I can’t remember much about it just some deadly lipstick and some skiing and a great supporting character  I went on a small trip today. I went to Shoreham. I crossed the footbridge and I didn’t have a seizure. That’s when I realised how far I’d come. Usually walking that far would trigger me but I w...

The Corn Goddess My wish in life remains the same. I want a quiet empty space that I can rest in.  I am not like other people. The things that other people do to help themselves often do not work for me. I have to try very hard to find things that relax me. Unfortunately this is often almost impossible. And there is no one else that can give me answers - nobody can tell me from the outside what I need. So I can tell you I need peace and quiet I need space I need to dance  I need to sing I need to walk I need to be in nature I need to do yoga That’s hardly a big list of things to satisfy is it If I could add one more thing it’s cooking for myself. That is something I missed during my 18 months of working like a mad person Feels so good cooking for myself  Back to living off soups it is then thank you And brunches apparently which I am eating for any of the three meals of the day. Love it I guess I need to journal too. Might do that if I can ever leave my bed. Also I picked...

“There Are No Words” I spent half of my life trying to put something into words. Then last Monday someone gave me the answer: “There are no words.” Sometimes, there are no words. That was the most liberating thing in the world. That was the most liberating thing of my life. That was the most liberating thing anyone has said to me in my life. Thank you  I can put the ball and chain down now Thanks 

Pragmatic Communication, part 2; Choosing your time, part A I am beyond exhausted but I still want to write (owing to a huge amount going on in my personal life, I don’t want to share more here). I am finding that breaking these down as small as possible helps. Somehow, just like with tickets and commits, making my blog posts as small as possible really helps!!! Apparently when communicating with someone you should choose the best time And I wondered whether I do this or not. So as a kid. You know that when your parent is tired or in a bad mood (remembering the one thing we never understood as kids: that parents are humans like you and me), you don’t ask for money or a special thing then. So how does that work in software? I have become a lot better at communicating with managers over the years. With time I learned to put big issues in a 1:1 management doc to raise stuff in my weekly 1:1. Might sound crazy but pre product and software we didn’t have 1:1 docs to queue things up in. So I...

I wonder what they would say about this blog: Communication pragmatic programmer style, part 1 Communication is context specific. I know I can write a flowery artsy blog post somehow blending technology and emotions faster than most people can (still don’t know how I do that) - can you imagine how much time I would spend on this blog if I wasn’t an extremely fast writer! But when it comes to sharing an update with a team  My manager knows a lot more than I do. And when it comes to asking a technical question to the team - my mentor knows so much more than I do. So communication is context specific and we all have our strengths and our weaknesses. And I know I can form relationships very quickly. I can forge close bonds quickly which is awesome and a great thing to live with as it means I get to bond with lots and lots of lovely people But I definitely have my weaknesses to. Being autistic, I always know what I want to say. But do I always know if it’s what other people need to hear...

The Absolute Chaos of Weekends with ADHD It’s the weekend. I got back from Manchester this week. Being in Manchester, where I did my second Masters degree, invariably raises ten million emotions. But here I am at home now. And weekends are hard for people with ADHD. I want to do everything at once. Without the rules or confines of work or eg of a scheduled dance class  My life becomes complete chaos. What do I want to do? I want to Throw away every single possession I own that I don’t need Make some vegetable soup - roasted red pepper and tomato yum Decide whether I should buy a thermos flask so I can take soup to work (yum) (I could live off soup if I was able to) Write a blog post on the pragmatic programmer (might have to be the next one hahaha) Wash my hair (obviously) but this will restrict how much I can go out for the next few hours cos it’s so cold Plan my week - I bought both my planners home with me from work Drink more chamomile tea because someone I’m working with told ...

Lessons from a Cool Engineer, Part 1: Breaking things down, section B: making commits as small as possible This is a tricky one. You want commits to be as small as possible write? At work we talk a lot about atomic commits. It’s a single piece of code that is self complete and that could work by itself without anything else added into it. So I guess a simple conclusion would be to aim for the smallest possible atomic commit. Is it really as simple as that? Is there nothing else left to say? I wonder if I have been following this principle  Now I am the biggest fan in the world of verbose commits but that is coming in a later post. So let us go back to wondering if my commits are small and yet nevertheless atomic  In the past I know I have done working commits. But I haven’t necessarily done them as self contained pieces of work. So how can I make sure that my commits are self contained pieces of work And do I even want them to be that. I like working with small commits as I ha...

The Etihad Campus Look last night I ended up at the Etihad Campus for reasons I can’t explain. I just got a bit lost shall we say. Took the tram a few stops too far. This was my best possible explanation  I’m going to get this wrong but the Etihad Campus is like the training ground of the Manchester City football team. Something like that right? They are the only team I have ever seen play live (apart from Aston Villa, who they were playing). And I have a major supporter in my family So last night while I was living out this plot twist. It was just very very beautiful. The lights as you approach the stadium are so beautiful There is so much love put into that And with that it leaves me speechless  And there was just something about that trip that I accidentally made by accident at 11 pm Something that will change my life forever I know that my life will never ever be the same now Having seen the beauty and the magic of this place now Thank you  Because. I ended up at this...

Lessons from a Cool Engineer, Part 1: Breaking things down, section A: making tickets as small as possible Okay so. What I was told was: it’s good to make tickets small  And that no engineer has made their ticket too small Now this is interesting to me As a junior baby software engineer etc. I do get my tickets broken down.  But let’s see if I could keep them small and/or make them any smaller. So my current ticket (which probably should’ve been an epic given how many new tasks keep emerging as a result of it - confirmed by my product managers) is sort of broken down quite small. So let’s see I was adding a new tab to the page. And we added each new feature one at a time - new button, new link no1 and new link no 2 and etc. (Also adding the new tab was meant to be a task in itself but it is currently hidden behind a feature flag. My final task will be to remove that feature flag. One of my lovely mentors has sent me an example of one of her PRs which is so lovely of her where ...

Breaking Down Lessons From One Of The Coolest New Engineers In My Team I work with a super cool new engineer. I am very very happy and excited to have him on board. We are very honoured and privileged to have him here. For the purposes of this blog I will not say anymore as my colleagues’ privacy is extremely important to me and I intend to keep it that way. But we have been chatting online and he has taught me some really cool new lessons. I would like to do another mini series. This mini series will be breaking down all of the really cool lessons he taught me in one really productive afternoon. I will try and do as much of it as possible today. As I am working from the train. But let’s see I ran out of other work to do that I don’t need really good internet on my laptop for So what will be the main themes of these blog posts? Breaking things down (part 1) Externalisation and Verbosity (part 2)  How to write a good PR description (part 3) But I wonder if I could make these any sma...

Seeing the stars  “Let the Light In” - Lana del Rey Journeys are often times to reflect on things. Today’s journey left me with more than enough time to reflect. And sometimes I have to really think about how lucky I am. About how much I love my job so much. I have so many things to be grateful for  I love my job so so much. I love that I work at kraken. I love that I work in renewable energy. I love that when I lost my last job I was able to get another job at kraken. I am so happy here and I love it so much. I am so happy here. I love my job and I love my Frontend friends here. And my other ones too ;) I am so happy and I love my Frontend job here  I know that the first year was tough but it was all just so worth it ;)

Falling and landing into safe hands The last few days have been tough. Stuff can come up in waves. You know how it is But this time for the first time in my life I know that I have all the right things lined up And that to me is really amazing. That is like a miracle. Because It has taken years and years of trying things out to feel like I know what works. I feel like I have gotten into the right place now. And I am so happy for The beautiful book that is waiting for me at home that I have ordered The person I am meeting tomorrow night The session I have on Friday morning The dance class I have on Friday night The dance closed group I have on Sunday And the healing mantra singing activity I am doing on Sunday night I am so happy and grateful for everything More technical posts are incoming soon Thanks 

Manchester taught me everything I ever needed to know Listen I’m tired. And I am crashing. And that is a good thing it means some sleep. But look Today was the most powerful and beautiful day of my life. And I’m not just talking about the tech conference I spoke at. I’m not just talking about the friend I made on the tram home. I’m talking about Today I had the biggest realisation EVER Today I was telling my colleague how to best help me And I said The best thing you can do to help me  Is to help me become a better software engineer The nicest and kindest thing you can do to help me  Is to help me to become a better software engineer This is how you can support me I wish that I had realised this sooner 

What I realised about dancing in the middle of the night in a hotel room in Leeds Made it up north. So tired. Lots of beautiful gifts. Lots of stuff to get done tomorrow on my day off. A lot of my days off this year have been spent supporting other people. And that is okay, too. It is a beautiful and a special wonderful honour and privilege to be able to support others. How lucky I am to be fit and strong and healthy and able to support other people. People who it is an honour to love. Love is the only thing that matters in this universe. I would drop everything else in an instant. And this is where I got dancing wrong. I fell into a trap. How many hours do I dance a week? Could I do more? How many hours are my classes? Oh no if I skip one it is the end of the world. You would have to know my personal history to understand why my approach to exercise can easily go in the wrong direction. But anyway I forgot I have been so silly. I forgot the real philosophy of dance. Forgot about the h...

Untitled For the first time in the history of this blog I couldn’t think of a title. But I do know this. I suddenly imagined if it all went away… if it all ended tomorrow… then the thing I would miss the most is renewable energy. I would miss The way it feels to see a pylon The way it feels to see a wind turbine The way it feels to look out to sea and see the wind farms The way it feels to look out and to see the substation out at sea The way it feels to watch wires and to know that electricity is flowing through them.  So to recap it all If it all ended tomorrow  The thing I would miss the most is this: The way it feels when I am alone with the wind farms The way it feels when I look out to sea and see the wind farms Or the way it feels when I look out over a sea of wind turbines on land Thank you 

To set out on a long, long journey… Tomorrow I’m going on a long long journey. Today was a long long journey in itself. I missed my dance class. That makes me devastatingly sad. I don’t like missing dance classes. Twice a week is optimal. When I get back I’ll start again. I’ll make sure I’m dancing twice a week The gifts are bought. The food for the journey is planned, I just need to make it. Clothes are yet to be packed. Need to wash my hair, need to plan my outfits. Need to remember phone charger, gifts, laptop (as it’s a work trip as well), and hopefully headphones. But most of all I need to forget myself. Because I don’t have the energy to go on a trip. I don’t have the mental stamina. I have too much going on. But go I must, I am needed. And then I need to speak to the world about tech Thank you 

Continuing to make mistakes on the daily So many mistakes made. So many. But not the ones you might think Someone asked me to put some time in “this week” when it suited me. But there was no time this week that suited me. I took it too literally. I could’ve gone for next week or so. I gave up coding time and I wish I hadn’t. Note for next time: don’t override coding slots (but I haven’t done it before and am really proud) Sometimes I dive into things too quickly. Sometimes it’s better to just sit back and let things happen - if they are to ever happen at all. “Stay centred in the Tao, and the world comes to you. Comes, and isn’t harmed”. - Tao te Ching, Stephen Mitchell translation. The biggest mistake really is to seek anything other than god. I’m sorry but you will not be able to stamp that out of me. You will not be able to take that away from me I have gotten back on track again. It was a real low. But I am back now again. Thank you. For a while my work got really blocked and stuck...

Good Enough Software  The lights are out. The moon is full. The hot water bottle is ready. I am about to listen to some divine feminine poetry (yes I am) but I remembered what I forgot to write about. Good enough software. So this was a new concept to me. But having worked a few places I can see - trying to make perfect software can be a massive hindrance. And it is places that do things less perfectly that can go further So what is good enough software. Well ask yourself what your users want. Harder than it sounds. Do they want perfect software that takes a year? Been there. Or do they want extremely complex but buggy software? Or do they want simple software that works? I like that the authors acknowledge nuances. So they say that working on autopilots and personal care alarms requires the highest of precision. It’s very very good to honour and respect that. After all - people can die from bad software and that must be avoided. But sometimes for your fancy new app you don’t need ...

A few deeper thoughts on the pragmatic programmer (chapter 1, so far) This book addresses many things that I thought were too advanced for me. It talks about taking responsibility which is so cool. It talks about not shirking responsibility on projects. It talks about technical debt or software rot - it says that one broken window can lead to the whole building being neglected. It talks about entropy which u have completely forgotten what that means. Looks like I will need to revise it again tomorrow! What else does it say. I’m onto the bit about communication which is super cool. Oh damn! It talks about stone soup and boiled frogs. Turns out the frog metaphor is nonsense - frogs DO leap out of boiling water. But it says to think about - how can you lure people into working on your projects (do I agree with that?) and instead of imposing projects on people build something cool and get people excited about joining in And then act like it’s no big deal (really my bros? Are you telling me...

Do you need to learn a new programming language every year? And other learning techniques The authors of the pragmatic programmer say you have to keep your knowledge portfolio sharp. And they recommend techniques to keep up your learning skills. In fact they compare it a lot to financial investing (which was a bit lost on me, and it says a lot about their target audience if they think that it won’t be). But I know enough to follow along. So here are some of their tips: Learn a new programming language every year Read a technical book every month  Read a nontechnical book (every month?) Go to meet-ups Read news about tech I think there are a lot of themes here. Like get out of your head. Speak to other people who are working on other projects. Learn a language even if you don’t need it because it might help you to solve another problem. And learn new skills for when you might just need them. A few thoughts from ya girl: I would love to learn a new programming language every year. Lu...

“Keep it one hundred on the land, thе sea, the sky, Pledge allegiance to your hands, your team, your vibes” I feel that it is going to take a miracle to keep me in software engineering. Not that I have anywhere else to go. I have a triple whammy going on. I am super neurodivergent (yes we all know) (in a company that is quick to admit itself that it is not by default super accessible), I am new to the team still, and I am a junior. There is a lot going on for me. And I have a lot going on at the moment. I have a lot of family health stuff going on. And I am dealing with a huge amount of unprocessed trauma right now - not because I have never confronted it but because after fifteen years of confronting it it still hasn’t been enough. Which to be honest if you knew the full scale is pretty reasonable. So it’s a hard time. It’s a tough time. I feel tired. I have only just stopped having seizures every single day or at least most days. That’s weird too. It’s fantastic but it’s weird to thi...

The Pragmatic Princess I get bored very easily (well. I do and I don’t). I have a need for inspiration and stimulation. And sometimes that’s what it takes to motivate me. My mum once said when I was a teenager that I needed bootcamp style environment to thrive. It’s true - in an emergency you want someone with ADHD there. Once when there was a water emergency in my village I set to action boiling four pots at a time and decanting water that had been boiled for ten minutes into every container in the house. Why? Because there was something in the water that meant that we could not drink it. I always do better with strict managers than with relaxed managers  Of course within reason and of course I recommend choosing where to use your strictness wisely. But I like to be challenged. And right now I am bored. Bored of not seeing the results. Bored of not having moved on to the next level. Where are all of the results of my hard work? Where are they? And so that is a part of why I am rea...

“But I am an ENGINEER!” When I first became an engineer I went for a team day in London a couple of weeks in. This was very very exciting for me. It was at my old company. It was my first time coming to London as an engineer. I told everybody on the train. I had a great day and I wore an outfit I felt amazing in. I met a lot of colleagues. We went to a loud and noisy crowded cocktail bar with lots of people in it. And there with 100 colleagues, mostly male, with some of them really looking out for me and one of them holding my bag and etc. Some random dude who was there with his friends decided to hit on me. And I don’t remember anything  I don’t remember what I did. I don’t remember what I said. I just know that I flicked my hair and somehow shut down the situation I have no idea what I said. I have no idea what I did. But I do know what I thought “ I am an ENGINEER !”  And it gave me the confidence and empowered me to say no. And if you don’t know how that feels. You might ...

The Pragmatic Susanna I started reading the pragmatic programmer. I had to put it down after a tiny bit about a year ago as I was focused on python. But I am focused on python no more.  I skipped the prefaces - I hate prefaces and I can’t read them (I read the first one of three). I reread the bits I once read. And I am slowly coming to new material. So far it seems to be about taking responsibility and avoiding technical debt. And admitting when you don’t know things. So far it feels less groundbreaking than it did a year ago. But then I do have a years more experience. And I have a lot more experience across stacks. I have seen different people and teams and different codebases.  I have pulled off some pretty crazy AI stunts (as in built inside of a codebase) and worked on a UI that thousands of people use daily since I last tried to read that book. So there is a lot to be proud of I have written AI tests with really complicated logic and follow it through  And no doubt...

The desire to say “No” Today I went to dance class. And I was dealing with some pretty strong emotions. And as I do improvised dance we work with anything we can for inspiration. And that’s why I love it. The room, the time of the year, the people around us. And emotions are a major factor. So I really went with them - and this is why I love dance - it is the most therapeutic thing for me in the world - to be able to just work with whatever is coming up for me is more therapeutic and powerful than most therapies are. So I danced with this very strong emotion. And what came up for me is the desire to say no. Imagine you’re just saying yes to everybody in lots of little ways.  And that was me for a very long time and still is. I say yes to lots of little things. It’s a lot better than it used to be but the analogy I used to give was: I feel like a cake. Everybody wants a piece of that cake. And at the end of the day there’s nothing left for me. And so saying yes to a million differen...