funkymike

Agreed. I think being able to predict what is likely to change is heavily dependent on knowing the business domain well since that is going to be the driver of change. I think it is a specific application of curiosity. It's also a matter of being forward thinking in general. I think both are skills one can foster and can apply more generally.

I also really like this feature of GitHub reviews and when deleting a comment as I continue reading I try to question whether to add a code comment so the next person doesn't get tripped up because they don't have the full context in their head.

You can do this in vim with the scrollbind option. You could create a simple script to set up the windows and get the views lined up to the correct line numbers. The one caveat is that enabling line wrapping will screw it up.

    :windo set nowrap
    :vsp
    ctrl-w ctrl-w ctrl-d ctrl-d
    :vsp
    ctrl-w ctrl-w ctrl-d ctrl-d
    :windo set scrollbind

Some other very handy shortcuts in MS Office programs (and maybe others) is alt-shift-up/down arrow will move the entire line up or down. Quite handy to move text around when composing an email for instance.

Ctrl-up/down will move the cursor past newlines, so you can more quickly navigate when there are long lines with lots of wrapped text.

I think stories like this show up because there is a set of Amazon users that still want it to be a neutral marketplace where Amazon doesn't have a vested interest in one product selling over another. That hasn't been true for quite a while though.

I think a large part of this topic isn't about a team making a promise and not living up to it. It's about a business (management) wanting to make a promise and getting the team to accept responsibility for it. So let's assume the estimate is very accurate but the business wants it done in half the time. When the project runs past that date being able to point to a very accurate estimate and say I told you so isn't very productive. So we need strategies and techniques for dealing with the mismatch between the desires of the business and what can actually be delivered in a given amount of time.

TFA advocates for bargaining on scope, where I prefer to start the conversation by asking about both scope and timelines to understand which parts of the overall request are negotiable. This is also a great opportunity to make sure the business context is well understood so everyone understands what success means from the perspective of the business

You might then find every single feature really is necessary and the timeline can be relaxed. Audit compliance can be an example when it is something new to an org. You are either going to pass or fail the audit, so there isn't really room to reduce scope. But you may be able to negotiate on the timeline.

I think there's a large difference between arbitrary deadlines that the team themselves set and buy into as a rallying cry vs. an arbitrary deadline that was externally imposed upon a team, often without full context provided to understand the relative priority of features as well as whether the deadline itself is negotiable.

I have this in my .gitconfig so the pull will fail rather than merge.

    [pull]
        ff = only

If it does fail I can decide whether to merge or rebase.

If you are editing over a network connection and you normally have cursorline on, then try turning it off. That makes a big difference for me when there is network latency.

You should check out Paul Sellers' videos and blog. To me he is the opposite of what you describe, preferring hand tools over machines. He describes himself as a lifestyle woodworker rather than someone trying to create results as efficiently as possible.

It seems to me the key then would be to have that programmable interface be used to actually implement the features shipped as part of the project. It will be a lot easier to get the API right if the developers are using it themselves, plus that adds a lot more incentive to maintain backwards compatibility as well.

> I noticed this as a teenager in the 1980s and deliberately tried to 'unspin' stories, but gave up after realizing how much work that was going to be.

This struck a chord with me.

Few specific lessons from school stuck with me. There was one though that was powerful enough that I have tried to not just remember it, but practice it ever since. The lesson was simply to watch the evening national news and pay special attention to words, phrasing, and tone that could sway the opinion of those watching, apart from the facts being presented, then describe what we found in class the following day. Even when seemingly just presenting the facts of the story you can almost always pick out the views of the presenter. The idea was to instill in people how to separate the facts from the opinions of those presenting the facts so one can form their own opinions. You can then also judge how honest the news source seems to be about their biases.

A speech that is described as a "standard policy speech" compared to a "powerful appeal for change" can affect how people think of it, then discuss it with others. Only if we are paying attention to these details can we split out fact from opinion.

Every source of news attempts to influence people. Everyone has opinions and they can come out in very subtle ways. The key for me is how open and honest they are about it. I think the problem we have today are so many news outlets that claim to be objective and unbiased when they are anything but, intentionally. Too many people never had the lesson I did and were never made to realize how much other people are trying to manipulate them, including (especially) those they trust.

One of the things that made multitasking on Windows much better for me was discovering that:

1. win+<number> opens the <number> program on the taskbar from the left. So having a bunch of pinned programs makes opening them very fast and easy.

2. Holding the windows key down then pressing the number multiple times allows switching between multiple instances of the program, similar to holding alt and hitting tab multiple times.

For example, chrome is the tenth icon pinned to the taskbar (counting from the left). So win+0 open chrome or if already open switches to the first window. Holding the windows key and hitting 0 allows me to quickly switch between multiple chrome windows.

So I don't have to mentally keep track of the current alt-tab order to switch between the second putty window and third chrome window. I just hit win+77 for putty and win+000 for chrome.

I had to resort to this for an Ebay account that someone opened with my email address. I finally got sick of them not fixing it so I used the email-based password reset feature to login, change the password, then closed the account.