The Alan Barr Show

I'm passionate about software, software testing, and writing. The intersection of metacognition, organization, and technology.

Flow

00:00 Intro 01:15 What is Flow 04:40 The Autotelic Personality 07:00 Developer Productivity for Humans 13:30 Summary Engineering Enablement - Measuring Flow and Focus Developer Productivity for Humans, Part 6: Measuring Flow, Focus, and Friction for Developers

01-28
14:16

AI / LLM Testing

(00:00) Introduction (01:12) How are we using AI. (03:40) AI Products and Testing. (06:26) AI Testing. (10:09) Summary Article: Testing LLM-Based Applications: Strategy and Challenges

01-07
10:55

Announcement: Rebooting my podcast

Topics I'll cover in 2024. ⁃ AI / LLM / Machine Learning ⁃ Book Summaries ⁃ Domain Driven Design ⁃ Flow ⁃ Metacognition / System Thinking ⁃ Software Engineering, Testing Links: - Website - https://www.alanmbarr.com/ - X - https://twitter.com/alanmbarr - YouTube - https://youtube.com/@alanmbarr

12-29
00:29

Alan's Updates May 15th 2022

The Start of The Journey Recovery, The Journey so far Figuring Out the Next Level of my Learning https://www.aarp.org/caregiving/health/info-2019/dementia-warning-signs.html If you like the podcast, please subscribe and share it with others.

05-16
18:00

Creating a Podcast

Act 1 - Your Elevator Pitch Act 2 - Prepare and Edit, liberally and ruthlessly Act 3 - Three Act Narratives, but mix it up Resources Start a Podcast - Kristen Meinzer Make Noise - Eric Nuzum NPR's Podcast Start Up Guide - Glen Weldon Edison Research, April 2019 "The Podcast Consumer" Edison Research Podcast Consumer - 2018 Otter Voice Meeting Notes - Otter.ai Voice Coach Yawning  Be a great communicator Podcast

05-09
23:52

Vision, Buddha and the Badass Book Summary

Today’s Topic is a Book Summary by Vishen Lakhiani from the book The Buddha and the Badass. Act 1 - Make a big vision and great people will find you Act 2 - Massive Transformation Purpose and Make a Stand Act 3 - Craft Your Identity

05-02
24:47

Ephemerality

Chainguard -The Principle of Ephemerality via Carlos Santana Get on with ephemerality; it's 2022. We had no choice but to build it ourselves before then. Nowadays, chaos engineering is an option. We use serverless and stateless technologies all the time. Virtual machines aren't even on our radar. Maintaining stateful systems is difficult. Make sure you have backups and failovers. To ensure that we have evidence of malicious software, you can test your code regularly. The COVID test provides a means of ensuring that historical evidence is reviewed over time. Combining and shortening an app's lifespan makes it more likely for an attacker to fail.

04-25
14:51

Alan's Updates April 10th 2022

Every week, I'll be posting one episode. I stopped in the past because I didn't have enough content to create a podcast with what I wanted to talk about. The podcast will help me improve my writing and voice. Hopefully, the content will be good as well. Improving my writing and sounding. Feel like I'm at 95% of what I used to be. Alan's education schedule from morning to night. I'm happy that normal people can't even tell I had any issues. Speechify is a tool that helps me read a hard text and speech it quickly. Summarizing writing. Preply is a helpful tool for tutors of English Recording sounds to type words for Asphia apps. Went back to part-time work for learning again. Saturday Zoom Python Meetup Discord Accountability Group Comprehensible Input

04-11
14:10

Mindfulness and Awareness

Today's topic is Mindfulness and Awareness. Mayo Clinic says, "Mindfulness is a type of meditation in which you focus on being intensely aware of what you're sensing and feeling in the moment, without interpretation or judgment." Act 1 - Awareness Act 2 - Desire and Suffering Act 3 -Be Responsible for our actions and Let It Go

04-04
15:27

50 Days After My Stroke

What Didn't Work? Phonics Elysian Disco John Maxwell Books Teen Books Tools Grammarly and Word Tune Accentia - Naver dictionary Bold Voice AnkiUse English for Everyone Vocabulary Typing.com Tutors and Preparing YouTube Videos from Tarle Speech and Rachel's English. Google search pronunciation on any search ESL Tutor Class ( Preply ) ESL Chat ( Tandem / Hello Talk) Tactus Therapy IOS APP  Creating Content to help me learn again Alan's first podcast try Kdenlive is an open-source Video Editing App YouTube of BoldVoice Speech Therapy and Occupational Therapy help Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It Work Emails Manga Mind Maps

03-21
22:47

Repeat - The Importance of Persuasion and Techniques to Try

I am out so this week. Please enjoy the techniques of Negotiation such as Never Split the Different Act 1 - What is persuasion and why should we be persuasive? Act 2 - Low Stakes Persuasive Techniques Act 3 - Higher Stakes Persuasion

03-07
24:26

Repeat - Lessons Learned Building Dev.Lab Internal Developer Platform

2021 dev.lab internal developer. I'll be back.

02-21
23:45

Software Design, Empathy, Personas and Career

Alan Barr Podcast Interview with Tyler Lemke  Don't make me think Empathy Mapping Mentors in tech MIX08 Microsoft Office 2007: The Story of the Ribbon Get Your First Dev Job  Danny Thompson Tyler's Youtube Tyler's Website Junior To Senior Dev Podcast

02-08
53:30

Systems Thinking

The Five Disciplines - Systems Thinking - Personal Mastery - Mental Models - Building Shared Vision - Team Learning Leverage Points in Systems

01-24
26:03

Junior Developers

Gergely Orosz Hiring juniors Dark matter developers "The average tenure of software engineers in small companies is only 1.5 years, where it’s 2.3 years for large companies." - Why Programmers Shouldn't Stay in One Company for a long time. Michael Nygard Coupling Definition Dave Farley Junior Developer Mistakes What are the skills you think juniors should be learning?

01-10
26:07

Ultralearning

Act 1 - Your First Ultralearning Project Act 2 - Nine Principles of Ultralearning Act 3 - Alan’s Version of an Ultralearning Project/Habit Summary You will be more successful if you start by researching your learning plan. You can ask experts or review guides. Shape your environment to focus. Participate in activities that allow you to use the learning in a real or near-real environment. You can learn what you are learning is composed of and learn to drill the parts that provide leverage. As you are applying the learning you are forced to retrieve that information or you are testing your knowledge via other tools. You either seek others to give you specific feedback for improvement, give yourself feedback via tracking, then use that feedback to tweak your learning. To retain what you learn you space learning out over time. You use the Feynman technique to teach others what you know which forces you to confront if there is a gap in your understanding. Finally, you play with variables with what/how you learned something so that it is more interesting and you learn new things about what you are learning. If you walk away with nothing else: Plan what you are going to learn and how you will learn it. Systematize your learning, What activities will I apply it to, how can I get feedback to improve my performance, Incorporate the ideas into the learning. Experiment to keep it interesting and to stretch yourself. Raw Book Notes Andrew Huberman’s neuroplasticity super protocols

12-27
49:06

API Design

In this episode, I review a few books on API Design. The Design of Web APIs by Arnaud Lauret the API Handyman, Irresistible APIs by Kirsten Hunter, and API Design Patterns by JJ Geewax. I also brainfart may refer to Kirsten Hunter as Kirsten Stewart so just ignore that. Act 1 - What is the goal of the API? API Goal Canvas - Who - What - How - Inputs - Outputs - Goals Alan's Digital Garden if the Manning link doesn't work in the future. Act 2 - What makes a “good” API? Act 3 - RESTful HTTP Guidance and Support Summary Define the goals and metrics of the API via design discussions and the API Goal Canvas and get feedback. A good API is fit for purpose, consistent, and expressive. RESTful HTTP Guidance and Supporting your API is more than the implementation. Support, Examples, Tutorials, workflows. etc.

12-20
41:59

Log4Shell

What do you do when the majority of software in the world is vulnerable to a remote code execution exploit via the logger? The one type of system the majority of programs run. How can we get better as an industry to benefit from sharing our code but also keeping our code up to date? Can we show restraint in adding features? Can we improve our quality and review processes to find these types of mistakes sooner?

12-13
12:18

Self-Leadership

Act 1 - Self-Awareness Act 2 - Emotional Regulation Act 3 - Patience and Acceptance

12-06
25:43

Fundamentals

If mastering the fundamentals sets us apart, what are those fundamentals?

11-29
13:20

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