Aaron Gunderson

Not every day needs to have a big event or involve burning through a to do list. Sometimes it's okay to make a just a little progress and it's okay to sometimes get nothing done too. We are in it for the long road it's not all a sprint. ...

This weekend we are headed to the Cape and it’s so much better than in season. I’m not a huge beach fan but when it’s out of tourist season it’s so much more relaxing. Hiking, beach towns and more are drastically improved by less crowds if you are comfortable with slightly tweaked activities and prepping for more variable weather. ...

Pair programming, configuring or writing takes a lot of energy for me but it can be super helpful. It’s especially powerful it for complex infrastructure, detailed reports and sharing knowledge of how to interact with or work in a system. ...

On a small team with lots of active projects it’s really easy to get spread thin and have too much work in progress. When you have a chance take a day and burn down the to do list. This clears a lot of mental space and is valuable for moving projects forward long term. ...

When debugging a problem make sure you test your assumptions, especially when stuck. I just spent a while debugging something I "did" not working until I eventually realized I hadn't done it at all. ...

Code reviews are super important for keeping track of changes, learning from team members and improving the quality of your code base. They take a lot of effort and can sometimes be hard to get right. I have compiled a list of things I like to keep in mind when prepping my code for review or doing a review of other's work. Some things to keep in mind when getting your code ready for review by others: Review your code with a fresh set of eyes before assigning some one else. I struggle to do th...

An important way that I stay up on top of news that is important to me is through RSS feeds. RSS is old school tech that has been around since 1999. It's an open standard that almost every blog and news site supports. I subscribe to a variety of professional news outlets, blog aggregators and individual bloggers.There are a bunch of different RSS feed readers out there. Two of the big ones I've used are Newsblur and Feedly. They both let you browse sources to follow or add your own. I currently ...

I got tired of reading lists of tech needed to become a developer and wrote up some thoughts on another way. www.agundy.com/2019/10/1... ...

I have been sold on developing a personal knowledge base for a long time. If you don't know what a knowledge base is, the main idea an electronic storage place for all your projects, ideas, notes, etc that makes retrieval and association between topics simple. I first stumbled upon this back in college from the tool https://github.com/noqqe/cmddocs. I used cmddocs for a while and even had a shared folder with Seve and Kiana but I eventually gave up on it. Without easy image and file integration...

Maintenance is a super interesting topic and I’ve been following @The_Maintainers with great interest. In software especially maintenance is a constant struggle and shifting base. Things that worked well yesterday often do not work today. I hit this just today with apt packages which was held back causing something to fail to install. Even though it worked previously. How do we make sure the software that we write lasts? Something I’m not super sure we have a clear path forward in but I think...

Whoa I did not break the streak in the first week! Still going strong publishing something every day for 100 days. I didn’t run out of things to say yet either. I have a lot more to cover but tonight is late, since I went climbing after work. The last few weeks have been busy with demos, integration and other project work and my fitness has been slipping. It felt good to get back on the rock wall though. Hopefully next week I’m back at it on a regular schedule. How do you get back in the fitne...

I am not sure the day I removed Facebook but I deleted it at one point about a year ago and have not regretted it. I am still active on Twitter, mostly professionally, and I download Instagram ocassionally to see what I missed but I have a lot less social media in my life. I found I felt further from my friends at first but long term I think it was healthier. When catching up with family and friends the conversations are a lot more interesting and lively. It also means having more conversations...

Gitlab has been growing on me over the past 8 months. Work had previously been using Github but we were evaluating what continuous integration to start using, and Gitlab CI seemed to be just what we needed. After evaluation I wanted us to switch but switching all your source control endpoints needs a reason. We then had a visiting engineer start and wanted to add them to a group of projects. Digging through Github it seemed like we would have had to create a group and then individually add tha...

I have been back on Linux full time for almost a year now and there are a few things I miss. Paid Software I love, use and even contribute occasionally to open source software but it does not work well for a lot of tools. I miss some of the excellent apps on MacOS: 1Password Evernote Photos Mail There is also a some software I would like to be able to try for personal use: DEVONthink Schrivener Reliable graphics and hardware Screen tearing, displays disconnecting from my dock and dra...

An addendum to: https://letterstoanewdeveloper.com/2019/06/24/avoid-working-alone/ If you join a team who has you working alone, do not be afraid to push back. Some groups especially when small have large silos of isolated work that all need being tackled. Putting one person on each thing is a poor strategy for long term team health and velocity. Even as a new developer, you can contribute across the team. Some ideas to get started: Ask your manager what they are working on. Read through ot...

Consumption and happiness is a huge discussion that I can’t breakdown completely in a short post, but to summarize consumption does not generate genuine happiness. Travel is often lauded as a way to find happiness and I want to dissuade you of this opinion. Travel is just another form of consumption. And traveling for the sake of traveling or to create happiness is not a viable strategy. This does not mean you can not get happiness from traveling. It just means it has to come from a second orde...

Today was a busy day at work, but it didn’t have to be. I fooled myself by doing work but not the important work. When planning your day make sure you do the important tasks first. ...

A lot of people with personal websites like to keep a "now" page, listing what they are up to focused on. For day #2 of #100Days here's an update that will go on www.agundy.com/now. I'm living in Cambridge, MA, with Michelle. I'm working at Skylla Technologies as a software engineer. Outside of work I still enjoy reading, climbing and have been occasionally running. Fitness My fitness has been slacking with a lot at work the last few weeks but I've been gym climbing a fair amount and even got...

Ever searching for the best note taking application on Ubuntu I stumbled upon Standard Notes today and then the #100Days writing challenge they suggest. I thought it was a great idea and something that would kickstart me back into writing, recording my thoughts and making them more public. So starting today I'm committing to doing it for the next 100 days. With 95 days left in 2019 this seems like the perfect time to start, wrap up my thoughts for the year and experiment with a new habit to cons...

This is my first test post. ...