Jake Worth ⚛️🌲

Thanks Swizec; this could not have come at a better time! I'm trying something like this now on an upcoming release.

🌲 I made a Bluesky Starter Pack of devs in Maine! We're a small community, and growing. Click that follow button, and let's get a conversation going!

go.bsky.app/6WrdHtm

Testing a feature or bugfix, make sure you aren’t trying to "catch it passing."

Okay: "Can I get it to work?"
Better: "Does it ever fail, even if I stray from the happy path?"

"Being fast" matters at the org level, too. Fast organizations fix little things. They experiment instead of talking. They deploy fearlessly because they know they can recover quickly from mistakes.

November Social at Novare Res!, Tue, Nov 11, 2025, 6:00 PM | Meetup Join us at Novare Res in Portland for an evening of networking, socializing, and JavaScript! ⏰ Timeline 6:00 - 8:00 PM: Refreshments / networking 8:00 PM: Depart (or not;

💻 New England programmers: just a few weeks until our monthly Maine JS Meetup! We'll be socializing and talking JavaScript at Novare Res in the Old Port.

RSVP now!

www.meetup.com/mainejs/even...

Same! ❤️

My gratitude continues to deepen for getting to pair program with some very smart people early in my career.

It was challenging. I got a lot better, quickly. I still marvel at some of the techniques I saw.

Always Be Ranking Anytime you’re making a list at work, rank it.

Tired: making a list.
Wired: making a list, then ranking it.

Here's why you should prioritize most lists that you make, at work and beyond.

"Always Be Ranking"
www.jakeworth.com/posts/always...

Always Be Ranking Anytime you’re making a list at work, rank it.

📊 I just wrote more about this:

"Always Be Ranking"
www.jakeworth.com/posts/always...

The extra step is stopping to ask, of all the ideas we have, which one is likely to have the biggest impact?

I was thinking mostly of short, single-use lists, answering questions like: "What could make our deployment process faster?" Prioritizing quick action, before a pile accumulates.

Anytime you're making a list at work, of anything, rank it. Tech debt? Security concerns? Feature requests? Rank them.

Rank them so that you do the important ones first. Those are the only ones you probably will do.

Acceptance Criteria That Actually Work Acceptance criteria, or AC, describe what a feature or bugfix does. Writing them is an art, and some AC work much better than others. So, how do we make them work? By including a little more detail.

Write acceptance criteria that actually work! AC that helps you:

- Build the “right Thing”
- Build the “thing right”
- Document

I also cover how to learn this skill as a team and individual contributor.

#ProductManagement

www.jakeworth.com/posts/accept...

Fight to work on big things. When presented with the option of working on something big, like a new app or major new feature, or doing anything else, prefer the big thing.

You'll learn more, gain ownership, build patterns, have visibility, and context switch less.

You're on the list!

There is always an argument against shipping. Be the person always arguing to ship.

I'm trying to build a "Maine software engineer" Bluesky starter pack! If you you're a software engineer in Maine, send me a message.

Has anyone written a great guide to writing software bug and feature tickets? It's one area of our field that I see a lot of variance. #agile

Yesterday, I vibe-code a Python CLI to delete typos, one-offs, sensitive items, etc. from your Zsh history. One of my favorite LLM use-cases!

Auto-formatters? No thanks; I type it all perfectly by hand, in a way nobody disagrees with.

Wow, congratulations Josh! 🎉

What are your favorite conversational LLM prompts?

I'll start: I'll share a blog post and ask: "What are the weakest parts of this argument?"

In the next four weeks, you should go to a tech meetup.

Docker Compose Watch One of my projects features a Dockerized API. The dev process was: write a file, rebuild container, and restart container. There’s a better way!

Working in Docker this week for the first time in years. This watch (+ sync and build) setting has been a game changer.

Answering "So how do I know when to pass an object or a value?" again and again feels like A/B testing, too. You see which versions of the answer stick, and help someone, and which don't.

Raise the "I'm Stuck" Flag Consider this scenario. You’ve been given some work, and you’re stuck. Hours have become days. You’ve exhausted the internet. You’re starting to backtrack, delete work, and start over. Feeling…

You’ve been given programming some work, and you’re stuck. Hours have become days. To make matters worse, you haven’t told anybody.

This is the solution.

useEffect – React The library for web and native user interfaces

Such an important point. Link below for those who want to read the rest. react.dev/reference/re...

GitHub - jwworth/mutation-observer-demo: Demoing Mutation Observers for the Maine JS Meetup Demoing Mutation Observers for the Maine JS Meetup - jwworth/mutation-observer-demo

I gave talk this week at Maine JS about the JavaScript MutationObserver API. It's really cool! Here is the app I made that demonstrates the feature.

Docker Compose Watch One of my projects features a Dockerized API. The dev process was: write a file, rebuild container, and restart container. There’s a better way!

Big win this week-- learning about Docker Compose Watch! Reduced iterations from over a minute to seconds.

Don't Stay Stuck: A Debugging Guide for Rising Engineers Have you ever been stuck on a tough bug and felt you had no path forward? You've tried everything you can imagine, and nothing is working? And then: a sharp engineer drops into the session, asks a few...

🐛 Debugging tip: Stay focused! If something irrelevant comes up— your text editor's busted, you need to update a library— make a note and fix it later.

My new debugging guide for rising engineers is out: 'Don’t Stay Stuck' 🚀 jwworth.gumroad.com/l/dont-stay-...

#dontstaystucktips