10 random things learned being a

startup CTO +Coder

Who am I?

www.muehlemann-popp.ch/de

What startups was I involved?

tilllate.com – Nightlife portal with 2Million visitors

Quelle: Schweizer Illustrierte, im 2006

Sobrado – Broker Workflow tool

Wishlist

www.wunschlischte.ch

10 random things I learned…

Disclaimer

It’s not scientific

It’s not well-structured

It’s my own opinion

1. Log everything.

• Log pageviews

including GET and

POST variables

• Log every activity of

background tasks in

log files

Debugging is much easier

2. Start simple.

• Keep the system

simple.

• Simple = easy to

understand

• You can always

refactor later

Make your code friendly

to refactoring (Unit Tests,

Method Names)

If your kid wants a

helicopter, he will be

happy with this :-)

3. Involve your team.

Let the team decide

about technology,

architecture AND

features

Benefits:

The team is more

engaged

More people -> better

solutions

Team discussions M&P Style

4. Don't follow trends too quickly.

Before you choose a

technology, make sure

that it will still exist in 5

years

Tests:

How many books are in

Amazon about the

technology?

How many commits does

a project have?

8-Track players were once top

technology.

5. Keep your code clean an tidy.

• Remove unused code

• Rename methods if the

function of the method

does not correspond

anymore to what the

method does

Cleaning is Fun!

6. Defensive programming!

• Think of everything

that can go wrong and

be ready to handle

those cases

7. Pay attention to security!

• Use the OWASP Top-

10 to check your code

securityhttps://www.owasp.org

• Filter and validate

incoming data -> only

clean data in your

system (DB, code etc.)

8. Your code will live longer than you expect!

• Be nice to the people

who will work on your

code after you left the

company. They are

engineers like you.

• If you find a mess,

clean it up

• Bad code is not an

excuse to add more

bad codeEven at 80 years old, your code

should be able to do skateboard tricks

:-)

9. Choose your symbol names carefully!

The code should replace a

documentation, so:

• Avoid mistypings (it

looks unprofessional)

• Don’t be afraid of long

names (your IDE will

autocomplete for you)Be careful as an artist when coding

10. There should always be fun tasks!

Developers which enjoy their

task …

• …are more focused

• …think about the project

even after work

• …will stay longer in your

company

When choosing projects,

always ask yourself whether

your engineer will enjoy doing

it

Thank you!

Silvan Mühlemann

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/silvan.muehlemann