EP 134 · 53 min · 30 May 2016
Justin Searls - Hip To Be Slow
Justin Searls talks with Dave Rael about choosing the most difficult path, heightened insight from challenge, and the pitfalls of local optimization
Justin Searls has two professional passions: writing great software and sharing what he’s learned to help others write even greater software. He helped start a software agency called [Test Double](http://www.testdouble.com), whose crack team of double agents solve complex problems with clean and simple solutions.
Chapters:
- - Dave introduces the show and Justin Searls
- - Natural language, the difficulties of English language, and parallels and differences between natural languages and computing environments
- - The virtue of slow
- - "Making it hip to be slow"
- - Beware of dogma and helping teams to go well
- - Justin's definition of value
- - Justin on being "lit up" on software and the pitfalls of local optimizations
- - Justin's story of failure - organizational dysfunction, team disconnection, rollback, and a self-destruct button
- - Justin's success stories - big attention and use from a weekend project, creating useful software immersed in the lives of users
- - Justin's book recommendation
- - Justin's top 3 tips for delivering more value
- - Keeping up with Justin
Resources:
Justin's book recommendation:
Justin's top 3 tips for delivering more value:
- Step away
- Indicate positive emotion when communicating via text
- Pair program and collaborate even when you think you don't need to - avoid the hacker mentality