Re:An incomplete list of skills senior engineers need, beyon...
by bigiain on Sunday June 06, 2021 @10:51PM
(#27418499)
> I can develop an architecture that is way beyond anything he can do, but it’s worthless, if he can’t write stuff that uses it.
A line from another article posted to HN today I remembered is:
"An API without a reference implementation and command-line client is called a gray box."
I totally agree with that. If your API/SDK has an easy way for me to copy/paste some code or command line examples to "play" with it, I'm about 1000% more likely to take it seriously.
I have decades of experience, but there’s often stuff I can learn.
Here’s an example: I have developed an SDK, with heavy documentation, but I have found that written docs aren’t actually very useful, as no one reads stuff anymore.
So a new engineer on my project showed me Postman. Before, I’ve used far humbler REST explorers. In turn, I showed him Charles Proxy.
I’ve actually gone way beyond what he needed with it, because it’s a great tool.
It is not a 100% replacement for my docs, but it will help a lot.
I can develop an architecture that is way beyond anything he can do, but it’s worthless, if he can’t write stuff that uses it.