https://briar-patch.neocities.org/tags/announcement/ Recent content in Announcement on Briar Patch Hugo en-us Sat, 20 Jun 2026 23:43:11 -0700 https://briar-patch.neocities.org/posts/growing_into_the_role/ Sat, 20 Jun 2026 23:43:11 -0700 https://briar-patch.neocities.org/posts/growing_into_the_role/ <h1 id="intro">Intro</h1> <p>For a long time now, I&rsquo;ve been thinking about how I would structure something like a course on software engineering. One thing that&rsquo;s important to me is to emphasize practical aspects and &ldquo;common sense&rdquo; tools and techniques, because often what ought to be common really isn&rsquo;t.</p> <p>I feel that gap even more strongly because I came into writing software from a non-CS background, and in the early days it was just a means to an end for me. But flailing around without knowing much about even simple things like version control led to way, way too many mistakes and setbacks. In the end, I was almost mad when I found out there were much easier solutions to the problems I was having, and since I learned the hard way, the lessons stuck with me that much more strongly.</p>