Hi, I’m Kate 💡
I love solving problems regardless of the type of work: from basic client support to advanced devops tasks. I do it better when I understand how things work, but sometimes it just feels like magic.
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Tidy first? (book review)
January 21, 2024My highlights from the first in the series of books on software design by Kent Beck
My tech year in review (2023)
December 25, 2023Reflecting on 2023, my best tech year to date
Advent of Frontend Architecture - supporting materials
December 20, 2023Supporting materials for my 'Advent of Frontend Architecture' talk at BarcelonaJS
Learning at work: common obstacles and how to overcome them
October 20, 2023It took me years to find the right mindset for learning at work. In this article, I share my experience and hope it will help you grow as a developer.
React Alicante 2023
October 01, 2023My takeaways and useful links from the conference.
Onboarding yourself as a Senior Software Engineer
July 15, 2023In this article, I share onboarding tips that I've learned from my experiences on both sides of the process.
It depends! Exploring my favourite Renovate features for dependency updates
June 18, 2023My top 5 features of Renovate, an open source tool for automated dependency updates.
Budgeting my communication capacity
June 03, 2023As an introvert, I have a limited communication capacity that I refer to as my "extravert budget". In this post, I will share how I learned to spend it more wisely in order to stay in sync with the IT reality.
Thinking Architecturally (book review)
February 28, 2023Thinking Architecturally by Nate Schutta is a short practical book for developers who want to stay current and grow in the rapidly changing tech industry. My favourite part is about “ilities”. Read on to learn more.
Fast by default with Next.js
February 20, 2023Next.js is a great example of a “fast by default” mindset. It popularises web performance best practices by making them easy to use. In this article I share my favourite performance features of Next.js framework.
Three tricks to get in focus mode
February 05, 2023In modern working conditions, software engineers often struggle with focus. I discovered a few tricks that I share in this article.
The road to Software Architecture (frontend edition)
January 31, 2023According to the State of JS report, the “Code Architecture” problem is the main pain point in frontend development. This post is an attempt to connect the Software Architecture discipline with the modern frontend.
Flutter guide for React developers
January 22, 2023In this guide I map common Flutter concepts to their equivalents in web development. If you are a React developer interested in Flutter, it will help you find your fit on the new territory.
Where to find a mentor
January 15, 2023Last year I had several mentorship experiences, and the results impressed me. In this article, I reflect on what worked for me and suggest how to get started.
“Learning Domain-Driven Design” - the software architecture 🐒 book that makes sense
January 07, 2023My review of “Learning Domain-Driven Design” book about DDD and how it maps to the common software architecture patterns.
My approach to the command line
May 10, 2021Terminals can be very cool and fun! But you don't have to be a command line geek to be a successful developer.
3 simple management tricks I learned as a Tech Lead
April 08, 2021Developers often blame “bad management” when something goes wrong. I’ve been there too, I remember the pain. For me, it was useful to sit…
Let Cloudflare CDN speed up your classic website like it's static
August 08, 2020Improve your website performance by caching dynamic pages in Cloudflare (or any other) CDN. No need to rewrite everything in Gatsby :)
How to investigate technical solutions
May 23, 2020We, developers, tend to value practice over theory because this is how we learn most of the things. Often though, we don't know how to start, which library or service to pick, etc. Quick investigation process described in this article helps me in such situations.
The Tech Lead rule: Management first, coding second
April 05, 2020It took me two years to realise that “How to find time to code?” is the wrong question for a Tech Lead. In this blog post I'm explaining why.
Why 1:1 meetings are so valuable for Tech Leads
April 01, 20201:1 is a simple and powerful management tool that is often underestimated by novice Tech Leads. Check out my practical recommendations to make the most of it.
Practical thinking
February 02, 2020What I noticed in behaviours of great developers is that they find a moment to think outside the box and apply results of their thought process to reality. This is what I call practical thinking.
My tech year in review
December 26, 2019A few tech highlights from 2019.
Automated releases in a cross-language monorepo
September 14, 2019Sharing my recent experience in automating software releases in a monorepo.
Don't get lost in never ending learning curve
March 17, 2019Maintaining mental health for Senior Software Engineers
Reading list: on technical leadership
August 04, 2018I've got a couple of great resources to share with those who eventually found themselves in a team lead / tech lead shoes...
Decode Alias and Union Types in Elm
January 21, 2018I’m so exited to open this blog with a post about Elm, a functional programming language for building web frontend. As a user, I interact with Elm almost every day...