Coffee chat with Graham Ritchie

#coffeechat #productivity #career #writing

Had a great time with @grahamthedev on our 30 min coffee chat today at 8:45 PM IST. Got to learn about his journey and had a chance to a warm conversation. During the chat, I did manage to ask him a couple of questions and his replies were off the hook!

I see that your current pinned tweet is a verbose getting started guide on accessibility. What was the compulsion behind this content?

I simply stumbled upon accessibility while playing around with keyboard shortcuts, and found it to be fascinating. Though, I realised that there was a big gap which no one was filling. This gap surely forms the biggest minority, and filling the gap brings in a lot of money which is simply just floating around. More accessible the platform, the more the user base.

A follow-up on the last question, if you think that everyone should have an accessibility-first approach to building software, why?

It saves a lot of effort and money in the long term. Following through with accessibility ensures coding best practices as part of your software being developed. It ensures you design your platform right the first time. UX is a long-term game, and having accessibility as one of the major concerns massively helps UX. An accessibility-first approach makes you a better developer. Users don't understand half the stuff we build. When we look at it from a user's perspective is when it's pretty obvious to us that it's complicated. Accessibility ends up increasing >=10% of the revenue if done right.

Suppose someone knows nothing about code and wants to learn software development, what path should he take according to you?

I'll go about how to get started with web development on this.

Starting with the frontend is easier than the backend, because of all the visual feedback you get when you're building the frontend.
Stay close to bare metal till you clear your fundamentals. A lot of amateurs out there are just jumping into frameworks way too soon. Many times in such cases when you encounter an issue while building, you may wonder if the framework is broken, while in reality most of the time it's your code. Learning concepts and fundamentals properly goes a long way and save you unnecessary trouble.
Learn how to debug. This is something which every dev needs to learn.

If you could talk to your younger self who's just starting out with his career, what would be your one most useful piece of advice for your younger self you wish someone gave you?

Learn the concepts rather than copy-pasting and finding out stuff ain't working.
Learn how to Google properly, and learn the advanced ways to do so.

How to become a good, if not, a great engineer?

Solo: Get past what people say they want and give them what they need. Learn to look through the actual business requirements.
Team: Communication is key. You may be an average developer or even a below-average developer, but if you're able to communicate properly, after exhausting all other avenues possible, you'll tend to be more efficient.
Career: Again, stay close to bare metal for as much as possible. Get your fundamentals right and they'll do right when it's time to use them.

Graham even mentioned some tips for doing better as a freelancer:

Always keep 20% of the turnover aside for marketing. Doesn't matter if you need to keep yourself hungry to keep the business afloat, you do it.
The right form of marketing and branding your business will help you get a continuous inflow of clients from where you can be selective.
Be selective, don't just take everything. There are always going to be clients who'll pay X while asking for 10X. You need to get the right clients for your business.

A little about Graham:

I was self-employed for 15 years. I started off with software development and went on to build websites and found a great interest in accessibility. I specialized in building high-end e-commerce platforms. Currently, I'm working on a side project focused on developer health, which we'll be shipping soon. :)