There be dragons all the way down & how to befriend dragons
Wim Leers
Many people are occasionally thrown in the deep end at work. It may sound reasonable, such as "Here's an existing Drupal 7 site, update it to Drupal 8 by next week" or deceptively doable, such as "form a government in less than a year" (ask any Belgian how that's working out for us 🇧🇪🤦♂️).
Having been thrown into the deep end and asked to work on many of the next big problems in Drupal core in my role at Acquia, I've noticed some succesful strategies repeatedly emerge.
I will walk you through the obscure arts of:
- git archeology
- breakpointsniping
- issue/ticket skimming
- deducing assumptions & rationales
- reverse empathizing
- minimal prototyping
- defensive test coverage
- fear-based prioritization
- and finally, probably the least obscure, possibly the most important, but certainly only possible thanks to the above: managing expectations.
Learning Objectives
At the end of this session, attendees will be able to go back to work with strategies to:
- be comfortable with being uncomfortable
- make sense of large existing code bases
- relentlessly recognize & reduce risk
You'll leave with a great understanding of the Law of Downhill Invention, Uphill Analysis.
Target Audience
Developers who either have had challenging tasks assigned, or developers who would like to take on more challenging work.
Prerequisites
Attendees will get the most out of this session by having been at least once (and hopefully only once) intimidated by work that was assigned to them.
Track
Development & Coding
Experience Level
N/A
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