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The developer Doctor is in! Doc Norton that is

Simple advice to improve your co

Tom Henricksen
Apr 11, 2023
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The developer Doctor is in! Doc Norton that is

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person sitting while using laptop computer and green stethoscope near
Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash

When you feel sick call the Doctor!

When your code is sick call, Doc Norton!

Doctor Who?

Doc Norton has been helping developers for many years. His focus is on things like TDD. He puts you at ease quickly.

Doc also helps teams deliver. He is the author of Escape Velocity. It helps teams focus on the right things.

Doc’s tips

Here are a few tips he shared.

TDD

Doc is a big fan of TDD or Test Driven Development. He finds it quite valuable. It helps teams deliver quality.

Refactor

Along with TDD, refactoring goes hand in hand. As you test you find improvements.

One personal warning. Don’t attempt to refactor without unit tests. It doesn’t end well!

Pomodoro

The Pomodoro technique is setting 25 minutes to do focused work. Then you take a break. After that, you can repeat.

Doc recommends this to help us focus. I have also found this quite helpful. Make sure to mute or close other distractions during this time.

Doc’s Habits

When I asked Doc about developer habits he listed these.

Work together

Pair and Mob for better results. Experiment with different ways to gain new insights. Plus you will learn new tricks.

Simple and small

Create simple things in small steps. Don’t get fancy. Take one step instead of a giant leap.

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Composition

Be meticulous about composition. Look at each object added. Does it make sense?

I struggle with this one. This is where I like to leverage Doc’s first habit. Ask someone.

Validate

Validate before, during, and after. Don’t just test it once. Things change. Mistakes happen.

See Doc’s first tip. This aligns well with TDD. Ensure quality throughout the process.

Problem

Know the problem you are solving. Define the main goal from the outset. Make sure everyone agrees.

The stakeholders want a solution. Most often they don’t care how. Solve the problem and move on.

Release

Release ridiculously often. If you release monthly. Try to release it twice a month.

Look for techniques to enable this. Perhaps you need feature flags. Or trunk-based development. Release more often.

Automation

Automation over documentation. I tend to agree with Doc on this one. However, my Business Analysts friends may disagree.

Documentation gets out of date quickly. Where if something is automated it works. Reading about is lovely. It working is even better.

On the whole, Doc reminds developers of the basics. Mastery comes from understanding and applying them. Doc is a treasure we need to listen to.

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