A Byte of Coding Issue 369

Hey-hey-hey,

I hope you all had a lovely weekend. I’m trying to grow the newsletter, so I’ve added a $5 starbucks gift card as a reward for anyone who gets five referrals (five new subscribers who sign up using your referral link, which can be seen at the end of the newsletter).

Anyway, here’s the issue!

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The work is never just “the work”

Published: February 2022

Tags: management

From a while ago, but still good. Dave Stewart delves into why estimating work is difficult and how it can be improved, by analzying his own previous work and estimates. My general approach is similar to the double it, then double it again (4x the original estimate), usually with an additional multiple between 1x and 2x depending on how slow the client is.

Some highlights:

• the “work” part of any task is actually only around 1/3 of the total work that needs to be done

• getting the information to actually start doing the “work” and then the QA back-and-forth after are significant chunks of “hidden work”

• “Beware fixed-price projects!” - this is interesting, because I personally prefer fixed-price projects over hourly, but it also requires more work to be done upfront

So I wrote a double delete...

Published: 18 March 2024

Tags: objective-c, debugging

The author explains how they found out they wrote code with a double release error and the methods used to find the issue.

Some highlights:

• code is written for a plugin for closed source software (I’m guessing Shadow of the Tomb Raider)

• logging output, debugger breakpoints, and looking at assembly code were all used to debug

• 8 different approaches to finding the bug were used

A guide to organization modeling

Published: 16 February 2024

Tags: sponsored, auth, architecture

WorkOS has published a guide that “surfaces complexities and implementation details for supporting organization modeling as part of the authentication and authorization layer for apps”.

Some highlights:

• “if you ever want to sell to an enterprise your backend needs to be ready to support complex models of users and teams”

• looks at the different ways you can implement the database tables for modeling the organization

• most of the complexity comes from users that need to be a part of multiple organizations

What I wish I knew about ESPP and RSUs sooner (company stock benefits. 2024, USA, California)

Published: 17 March 2024

Tags: finance

Alan Wolfe dives into part of the financial compensation as an employed software engineer. Not a software technical article, but definitely information worth knowing as an employee.

Some highlights:

• focuses on Employee Stock Purchase Plan (ESPP) and Restricted Stock Units (RSUs)

• both can be used to increase your total compensation

• both have tax implications