141125 10 lessons learned being a startup cto
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10 random things learned being a startup CTO +Coder
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Transcript of 141125 10 lessons learned being a startup cto
10 random things learned being a
startup CTO +Coder
What startups was I involved?
tilllate.com – Nightlife portal with 2Million visitors
Quelle: Schweizer Illustrierte, im 2006
Sobrado – Broker Workflow tool
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
