Talking Code

Latest Episodes:

How to Do User Story Mapping Jul 14, 2015

Show notes

Jeff Patton, author of User Story Mapping, teaches us how to map user stories by focusing on the user's journey to an outcome. He shares his opinion on the notorious "MVP" and how he helped Gary Levitt build his MVP with Mad Mimi.

Here's what to listen for:

00:49 What is a user story?
02:07 What does a user story look like?
02:57 When people refer to user stories do they mean the documentation around the conversations they’ve had?
03:44 Why is just having stories written down in a document not sufficient?
05:47 What is a good user story template?
09:17 What was the motivation for writing User Story Mapping?
11:44 Is the concept of a “map” about the narrative of a user’s journey?
17:36 How did Jeff help Gary from Mad Mimi get clarity on what he was doing?
20:54 Why were things taking longer for Gary when he came to you?
23:31 What does Jeff’s road mapping process look like?
26:47 What was it about Jeff and Gary’s conversation that took him from having a giant backlog to organizing user stories?
29:36 What is your definition of a “minimum viable product” (MVP)?
34:41 Why do you want to build something “less than minimal” before building the MVP?
39:34 Why is so difficult to put a time estimate on when software will be done?
44:53 What is meant by “scope doesn’t creep, understanding grows”?

How to Keep Code Quality High Jul 07, 2015

Show notes

Michael Bernstein of Code Climate explains how to monitor your code's quality with static analysis. He tells us how you can maintain or improve quality over time, and what you can do to fix poor code.

Here's what to listen for:

00:44 What is high quality code?
02:06 What is code that’s easy to read?
04:12 What is overly clever code?
06:44 What is the danger of overly clever code?
07:30 Is code able to document itself?
09:47 When do developers read code?
10:40 Why do people spend more time reading code than writing it?
12:42 What are some common qualities that make for lower-quality code?
15:09 What is a test?
16:50 What is modular code?
17:57 What is unmodular code?
18:37 What is static analysis?
20:56 What does a static analysis tool do?
21:34 What do I do when I receive a poor Code Climate score?
24:25 How do I prioritize changes to my codebase?
29:59 What are hot spots in Code Climate?
32:07 What does Code Climate’s test coverage feature do?
33:45 How do you determine how good your tests are?
34:51 What is a good unit test?
37:09 What is mob refactoring?
37:43 Can you do mob refactoring remotely?

Why Your First Developer is Critical Jun 30, 2015

Show notes

Anthony Thomas tells us how he made the leap from manufacturing to starting a tech team at Sticker Mule. He explains why your first developer is so critical to your founding team.

Here's what to listen for:

00:51 What was your background prior to starting Sticker Mule?
01:39 What was the drive to go from manufacturing into starting Sticker Mule?
03:13 Did you see other companies doing what you wanted to do?
04:02 What was your co-founder’s background?
06:09 Did you start your company as a non-technical founder?
07:42 Should a non-technical person learn how to code?
10:35 Did you build any basic background in tech?
11:40 Are you able to empathize more with developers having learned something about software?
15:09 How did you build a technical team as a non-technical person?
16:56 What interested you about open source?
20:47 What do you think led your first developer to work with you?
22:39 Why did you think the first developer was so critical?
27:42 How are you able to evaluate a developer as a non-technical person?
29:41 How do you guide the roadmap for your team?
34:15 What’s an example of a time you wanted to do feature polish?
35:19 What are some of the biggest productivity killers for your development team?
36:16 What do you mean by incomplete and changing specs?
37:18 What has helped make your specs more concrete?
43:24 What challenges have you faced as you scaled your team?
46:27 What advice would you give Anthony prior to starting Sticker Mule?

Building Modern Web Applications Jun 23, 2015

Show notes

Tom Dale tells us about building modern web applications that are becoming increasingly like native apps. We discuss JavaScript frameworks like Ember and the future of the web.

Here's what to listen for:

00:43 What is the difference between websites and web applications?
03:05 What is a single page web application?
07:39 How is the web different today with client-side interactivity?
10:21 What changes in the way the web works have paved the way for better web apps?
14:30 What do you see on the horizon for the web?
18:52 How is the extensible web manifesto playing out in practice?
21:46 What does it mean for developers that the browsers and standards are moving faster?
25:16 How do you think about the landscape of the various JavaScript frameworks?
29:43 How would you convince me to prefer convention over configuration?
34:14 How do you decide which framework to use?
41:35 Do you think progressive enhancement and unobtrusive JavaScript are still realistic?
52:50 What is the state of the URL in web applications right now?
53:31 What is routing?
55:22 What excites you about the future of Ember?

How to Fix Errors Quickly Jun 16, 2015

Show notes

David Cramer tells us how to catch and fix critical errors that can affect your bottom line. We also discuss the key differences between exceptions and bugs, and how to handle errors gracefully.

Here's what to listen for:

00:43 What is an exception?
01:21 What’s the difference between an exception and a bug?
01:56 What might a developer do to cause an exception?
02:30 What is the user’s experience when an exception occurs?
04:32 Do exceptions mean developers aren’t writing code well?
05:40 How can I become aware of the smaller errors that happen?
11:38 Why are logs bad?
12:49 If I can’t sift through logs as a developer, how is Sentry able to sift through it?
13:51 What information do you need to fix an error?
15:52 How do we reproduce bugs?
17:44 Is it possible to use information from bugs to improve automated tests?
18:43 What are my next steps after being notified about an error?
20:19 What are the other side effects you might see from errors?
24:16 Why is it not possible for Sentry to catch bugs?
26:05 What can we do to minimize the chance of exceptions occurring?
28:16 Are there any common things people should test for around exceptions?
30:06 Why do you think people don't do automated testing?
34:21 Are there any best practices on how to handle error display?
36:40 How does Sentry use Sentry to monitor Sentry?

When and How to Outsource Your Software Development Jun 09, 2015

Show notes

Randy Rayess tells us when and how you should outsource development of your software, how to reduce your risk, and the way your team should think about feature prioritization.

Here's what to listen for:

00:52 Why do companies outsource software development?
02:10 What’s the difference between companies that have technology as their core product and “tech-enabled” companies?
05:17 What should you look for in an outsourced development team?
08:03 Why are tools important to you?
09:19 Do you also look at hiring companies to see what tools they use?
11:13 Are there any particular tools that you recommend for remote teams?
14:52 What can I best do to prepare for my first meeting with a development shop?
17:21 How do I go from a high level overview to something I can hand over to developers?
20:13 What should people use to create mockups?
22:52 If you have user stories and flows, is that enough to get an estimate?
25:38 Is there a risk to the client of doing a fixed bid project?
28:45 As a client, what can I do to reduce my risk?
31:57 Should you focus on the critical path first?
36:36 When clients have bad experiences with outsourcing, where do things usually go wrong?
39:20 How do you address a problem that’s occurring with your outsourced team?

How to Email Your Users at Critical Moments Jun 02, 2015

Show notes

Brad Van Vugt and Matt Harris talk about transactional emails – how to send your users emails they'll act on at critical moments in your application's lifecycle.

Here's what to listen for:

00:49 What is a transactional email and how is this different from a regular email?
01:26 Can you give me some examples of transactions?
01:56 How does a transactional email work?
02:49 Do you have some examples of what times transactional emails get sent?
03:53 Are transactional emails more personal than marketing emails?
04:43 In a lot of web apps emails are tucked away in code; what’s wrong with this?
05:47 What’s the difference between emails being owned by developers and the rest of the code?
08:35 What’s the difference between plain text and HTML emails?
09:55 How can you tell what emails perform better or worse?
11:00 How are you able to declare the winner of an A/B test?
15:25 If you were to open an email and you don’t have images turned on but they do click a link, do you go back and retroactively tag that email?
16:27 What separates great transactional emails?
19:18 What should you be using as the from address for your emails?
20:32 What’s the experience if I have a noreply transactional email in my inbox and I reply?
23:32 How do we maintain the ability to have emails get personal data from the application into email?
28:41 What is the nontechnical person able to customize?
29:51 Is your templating language pretty accessible to someone who’s nontechnical?

Stop Treating Email Like the Web May 26, 2015

Show notes

Justine Jordan explains how your company should treat email, the difference between designing for email and the web, and what you can do to up your open rates.

Here's what to listen for:

00:44 How are most people reading email today?
02:46 What are most companies doing to send email?
04:23 What’s the distinction between transactional and marketing email companies?
06:58 What are the downsides of building your own email platform?
08:35 What are the differences between Mailchimp and Mandrill?
11:30 Is designing an email the same thing as designing a web page?
14:10 What does it mean practically that email and web are different?
16:36 Why is that you might design an email and it looks great in Gmail but it looks completely different in Outlook?
20:20 How do you feel about automated CSS inlining?
22:53 What is responsive design, how does it work, and what does it mean for email?
25:57 Are there any challenges with non-integrated design and development teams where a designer is building an email to look a certain way and now a developer has to try to make it work on different devices?
29:45 What’s the experience difference between responsive and non-responsive emails?
32:57 What happens to my business if my emails look bad on mobile devices?
34:55 What are good takeaways for teams trying to make their emails look good everywhere?
36:25 As a startup, how much work should I be putting into my emails?
38:36 What can I do to support my developers in making email easier?
40:34 Can you share what Litmus does?

How To Do Quality Assurance Testing May 19, 2015

Show notes

Fred Stevens-Smith of Rainforest explains the need for quality assurance testing and how to actually do it in the resource constrained environment of a startup.

Here's what to listen for:

4:06 What is quality assurance testing?
5:19 What are the main differences between an automated test and a QA test?
7:11 For those of us that have automated tests, do I still need QA tests run by hand?
11:41 What is the difference between an integration test and a unit test?
14:48 What is the Document Object Model (DOM)?
17:49 Who should be writing QA tests?
21:10 How do I shift my perspective from building things to breaking them?
23:33 Why is it problematic to leave QA for the last minute?
27:14 How thorough do our tests need to be?
30:23 What do you to minimize the cost of the time it takes to test?
39:30 How do you balance your team owning QA without getting distracted by building a QA team?

Finding Your Technical Co-Founder May 12, 2015

Show notes

Jordan Gal of CartHook talks about how he found his technical co-founder, how he de-risked his app before building it, and the tension between business and technology requirements.

Here's what to listen for:

2:17 How did CartHook get started?
4:04 How did you find your technical co-founder?
6:55 What stage was CartHook at when you looked for your technical founder?
8:06 What convinced you that you needed to work with someone in-house?
11:35 How was your relationship structured?
14:01 Was your job to just be the idea person?
17:26 What matters to a technical person being approached by a non-technical person?
22:03 What challenges do you face working remotely?
31:21 Should non-technical founders learn how to code?
33:55 How do you stay on the same page with product?
35:15 How do you balance technology and business requirements?

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