Jeffrey
Russell

Jeffrey loves solving problems, whether they're to do with people, code or music. His wealth of experience means he has a keen eye for where problems are hiding and he's not afraid to get dirty and fix them.

What's the most underrated skill in software development?
Typing. I know this is a very strange one to pick, especially with AI and everything on the rise, but you have to know your tools, and for now most of our interaction with computers happens through a keyboard, so you better know it.

What's something you changed your mind about in the last few years?
Where the source of problems are in a software project. Most of the time new software developers are dazzled by code and its possibilities, then they're completely destroyed by the bugs they create, and then finally they start to see the fundamentals of what writing code actually looks like. Unfortunately I think this leaves most of us with the feeling that the code is where the problems start and end. If we could only fix the code, make it more elegant, introduce more abstraction, then none of these problems would exist. I've changed my mind in the last few years about this one, and now I firmly believe that in almost every case of severe errors or bugs, there's a people or structural problem at play rather than simply a code fault.