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• Symmathecism and symmathecies: learning systems made of interconnected parts |
• Software development as a symmathecy: team learning and relationships |
• Understanding the system you work on: specific system, not abstract architecture |
• Importance of understanding the system's impact and how it works |
• Difficulty of transferring mental model to new developers or team members |
• Limited effectiveness of documentation, comments, tutorials, and other traditional methods of knowledge transfer |
• The importance of storytelling in understanding code and system history |
• The power of context and back-story in making sense of code decisions |
• The role of human interaction and relationships in transferring information and building trust |
• The limitations of documentation in conveying the full story and history of a system |
• The value of pairing and micro-moments of human interaction in building relationships and trust |
• The need to understand the system as a whole, including human involvement and deploy processes |
• Importance of relationship-building in pairing sessions |
• Knowledge transfer and the cost of frequent job changes |
• Impact of high employee turnover on organizations and productivity |
• Value of experience and deep understanding of a system over longevity |
• Legacy code and the importance of keeping systems alive in people's heads |
• VS Code's separation of project space and human space |
• Docker containers for development environment |
• VS Code server concept for remote pairing and collaboration |
• Docker container configuration in VS Code |
• Security permissions for terminal access in container |
• Use of containers for local development vs. production |
• Docker container setup for Changelog.com |
• Advantages of using a Docker container for development |
• Isolating project setup for collaboration and reproducibility |
• Benefits of a defined environment for development and pairing |
• Using VS Code server inside a Docker container for remote pairing and video recording |
• Challenges of too much knowledge in code review and collaboration |
• Idea for a YouTube series on code review and collaboration |
• Pros of podcasting feature in VS Code, including ability to follow and learn from others in real-time |
• Discussion of limitations and potential issues with feature, including scaling and stability |
• Benefits of using Docker containers, including consistency and documentation of dependencies |
• Challenges with using Docker containers on Mac, including performance issues |
• Connection between learning and action, and how this applies to coding and testing |
• Discussion of continuous delivery and systems composed of multiple services |
• Example of using Honeycomb for observability and seeing the effects of changes in real-time |
• The importance of testing at all layers, including locally, in CI, and in production |
• The difference between meeting requirements and creating a useful and effective system |
• The value of feedback in the learning process, including learning from others through stories and simulation |
• The concept of mirror neurons and their role in empathy, compassion, and learning |
• The idea that attention and awareness are key to personal growth and changing oneself |
• The humorous speculation about whether their conversations are being simulated or controlled |
**Jerod Santo:** Jessica, you're a software developer, you're a consultant, you're a symmathecist. I know what a software developer is, I know what a consultant is... What's a symmathecist, and why do you use it to describe yourself? |
**Jessica Kerr:** A symmathecist is an active participant in a symmathecy. A symmathecy - I didn't coing this word - is a learning system made of learning parts... Such as the economy, which is made of businesses, but every business is responding to every other business, and the buyers, and the people, and the environm... |
**Jerod Santo:** Right. It's like a living thing almost. |
**Jessica Kerr:** Yeah. It's not bounded like an organism is. Somebody said that ecosystems and economies are not organisms, but organisms are ecosystems with a very strong boundary. |
**Jerod Santo:** So how does that apply to software then? I'm assuming it does... |
**Jessica Kerr:** Yeah, so our teams are definitely symmathecies, because the team as a whole learns as each individual learns. And we're constantly learning from our interactions with each other. So Ackoff says "A system is not the sum of its parts. That would be an aggregate." |
**Jerod Santo:** Right. It's more than that. |
**Jessica Kerr:** Yeah, it's a product of its relationships. That's why we call it a system. But a symmathecy points out that each part is a product of all our past interactions, and that's even more powerful. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** It's like future you is only the future you because of the current you. |
**Jerod Santo:** And past you. |
**Jessica Kerr:** Yeah, yeah. Everything we do has some side-effect on the world, and the next version of ourself. Just like in the actor model. |
**Jerod Santo:** Okay, so isn't that a little bit overwhelming though? |
**Jessica Kerr:** Is it overwhelming...? |
**Jerod Santo:** Doesn't that put a certain amount of weight and gravity to every single thing you say and think? |
**Jessica Kerr:** \[04:20\] You know, I think really it puts a gravity on where we choose to put our attention. In that sense, the control we have over future us is by where we choose to put our attention. |
**Jerod Santo:** So where are you putting your attention nowadays? |
**Jessica Kerr:** A bunch of places... See, it's May now, and we've been in a quarantine for over two months, and so you'd think we'd have more time, but I find that is not the case. It turns out that when you cook at home every night, you have to wash dishes every night, and do so much laundry... |
**Jerod Santo:** Yeah. |
**Jessica Kerr:** ...and keep on good terms with your family; I can't just ignore them, and let the relationship deteriorate until we see each other again... So some of my attention has been on consciously maintaining the relationships within the house, because we really need to continue to like each other... So far, s... |
**Jerod Santo:** Well, that's a win. |
**Jessica Kerr:** Also, now that I can't go to conferences and talk to a bunch of random people, I have found it easier to focus on something more technical. Avdi and I started an app, and this has gotten us to try a new Rails 6 implementation in Heroku... And we're also learning a lot about Docker, especially in VS Co... |
And let's see - for work, I'm learning about secure code... Oh, and we implemented Honeycomb in our toy app the other day; that was very exciting. |
**Jerod Santo:** Okay, so you're having some fun, it sounds like it. |
**Jessica Kerr:** Yeah, piles of things. |
**Jerod Santo:** Yeah. I wanna get into some of that VS Code/Docker stuff, because I'm completely ignorant of that domain... I mean, I'm not ignorant of VS Code, and I can use Docker a little bit, but I don't understand exactly how they fit together... But first, I don't wanna bury the lead, because as we were preparin... |
**Jessica Kerr:** Okay, yeah. The tricky bit is it's different for every dev, or at least every team. |
**Jerod Santo:** Okay. |
**Jessica Kerr:** But the single most important thing to understand is how your system works; not just any system, not any abstract architecture... The specific system that you work on - why does it work, and what impact does it have on the world, and how does it accomplish that? |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Could you use a well-known example out there to be less abstract? |
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2020 Changelog Interviews Transcripts
Complete transcripts from the 2020 episodes of the Changelog Interviews podcast.
Generated from this GitHub repository.
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