James M Snell - System Engineer at CloudFlare

James and David talk about learning new codebases, avoiding burnout, and being a humble programmer
Talking Points:
  • Building tools developers use
  • Learning a new codebase
  • The viability of open source careers
  • What makes a good team member
  • Avoiding burn out
Quotable Quotes:
  • “Every line of code you change is going to have an impact somewhere and it's going to impact someone.” - JS
  • “The amount of knowledge you have...will never define you, it's how you apply it, it’s how you recover from mistakes.” - JS
  • “[How to learn faster] Figuring out what you don't know and knowing how to quickly identify the gaps in your own knowledge.” - JS
  • “I don't mind helping...but I also want to see you putting in the effort yourself to figure it out.” - JS
  • “[Learning new code bases] I fiddle and break things, and then figure out what broke.” - JS
  • “If you're just spending all your time looking at code and thinking about code, you will burn out very quickly.” - JS
  • “The people that I enjoy working with the most take a very humble approach to the code they write.” - JS
Notes:
James’ Twitter 
James’ Github