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2025

  • 1 min read

Remembering Past Developers

The topic for the November 11th, 2025 chat is remembering past developers whose shoulders we stand on. Who is your favorite software developer and why? Is there a developer that inspired you or whose past contributions you use regularly?

Everyone and anyone are welcome to join as long as you are kind, supportive, and respectful of others. You can find more information and register here:

https://luma.com/qgtxl032

Inspired by this chat being held on Remembrance Day:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remembrance_Day#Canada

Poppy on lapel

  • 1 min read

Don’t Pre‑optimize: Why Clarity Beats Premature Performance Tweaks

Every developer has stared at a fresh function and wondered, “Can I make this faster right now?” Simon Harris’s Beginner Algorithms (2006) reminds us that pre‑optimizing is often a wild goose chase. In this week’s Weekly Dev Chat we’ll unpack that advice, examine real‑world trade‑offs, and surface strategies for balancing performance with readability. Main arguments:

  • Most hot‑spots are hidden in I/O, network latency, or third‑party services, not in the loops we think matter.

  • Well‑structured code is easier to profile, test, and refactor. Simple abstractions often let compilers and runtimes optimise better than hand‑rolled tricks.

Everyone and anyone are welcome to join as long as you are kind, supportive, and respectful of others. Zoom link will be posted at 12pm MDT.

scientist in laboratory

  • 1 min read

Testing

What is the state of testing at your workplace? Is it continuous? Do you have a dedicated QA team? What tools are you using to support testing? Has Test-Driven Development (TDD) made a significant impact in the industry? Are you conducting security-focused testing?

Last week, AWS experienced an outage—arguably unanticipated due to insufficient testing. Do you test for infrastructure failures?

Everyone and anyone are welcome to join as long as you are kind, supportive, and respectful of others. Zoom link will be posted at 12pm MDT.

testing