This article has been trimmed down from my blog, Literary Phenomenot

This Week in Tech

I've been developing my own process for documenting legacy code while I refactor, drawing from the experiences of the general collective at software engineering stack exchange. The sentiment for most is that inheriting old code is such a hassle. I, on the other hand, feel like an investigator of sorts, and I get satisfaction out of knowing that when the rest of the team arrives, they'll have a head start because of my efforts. What's your approach?

Next, we've been interviewing candidates to fill our mid-level and junior developer positions. Interviews are not unlike auditions; you get chance to show off how you can play, and the rest is trying to figure out if we'd enjoy sitting next to each other for the coming years. Having just gone through the process myself, I'm fascinated by the number of variations out in the field when it comes to selecting candidates. Do we screen them with phone calls or a coding test? Should we have them submit a real code sample, or are we more interested in how they communicate concepts verbally? How about those coffee/happy hour interviews? It's almost as much of an art as it is a process.

Lastly, I've made some progress this week on submitting my first pull request for dev.to. Whether or not it is accepted, I'm really enjoying getting to know Ruby!

Sights and Sounds

On the way to work this morning, Spotify let me know that Muse's new album, Simulation Theory, is available. The timing is perfect, because I've just discovered an old article on digital trends that lists the 10 best video game soundtracks on Spotify. All of it's fantastic for coding IMHO, and I especially love those moments when something familiar comes on, something that was in the background of your story for hours on end, and you're instantly transported to another world. Video game music is every bit as iconic as film scores, or at least that was the topic for a paper I wrote in my 21st Century Music class in 2008. Music is powerful stuff.

That is All.