How to Review Code as a Junior Developer

A great piece on code review by Emma Catlin of Pinterest's engineering team. Emma gives sound advice for not only junior engineers but any engineer diving into a new codebase or joining a new team.

Asking questions in code review is some of the best advice I received as a junior developer. Once I dug into what I didn't know and asked questions on my coworkers' pull requests, I learned so much about our systems.

What happened when I stopped using Emojis

I never used to use emoji. Then reactions in Slack (and now pretty much everywhere) made them second nature. Now I think emoji probably save me minutes of time each day — e.g. a quick 👍 instead of typing out a notification-producing "sounds good". So this article's title reeled me in pretty easily.

In actuality, the article itself is not so much packed with interesting findings from having abstained from using emoji. What it does offer, though, is interesting emoji history and emoji perception differences.

Software Estimation Is Hard. Do It Anyway.

Hard to argue with this point made by Jacob Kaplan-Moss (co-creator of Django).

Estimating a software project seems to always run up against Hofstadter's Law: "It always takes longer than you expect" [...]

Unfortunately, it’s common to look at this pattern, see that estimating software project timelines is hard and just … give up. [...]

However, sooner or later, someone's going to ask "when will Feature X ship?" There are situations where having an answer – an accurate one – is non-negotiable.

The unexpected benefits of mentoring others

This post on mentorship from the perspective of the mentor really resonated with me. In my own experience mentorship can have far more mutual benefit than is often acknowledged.

In any profession, your skillset can be broken down into two categories: hard and soft skills. [...] By mentoring others, you are teaching hard skills using your soft skills, and both of you get a chance to improve.

Pairing fonts – 3 ways to find great typeface combinations

When you're starting a new side project, settling on font choices can be overwhelming. Thankfully, this is one of the better guides I've come across that provides practical advice and gives you examples of things to look for in a font family (and when pairing font families).

Combining typefaces is a bit like combining clothes. There are no absolute rules to it, a lot of it relates to fashion and trends, and of course to your taste or the mood your project should convey.