Forem: Sean Killeen

My New Reading Workflow

Sean Killeen — Mon, 20 Jan 2025 14:00:00 +0000

I absolutely love reading. Lately, a few things have been happening:

I’ve been pretty busy, which has stopped me from feeling like I could really dig into something long-form
I’ve been looking at a screen too much, so my eyes have been tired at times when I might otherwise read something on my phone
My phone has offered too many distractions and I felt like I wasn’t fully engaging with what I was reading.
My unread articles in Pocket had been piling up to the point where it started to feel silly to save them.

Recently, I discovered an app, https://p2k.co, and revamped my workflow in a way that is absolutely delightful to me. I’ve read hundreds of articles, I feel better before bed, my eyes have gotten a break, and I’ve felt better about engaging with things.

So, here’s what I do now!

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My OSS “Social Contract”

Sean Killeen — Thu, 16 Jan 2025 14:00:00 +0000

I’ve spoken about this in fragments online and eluded to it in other blog posts, so I figured I’d spell it out here.

Resources Within the OSS Ecosystem

As a possible participant in the OSS ecosystem, I feel we have three possible resources:

Money
Time
Gratitude/Grace

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How to be a Ghostbuster

Sean Killeen — Mon, 13 Jan 2025 14:00:00 +0000

According to some research that was announced in November, “Ghost developers” are 0.1x¹ devs who barely do any work, and may have multiple jobs. Apparently it’s as high as 9% according to the research. I saw this when Aaron Stannard pointed it out in a LinkedIn post.

I found that figure striking, given the teams I’ve worked with and worked to build over the years. I don’t know that one of these developers could actually exist in the environments I’ve been lucky enough to be a part of. That such a situation could occur speaks to a massive failure of engineering leadership and process. So, I want to take a little time to dive into how to prevent these sorts of situations from occurring. Let’s become Ghostbusters.

Engineering Leaders Need to be Able to Understand What’s Happening

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TIL: Kubernetes Auto-scaling and Requests vs Limits

Sean Killeen — Mon, 06 Jan 2025 14:00:00 +0000

I recently revised an incorrect mental model I had about Kubernetes as part of a strange experience, and I figured I’d share here in case it helps someone else.

Background / Challenge

I have a Horizontal Pod Auto-scaler set to scale at 80% CPU or 80% RAM, with a minimum of 2 pods and a max of 5.
I’ve given these pods limits of 1GB RAM (throwing some more resources at a problem temporarily 😉 )
I recently saw my HPA set the pod count to 3. So I’m curious as to why – maybe these things are just hogging RAM?
I see the RAM threshold as 84/80 on the HPA, even with 3 pods running
However, I check our instance of Goldilocks which is giving us recommendations from a vertical pod auto-scaler (in observe-only mode) – and it’s telling me I can set our resources way lower.
So I run kubectl top pods --all-namespaces --sort-by=memory …and I see the pods are using 145mi, 118mi, 115mi – far from the 1024mi I specified

What gives?

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How to Get Package Updates in Hard-to-Reach Places With RenovateBot

Sean Killeen — Mon, 30 Dec 2024 14:00:00 +0000

Background

I’ve adopted RenovateBot in many of my repositories. I’ve found it easier to work with than GitHub’s own Dependabot. Highly recommend checking them and Mend.io (their parent company) out.

A challenge I’ve had in a few places has been that package updater tools aren’t always able to detect every location for packages. For example:

In the NUnit Docs repository, we have a reference to the version of NUnit in a build script variable
In an automated test in a company repo that uses TestContainers for .NET, our tests need to use the same version our app does, but the version number is located in a string in the middle of a test.

Luckily, RenovateBot has a great way to manage these too!

Solution: Custom Managers

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Communication Tip: The Power of Named Chats

Sean Killeen — Tue, 19 Nov 2024 14:00:00 +0000

In many organizations, natural communication pathways start to form. Something happens or information needs to be sent out or a decision needs to be made, and you fire up a Teams window or Slack group message and invite the usual suspects.

The Drawback of Individual/Group Chats

They’re difficult to expand. Adding someone new, it’s unclear if past history should be shared, and how far back that should go (if you even have control over it).
They get lost over time. An important context fades into the background, and it’s difficult to tell that the conversation ever took place unless you’re explicitly scrolling or searching for it.
They get blurred. When similar groups are in multiple chats as individuals, it can be difficult to keep subjects straight, leading to cognitive overhead to sort it all out.

Enter the Named Group Chat

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How to Run Docker-based .NET apps in JetBrains Rider Without “Fast Mode”

Sean Killeen — Tue, 16 Apr 2024 11:00:00 +0000

In most cases, containerized .NET apps run just fine “out of the box”. IDEs such as Visual Studio and JetBrains Rider provide a helpful experience called “Fast mode” that uses some magic to put your files where they need to be inside of the container, rather than rebuilding it each time you start up. This is helpful!

However, in some cases – such as one I experienced recently – a container is not well-suited for “fast mode”. There are ways to disable this in Visual Studio, but our team needed a little extra help to get it working with JetBrains Rider (which we also love!)

So, here’s the Docker.run.xml that worked for us in Rider, including a breakdown on each line, and one additional step we had to take.

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Beautiful .NET Test Reports Using GitHub Actions

Sean Killeen — Wed, 27 Mar 2024 20:01:00 +0000

I know some folks who would like to move to GitHub Actions from Azure DevOps, but would really miss the “Test View” that Azure DevOps provides. Let’s see if we can work some magic with GitHub Actions to get us close to that within GitHub.

Goals

Work entirely within GitHub Actions
Show test results within a pull request
Show difference in number of tests
When tests fail, be able to quickly see which tests failed, and the failure/trace
Understand test coverage

Sample Project

I’ve created a sample project that uses these techniques at https://github.com/SeanKilleen/ExampleTestResultsWithGithubActions. Feel free to submit a pull request to see it in action!

Project Structure

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Tips for Getting Un-Stuck on a Blogging Journey

Sean Killeen — Tue, 12 Mar 2024 12:00:00 +0000

Ed. Note: Posting this in honor of once-again breaking the blogging logjam myself. Seemed fitting that it was a post sitting in my backlog forever!

I had a conversation last year with a developer I respect and admire. They were talking about how they just couldn’t seem to blog, though they wanted to.

Some quotes from them:

For me it’s mostly about structuring the text and getting in some kind of flow. I know what to say, but every sentence is difficult to formulate in a way that I’m happy with it.

Not sure if it makes sense or not. I see some people write a blog post about something in an hour (or quicker), and it’s like magic to me. I have about 50 topics for things I’ve been thinking about really hard that I would want to share with others, but just getting started writing is a huge roadblock.

I thought I’d post some points of response to them on the off chance it helps someone else, because it’s certainly not the first time I’ve said these things.

Advice from “Bird by Bird”

There is a fantastic book that you might find interesting about this. I read it during college and I still keep a copy with me. It’s called “Bird by Bird” by Anne Lamott – it’s a quick read and the way it’s written is kind and funny.

Two aspects of that book really stuck with me, and I think are applicable to software as well as writing:

How to Write a Successful Job Description for a Developer Role

Sean Killeen — Tue, 05 Mar 2024 12:00:00 +0000

I got a surprising amount of positive feedback on a job description I wrote recently, both internally and from candidates. So, I figured I’d write up my process here in case it can help anyone.

Caveat up front : There are lots of ways to do this well; this is just one way that happened to work without a ton of effort on my part.

A Window Into Your Company’s Culture

The job description is a way for you to live your company’s culture. Use that to your advantage. Does it reflect the values of your organization? Does it reflect the way you intend to show up as a leader? Think about key words and ideas that reflect your culture/value that you feel strongly about and work them into the post.

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Shrink Your Meeting “Feedback Loops”

Sean Killeen — Tue, 27 Feb 2024 14:00:00 +0000

I’ve seen a lot of meetings go sideways. And with the events of the past few years, we’ve seen a dramatic increase in remote work – and communication challenges for organizations that aren’t adapting to current circumstances.

Dear reader, I’d love to save you some trouble there.

What Do I Mean by “Feedback Loops”?

In software development, feedback loops are key. If we can iterate 10 times on something while our competitors are still getting their shoes on, chances are we’re going to come out ahead. This ability to adapt and respond to change is one of the driving forces at the heart of agile software development. Many loops exist all over our organizations, and the more we improve those loops, the more we improve our organization.

Meetings are A Crucial Form of Loops

They involve scheduling and logistical acrobatics, they steal focus, they cost a lot of money, and they often lead to more follow-ups and work (not to mention more meetings.)

What can we do to get ahead of and shrink these expensive feedback loops?

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How to Set up Netlify Deploys for Docfx using GitHub Actions

Sean Killeen — Tue, 20 Feb 2024 12:00:00 +0000

We currently use docfx to publish the NUnit docs, because it has a lovely capability of generating docs for our API reference in addition to all our articles.

However, one thing I often yearn for – that I get on this Jekyll blog and some others I work with – is the ability to have a live preview within a pull request of what the generated site will look like.

Because the source code for the API docs is in the nunit repository, and the docs live in the docs repo, it’ll be a little extra complicated.

Nevertheless: Let’s make it happen.

The Conceptual Approach

We pull the NUnit DLL and create the docfx site
We zip up the site
We create a custom GitHub environment to be associated with our deployment environment
We manually update the statuses of that deployment
We deploy to Netlify
We post the link as a comment in the PR

The Build Steps

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