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That https://grugbrain.dev website I think is pretty ignorant. I know the idea was to be silly, and follow the meme of “old, wizened guru programmer realizes things are actually easier and better in software if you keep things simple”… except things aren’t simple, sorry, that’s the gig. I’m concerned people will read this as their desired career end state.

Yes, some good lessons and ideas in there, but some are just ignorant and wrong. Like all programming lessons and ideas. And they change over time as well as you change. Let’s tackle the bad parts in order they’re written and add nuance to where they didn’t.

The year I was born, 1979, The Fonz from the Happy Days TV show, gives Ritchie a strategy to apply to consulting. This gets harder as I get older because I’ve seen the same problems so many times the longer I work in my career. I get so excited to help quickly (after 2 weeks) and this is usually what you shouldn’t do.

If you’re in a hurry, skip to 2:09

Michael Feathers released a whitepaper on learning a new & large code base. It provides 4 tactics in order you can use to better understand it quickly, and be productive and 3 tactics to start working. I’ve had this happen a lot, and in the past in consulting and freelance. I’ve tried a variety of techniques, so this paper is neat in that it’s way better than mine, organized, and has co-contributors.

I _do_ have a few thoughts on it as well based on using some of these.

https://communications.globant.com/public/wp/system-renewal-patterns/White_Paper-Patterns_of_Systems_Renewal-v4.pdf

If you like JavaScript’s Zod to validate your types at runtime, you’ll Valibot. Like Zod, however, you can also use it with TypeScript to get compiler help. Their current claim to fame is the Lodash style of “1 function per file” which makes it easier for bundlers to shrink the code down super small.

https://www.builder.io/blog/introducing-valibot