/Austin Henley

When Users Never Use The Features They Asked For tl;dr: Austin concludes his story with what he learnt as a product minded engineer, including: (1) Always keep your users in the loop. Do not go build in isolation. (2) Don't underestimate engineering challenges that you have an external view of. (3) Voice your concerns to your team regularly and often. They might be to solve them far more quickly or identify a future roadblock. And more.

featured in #256


Building Solutions To Problems That No One Knows Exist Yet tl;dr: Austin found a lot of freedom in his research internships. He tells the story of his time at National Instruments to investigate automated refactoring in the LabVIEW programming language. "He started down a route to solve a problem that the business believes they have, only to realize that there is a different and much bigger problem."

featured in #249


Why I Prefer Making Useless Stuff tl;dr: "There is no expectation or obligation to ever become more. It is just for fun, learning, and curiosity. I can add whatever features I want. I can use whatever technologies I want. I can throw it all away if I want. These are the projects I yearn for and look forward to when I'm busy with work."

featured in #231


Why Is It So Hard To See Code From 5 Minutes Ago? tl;dr: "Java developers backtracked every 6 minutes, meaning they reverted their code to a previous state." Austin has developed a few years ago as an Atom plugin, letting you swipe through your code history on a timeline.

featured in #225