Logging is an area of engineering that isn’t really discussed enough.

At some point early during our careers, someone shows us how to debug stuff with print statements, console.log or one of the other variations and we are set. At a later point, someone shows us centralized logging with all our logs going to ELK or Splunk, and now we’re able to do the same sort of thing with loads of servers at once.

Change

Software can change a lot over its lifetime because technology is moving faster, and I believe that software is living longer when operated as services. Change, driven by evolution and revolution in competitive technologies, huge changes in platforms, business models and shifts in customer expectations require us to be agile.

I don’t mean that we have to adopt Scrum, but that we need to fundamentally consider software development with an agile viewpoint that accepts change as inevitable — you will be disrupted every 5 years or so, and you’d better be able to adapt. Maybe it’s new hardware, the cloud, some new database solution, VR, mobile, micro-transactions, free to play, digital distribution, services, new middleware…