Mothers in Tech, the Software Architecture Football Coach, Finding the Seams, and Other Must Reads

LinkedIn’s publishing platform gives professionals a way to share their personal opinions about topical professional news and interests, including our engineers. Here, we regularly round up some of the best pieces written recently by LinkedIn engineers.

"Find the Seams"
By Jens Pillgram-Larsen, Senior Engineering Manager of Development Tools at LinkedIn
When it comes to organizing software code, what's the right question to ask? Jens writes that it's not about distinct or monolithic code repositories but rather what are the seams – the natural boundaries between code objects, libraries and applications, and runtime services.

"Why PiMothers?"
By Neha Jain, Senior Software Engineer at LinkedIn SlideShare
PiMothers is a blog written by and for mothers in tech, where women can share their experiences and advice. Neha explains why working moms in the tech world should be celebrated and encouraged to pursue careers in programming and engineering. Female programmers – and programming mothers in particular – share a unique perspective that cannot be replicated. Imagine, radioactivity research without Marie Curie, programming without Ada Lovelace.

"TL;DR: JavaScript and the Netflix User Interface: Conditional dependency resolution"
By David Millet, Senior Web Developer at LinkedIn
A brief summary of an article written by a Netflix engineer about JavaScript and the Netflix User Interface. Netflix wants to A/B test UI changes in production, but client-side dependency resolution of A/B tested AMD modules is slow. Read David's TL;DR to find out Netflix's solution.

"How is a Software Architect Like a Football Coach?"
By David Max, Senior Software Engineer at LinkedIn
David Max from our NYC Engineering team compares programming and football. A football coach watches his team's game at a distance, through the All-22 video, allowing him to see all 22 players on the screen at the same time and understand the game at scale. Similarly, developers can reason about the behavior of large scale complex software systems using high level abstractions that come from software architecture principles.

"Insights From Software Architecture: A Tale of Two Systems"
By David Max, Senior Software Engineer at LinkedIn
The follow up to David's previous post, "How is a Software Architect Like a Football Coach?" in which he offers a real-life example of how software architects think the same way football coaches do. Like coaches, developers must react quickly to important features in a new system design and look at the big picture in order to reason correctly about a complex system’s performance. Sports and programming aren't so different after all.

"Success in the Coding Interview!"
By Joey Addona, Software Engineer at LinkedIn
A software engineer offers up his advices on how to succeed in the coding interview – perhaps the easiest interview to fail. He explains that algorithms alone will not guarantee success but rather experience with interviewing as a whole. With simple tips like listen to the problem at hand, see the problem from the interviewer's point of view, ask questions and offer clarity, Joey attempts to set coders up for success during the coding interview.