Category: Articles (Page 153 of 258)

Personal opinions and how-to’s that I’ve written both here and as contributions to other blogs.

Ask Not “What Can WordPress Do For Me?”

July 7, 2015 / Tom / 0 Comments

I love it when I see tweets like this show up in my timeline:

I’d like to know if there’s any part of WordPress that needs more tutorials and more attention. I’m going to start blogging soon :)

— Nikhil Vimal (@nikvimal) July 6, 2015

And it’s for multiple reasons, but I’ll get to those in a moment.

First, if you’re involved in WordPress in any capacity and you’re not following Nikhil, then he’s a solid recommendation. He’s representative of the type of developers and contributors that we need coming up to continue working on WordPress.

He’s smart, he gets things done, he shares his work, he’s constantly looking to learn, he’s constantly looking to help others, and he’s had the opportunity to intern at places like iThemes and Rocket Genius.

By the time he’s out of college, he’s going to have the education and experience to continue to do great things from the project (if he so chooses).

Though with all of that said, it doesn’t explain why I enjoy seeing tweets like this.

WordPress and Developer Maturity

July 6, 2015 / Tom / 0 Comments

One of the things that we often hear about WordPress is that it has a low-barrier to entry for those who are interested in programming and/or for those who are interested in applying what they’ve learned about computer science or software development.

Generally speaking, I have a hard time saying that out loud. I’ll talk about this in more detail momentarily, but suffice it to say that I’m suspect of saying that.

Barreir

Don’t get me wrong: There are some nice things about working with WordPress that are easier than working in other environments, but that’s all assuming you’ve worked in other environments before.

Secondly, I think it’s important to also know where you fall on the spectrum of developer maturity (that isn’t a real thing, so don’t bother googling it, but I’m using it for the sake of this post :). This has always been a fun topic to talk about, but Matt Briggs of Google recently wrote an article that did a great job articulating this.

I highly recommend reading it before continuing with this post, though I’ll be quoting a few parts of it.

The Nature of WordPress Debates

June 29, 2015 / Tom / 0 Comments

Last week, I talked about when people claim that they are Getting Out of the WordPress Bubble and some of the perspectives others have when reading things like this.

The flip side of this is that there are some people who are deeply ingrained within WordPress and who pour their day in and day out into the software and into the economy around it.

I’m not one to say if either one is better than the other because I think they both offer their own set of advantages and disadvantages though, at this point in my career, I tend to be deeply immersed in WordPress – and I am by choice.

One of the challenges that comes with being ingrained in a culture is that you’re exposed to both the good, the bad, and the ugly sides of all of it. And, to be clear, it’s not just WordPress – all software communities, online communities, offline communities, etc. – all have this behavior, but when it’s what you do every day, I think it can leave you with a bit of a distorted perspective.

The TL;DR to all of this is simply that when entering the foray of WordPress debates, it’s important to remember that not everything you read reflects the perspective of all involved.

My Priorities (Balancing Work and Home)

June 26, 2015 / Tom

For an upcoming project, Andy Adams and I are working to build [what I consider to be] a really cool site for a client. Details of the project aside, he and I had a really interesting conversation earlier this week the details of which I thought were worth sharing. Specifically, we talk about developer pragmatism and balancing work with our home lives.

To some degree, I almost consider this to be a sort of letter-to-my-20-year-old-self, but I think it’s relevant to anyone who may be young and starting out in the field of development or who may be about to experience a major life change for whatever reason.

For those not wanting to read the entire post, the gist of it is this:

The ability to sit at your computer and consume as much information as possible regarding programming, software development, and so on is likely to change as you experience major changes in your life.

The thing is, this can sound like a major bummer if you’re someone on the cusp of a major life change. But it’s not and I thought I’d share why – at least as far as my experience allows me to do so.

A Strategy For Estimates in Software

June 25, 2015 / Tom / 0 Comments

This is one of those posts that’s driven by my own personal experience and nothing more. I know there are tons of books, articles, blogs, and probably even tweets that would disagree with what I’m going to share, but as someone who has worked for himself for the last half a decade or so, I figure it’s something worth talking about if it’s only tangentially related to WordPress (or running your own business).

Furthermore, I rarely discuss business-related topics here. There are others – like Chris and Curtis – who do a far better job than I ever could.

Nonetheless, as someone who’s done enough project proposals and free estimates – just like most freelancers, agencies, and so on – I’m coming to the conclusion that, at some point, estimates in software aren’t enough if they are free. There’s more to it than that.

And when you’re livelihood depends on your business and your business depends on cash flow and putting effort into trying to land a project that results in no cash flow negatively affects your livelihood. Thus, there has to be more that goes into drafting a proposal that just coming up with a document to send to your potential client.

So I suppose that’s the TL;DR version of the experience(s) on which I’m going to elaborate.