brw12

I'm trying to process some conflict I've experienced, both in jobs and in my personal life. One synthesis I'm converging on is the idea that there are "story-based" people, and "fact-based" people. I self-identify as "fact-based", so I'm trying to articulate this while adjusting for my bias towards fact-basis :)

story-based: think in terms of whole narratives; have trouble evaluating statements without knowing where they fit in some story, whose case they help or hurt. Tend to be good at articulating vision and goals; tend to think that it's wrong to pierce a valuable story with contrary facts. Not great at anticipating problems where reality disobeys the intended story, but good at rolling over bumps and keeping eyes on the prize.

fact-based: strive to assess truth and falsehood irrespective of who it helps or hurts. Tend to put foot in mouth by saying things at the wrong time; perceived by others as indelicate. Tend to struggle to articulate vision and goals, given all the things that can go wrong; see nothing wrong with piercing a narrative with contrary facts. Good at anticipating problems, but can be too fixated on obstacles.

Does this ring true for others? How would you revise or amend this?

I'm a veteran programmer -- not a 10x genius, but reliable and attentive.

My problem is that at my company, a nonprofit, there's a culture of not prioritizing reviewing others' code. That means my code, sometimes even urgent fixes to significant problems, can sit for a week or two before it's reviewed. Less urgent changes that should take a day or two of back and forth work and communication instead can many times that.

When I get assigned code to review, I make it a priority and try not to let more than a day go by without my at least responding with questions. This just makes sense to me -- after all, somebody is waiting on me to merge an improvement to the product!

The director of engineering tries to help by reviewing code himself, but he's overburdened and usually can't.

What's worse, there are fellow engineers I no longer feel comfortable being paired with on projects because the projects are sure to take far too long.

It's exhausting to be constantly spinning my wheels, trying to keep the context of my 6-8 open, unreviewed PRs fresh in my mind so I can move forward with my work.

I can't say my code is sparklingly perfect, but I don't have any reason to think it's particularly hard to review or unpleasant to review. My sense is that other people face the same situation, but don't mind so much. I know I produce more PRs than other people, and that I have higher expectations for our team productivity.

I've brought this up gently many times, but no one else seems to take it seriously. I also frequently offer to review others' PRs, and make sure to do a thorough and supportive job when I do.

What should I do? Keep trying to communicate about how this isn't working for me, and I think, for the organization? Try phrasing my needs differently? Look for another job?

I've done frontend development with a variety of frameworks and libraries. There are things I like about angular and react, though I find them both fragile and slow to develop and maintain because so much of what they're doing is opaque. I often find I'm spending forever fiddling with angular filters, or with unexpected react lifecycle properties' states, or with fiddly churning React/Redux syntax.

In contrast, I find developing with jQuery to be a pleasure because there's never much of a mystery about what's going on or what I need to add next. I recently was wondering if I should try to dive deeper into jQuery to see if I can use it as a light front-end framework for some of the purposes I've been using react and angular.

The TodoMVC example of written in jQuery is impressive: it's an SPA that includes routing and everything. And it would obviously be easy to add on Ajax to use an external API.

What I'm wondering is, if I tried to develop a more robust and complex application in jQuery instead of angular or react, where would I be most likely to miss them? Would it be in the reuseability of components in different views? In the built-in control over components' life cycles? In the cumbersomeness of having to code every state delta instead of just counting on the DOM engine to update things correctly?

I'm teaching a (non-online) course in a few months, and I figure that as long as I'm preparing it, this is a good chance to try creating an online version.

But it's sooo hard to find out what the actual features of different courseware/LMS platforms are.

In particular, I'm looking for options for teaching that's mostly live sessions. This seems different from the use cases most LMS/courseware was designed for.

Does anyone know any that have any of these features? (I know there's probably nothing that has all this)

1. Interface for students to formally submit deliverables (as opposed to just another forum)

2. Forum where students can post questions and join discussion

3. Ability to differentiate between students taking the class statically (can start whenever, no feedback) vs on a schedule (with others, with instructor feedback)

4. I can livestream sessions

5. Students can comment on live sessions using text chat

6. Students can speak questions in live sessions using microphone

7. Students can screenshare to the group in a live session

8. Tutoring mode: instructor can control mouse and keyboard of a student temporarily, or work in a shared environment during session

9. Automatic transcription of recorded and live sessions (ideally human edited, but voice recognition alone is ok)

10. Ability to form discussion sections by grouping students into subsets, in an organic way (MIT Open Courseware does this great)

11. Provides ability to use streamlined signup (like, just provide an email address) if I prefer, instead of charging money (useful from promos and teasing upcoming courses)