Questions surrounding communications between programmers and the others involved in software development. This can include stakeholders, management, end users, designers, testers, and other developers.
40
votes
21answers
5k views
How do you explain refactoring to a non-technical person?
(This question was inspired by the most-voted answer here)
How do you go about explaining refactoring (and technical debt) to a non-technical person (typically a PHB or customer)? ("What, it's going ...
33
votes
11answers
2k views
How can I improve my communication skills? [closed]
Jeff Atwood suggests that becoming a great programmer takes serious communication skills. What are the suggested ways for a programmer to develop his communication skills?
16
votes
17answers
3k views
I believe my solution is better than my boss's, so should I ignore him? [closed]
I'm working with php and sql.
I think that my method of implementing functions is better than what my boss proposes. Just now he explained me how to do a check on a list of email addresses, and I do ...
13
votes
5answers
808 views
How to improve my email communication
Paraphrase of an email I sent to a colleague
I noticed a problem with System A. I
have determined that it is not caused
by X. I suspect that it is being
caused by Y. (since you are in ...
76
votes
19answers
3k views
Dealing with management that does not see value in improvements that are not immediately visible to the user
I can understand schedule pressure. You want to please your users, as they are the lifeblood of the company. However, it is also true that certain changes will make everything easier down the road. ...
32
votes
18answers
961 views
How can I improve my technical writing?
Writing documentation is part of programming, and writing well
is part of what makes the documentation useful.
So, what are some hints or guidelines for good writing in the
technical realm? What are ...
23
votes
13answers
1k views
What tools are available for remote communication when working from home or with a distributed team?
My supervisor is allowing my team to dip our toes in the water of working from home. Considering a recent aquisition of another company is requiring some employees to love this new idea which will ...
40
votes
9answers
2k views
Why do programmers still use mailing lists?
Why do many open source projects collaborate primarily through mailing lists rather than through, say, forums? I may be ignorant in my assessment, but I, along with my communication teacher, think ...
15
votes
3answers
871 views
Integrating into a new team
I've just joined a new company where a lot of the developers have been working for more than ten years. How do I integrate into the team without stepping on too many toes?
10
votes
9answers
895 views
What do you do to improve your speech communication skills? [closed]
Being a programmer is not just grokking the latest cool technology or debugging a sneaky code error , we have to speak to our coworkers, project manager or boss, in the most effective way possibly; we ...
6
votes
4answers
245 views
Communications regarding maintainability of code
I'm in search of good language or metaphors to discuss the maintainability of code with non-technical folks (PMs, business sponsors &c).
In particular, I've recently created a few one-off, ...
2
votes
1answer
459 views
What is the best way to study and become involved in software engineering process work? [closed]
This might sound rather strange for someone who just graduated with an undergraduate degree in software engineering, but I'm extremely interested in the process and people side of software ...
10
votes
10answers
474 views
How to communicate with a co-worker that considers frameworks a performance hit
How can one sell an idea like "we should use jQuery because its highly optimized and cross browser compatible" or "entity framework is cool because its neat and takes care of our model automagically" ...
