Have you ever found yourself working alone for what appears to be too damn long ?
If you're a developer, not having to discuss your tasks with another coworker, or having to explain and fight for your decisions sounds nice at first.
You have the entire project to yourself, so you get to play with whichever new toys you feel like playing with. All the decisions are up to you, and you certainly know the best course of action, because no one knows the project better than you do!
This is the situation I've been in for the better part of the past few months. And it went out pretty well, actually. For the most part.
It's not even a case where the project went south due to some bad development decision, or lack of knowledge. No, I can honestly say that everything went smoothly in that regard.
But having someone to keep us in check, and to challenge us, is in my opinion one of the healthiest things to have in a workspace.
We don't usually appreciate the good that does to us and to our work, until it goes missing.
For me, going to Pixels Camp was a sort of wake up call about this.
Having to rehearse a technical talk to my team before I actually delivered it, I got a lot of constructive feedback from them. Those few hours were more helpful to my talk than all the days I spent working on it by myself.
Attending a tech conference after so long also reminded me of how long it's been since I've worked on a new technology or side project.
The usual excuse for this is a lack of spare time. But the lack of a challenger, someone to stand there and go "You can do better" is probably what caused me not to find the free time for that in the first place.
After a conference, I always leave with a sense of wonder, and a drive to try out new things.
But this time, it was more than that. My talk reminded me of how perfectionist and detail-driven our team is, and how much I missed having my ideas drilled down by them.
Finally, here goes the usual content, gathered with love from all over the web:
Progressive enhancement isn’t dead, but it smells funny
I trolled my IRS scammers for weeks. I learned something really dark.