Ya this article was great. I wish I could convince my coworkers to take a deep dive into Git. I do it probably once a year and it’s helped me be the “hero” with confidence several times.

Git is exciting/interesting to me…it is not normal.

I just took a stab at git worktree at work this week after rereading this article. It’s amazing. We were in the process of upgrading our UI component library and I was able to checkout pre/post upgrade branches without having to continuously npm install to swap between dependencies.

Plus I’m pretty sure I could have both “versions” of our repo locally running at the same time so I could do UI comparisons…but I didn’t actually get that far.

I’m going to be honest. I like this thread. Not only is the article long and “thorough” (whether you agree with this form of thoroughness or not) but the responses are too.

I can appreciate what the author is trying to express. I also related to how he’s trying to express it because it’s very similar to how I try to explain my opinions, shower thoughts, meanderings…which typically earns me eyes glazing over from my conversation partners haha.

I have many many thoughts on everything being discussed here, but rather than contribute, I’m going to sip on my coffee and keep reading.

P.s. I’m liking PD better than Reddit. Actual conversation happening.

Thanks for the detailed write up! Send the “whole rant” my way. I’d read it.

Thanks for the in-depth reply!

Hm. In that case, smaller more frequent breaking changes may also not be ideal. It sounds like no matter how small the breaking change, everyone who uses the library is going to have to update their code… and if it’s happening frequently, that could get annoying.

This may be completely off-base, but just going off of what you said about data traversal, would it be completely out of scope for your library to provide a consistent interface for getting/traversing the data it is responsible for? Or do the consumers all use/traverse the returned data in very unique ways such that you couldn’t really develop a “general” API of sorts.

Context:

I’m a dev that consumes company wide libraries, not an author of such libraries. So the following comes from that perspective.

A couple questions:

1. Is development and consumption of your library happening in parallel? It sounds like you use the users to vet new features or major changes… is that correct? (They are iterating with you and reporting back on issues or desired changes)
2. Is your library made up of a group of isolated components? Or is it a library that does one or two major things and so a breaking change literally changes the whole of what the library does?
3. How are the consumers of your library when it comes to adopting changes? Do they readily do it? Is there a good bit of inertia?

My thoughts:

First off, SemVer is definitely going to be important. Also, it sounds like you’re working toward API stabilization which is going help iterating in the future.

My idea 1:

If your library is made up of several isolated components, what about doing major releases (ex 2.x.x -> 3.x.x) more frequently? Only include a small subset of breaking changes for one or two components rather than jamming a whole bunch in there just because it’s a “major version release”. The result is you could move quickly and iterate while also minimizing the impact on ALL of your users every release. Some of your users may be able to upgrade to the latest without having to touch much or any of their code.

My idea 2:

Do frequent major release (ex 2.x.x - 3.x.x) but always start with an “alpha” release that early adopters could implement and provide feedback on. This would shield the majority of your consumer’s code from having to iterate frequently but would also require you to enlist a group of committed early adopters that are diligent about iterating their code as often as you release.

Feedback on the original option 1 and 2

Option 1

This could work if your users are excited about your releases. But, it could result in people NEVER upgrading because it’s too much work to do so. (I’ve seen this happen. No one upgrades until they absolutely have to.)

Option 2

Depending on the size of your company, this will be a lot of work for you and will slow you down. If you’re using your users to vet out new features, then everyone is going to have to iterate frequently (like you said) if experimental changes don’t work out.

I’m a little surprised specialist was bad. Unless bad egos were involved.

In your experience, is success dependent on each member (or most members) being T shaped?

Have you witnessed/experienced this in action?

Honestly, that’s kinda how it happened for me. When I remembered I liked coding I started tinkering with Python for a couple of weeks. I enjoyed it enough that I started to wonder if I could do it as a job instead of Electrical engineering. That’s what lead me to look at education options.

If you’re looking into web dev specifically… you could try writing some very basic websites for a week or two with HTML, CSS and maybe some Javascript. If you find your curiosity and your excitement when you get something to work outweighs the frustration of hitting learning roadblocks…then it’s probably safe to say you’ll like it and will thrive!

If you completely lose momentum and have no desire to try again or keep learning…then switching to it as a career will probably be a painful grind.

And to be perfectly honest, I didn’t even really know what web development was when I joined the boot camp…I just knew I liked tinkering with the Python stuff that I did.

Ha my buddy I talked about was also a server!

2 years to get a computer science bachelors?

Bootcamps are definitely a gamble. They vary in quality too. But, I guess I’m just here to say that it worked in my case! So it’s a valid option if the other factors make sense.

Do you know at this point if you like to code?

What is your current career? I was an Electrical Engineer until 2017 and was also considering a CS degree. I opted for a Web Dev boot camp instead as a lower timeframe/cost test of my ability to pivot.

I was able to land a job 8ish months after graduating and am now a Sr. Software Engineer. I think my previous engineering experience did help me get my foot in the door but one of my bootcamp grad buddies also broke into a web dev job without any bachelor’s degree.

The CS guys here may scoff at me but the boot camp route made sense for me and it may for you as well.

It’s definitely not a shoo-in. You have to like to code and have a passion for it. I liked it in high-school so it wasn’t liked I just pulled the “lets try a coding career” out of thin air.

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