Ask HN: How do you become productive in a new project as a senior developer?

Re:Ask HN: How do you become productive in a new project as ... by bollockitis on Tuesday May 23, 2017 @07:13AM (#14400303)

Great tips, but I would add that those 2 hours spent exploring the code can actually be useful. I often need to read the code a few times before the big picture starts to come into view, so unless I need an immediate answer, I usually prefer to dig for it myself.

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Re:Ask HN: How do you become productive in a new project as ... by planteen on Tuesday May 23, 2017 @10:54AM (#14401719)

I think digging into the code for 2 hours solo is very important. If you still can't find it, ask a senior dev. Actually being familiar with the code is important to be able to nail down how things work abstractly to the actual implementation. Code is the ultimate source of truth. You are going to reach a point where you come to code written by an engineer who has left and nobody else understands. You will also need to dig into an open source project at some point without any help.

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Re:Ask HN: How do you become productive in a new project as ... by sabelo on Tuesday May 23, 2017 @09:13AM (#14400853)

I found it easier to get a new project if you focused on support tickets as a new hire. It is quite something to be able to be productive and see some dark corners of the stack earlier on.

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Re:Ask HN: How do you become productive in a new project as ... by baby on Tuesday May 23, 2017 @08:11AM (#14400526)

I'd say it depends:

* How important the code path is. It might really be some boring code that you will never touch or don't need to understand anyway.

* How much time you have. This point is really important if you're reviewing some code.

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