Developer on Fire
Episode 109 | Darren Cauthon - Confident and Comfortable Programmer
Guest:
Darren Cauthon talks with Dave Rael about confident Test-Driven Development, dark matter developers, Uncle Bob and virtue, and being lit up for software and the coding lifestyle
Darren Cauthon is a programmer who has lived two dev careers. His first career was wasted away as a timid dark-matter developer. He stayed there until he was introduced to a simple idea: The idea that it's possible to write code that works with test driven development. Since then he's become a vocal advocate for clean, tested code, a regular contributor to open-source, a speaker, a mentor, an instructor, and has written dozens of applications in different languages. He's a passionate programmer who doesn't understand why all programmers are not swept away by their passion for programming. Darren lives in Kansas with his family.
Chapters:
- - Dave introduces the show and Darren Cauthon
- - Darren as a fearful dark matter developer and how it didn't suit him
- - Darren on trying new things and having experiences with different platforms, languages, etc.
- - How we identify ourselves with the languages and tools we use
- - Darren's definition of value
- - The things that "light Darren up"
- - How Darren got started with software
- - Darren's story of failure - solutions looking for problems
- - Darren's success story - Application of Domain Specific Languages to enable natural language input to customize applications
- - How Darren stays current with what he needs to know
- - Darren's book recommendations
- - The things that have Darren most excited
- - Darren's greatest sources of pain
- - The things about which Darren likes to geek out apart from software
- - Darren's prediction for the future of software
- - Darren's top 3 tips for delivering more value
- - Keeping up with Darren
Resources:
- Darren on GitHub
- Scott Hanselman's Blog Post on Dark Matter Developers
- Scott Hanselman on Developer On Fire
- Scott Hanselman - Do they deserve the gift of your keystrokes?
- Dave Thomas on Developer On Fire
- Alt.NET
- Scott Hanselman and Rob Conery - Get Involved!
- Programming Elixir: Functional |> Concurrent |> Pragmatic |> Fun - Dave Thomas
- Ayn Rand on Value
- The Virtue of Selfishness, Centennial Edition - Ayn Rand, Nathaniel Branden
- Udi Dahan - When to avoid CQRS
- Udi Dahan on Developer On Fire
- Bryan Hunter on Developer On Fire
- Wendy Closson's Podcast - Uncle Bob on Quality, Ethics and Chickens
- Wendy Closson's Podcast - Digging into Software Ethics with Bob Martin
Darren's book recommendation:
Darren's top 3 tips for delivering more value:
- Demonstrate that your code works - Include screenshots in your pull requests
- Make your commits models of good code, including formatting
- Use early morning hours for working on code rather than late nights