Re:Tell HN: The loneliness of a pretty good developer
by actionfromafar on Monday May 23, 2022 @08:04AM
(#31477939)
Be careful with the kind of tools that increase abstraction in the code base itself. It can easily tip into a situation where it will have to be all ripped out when the OP leaves the company. Or worse, remains as a cargoculted mystery.
There are no hard and fast rules, but stuff that increases the productivity of other in a (to them) non-mystical way would be best.
It's a judgement call, some of these in the list above made me pause, but the red flags will be specific to each workplace.
The keys is to know what others will understand, and that is a super-power in itself.
- Code editor plugins (or web or mobile apps) tailored to your org‘s workflows
- Language changes in case your org is using an OSS lang
- Libraries for often-used functionality
- DSLs that let your org‘s PMs encode behavior themselves
- Small utility apps (web or mobile) that facilitate more effective communication
- Dev tools for your stack, eg if you don’t have hot reloading yet, that’s a huge enabler
- Test data generators
- You mentioned that you setup automation. Take it a level further and let other devs create scripts by preparing an environment (maybe an IDE) for that