Developers need to be able to in write their primary spoken languages as well as they can writing in their primary programming languages. It takes effort and practice, just like programming does. And you get rusty if you stop for awhile, just like in programming. I started blogging in part to make sure I was writing on a regular basis. When I worked at AFSC I was writing and editing everyday for my work, but the next two jobs I had didn’t expect much writing from me. I’ve written before about the value of my liberal arts education, and the last few weeks have been a testament to effort Hamilton put into making sure I learned the fundamentals of writing. ...

This afternoon my wife and I went to the Families Belong Together protest at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Augusta, and organized by a few of their members, Progressives for Democratic Reform, along with a few other like minded groups that think tearing families apart is repugnant (at best). ...

Every time I go through a job search either as a candidate or reviewing applications I try to learn a few things to make sure I am better prepared in the future and to help friends looking for work and talent. I recently completed a job search, so I want to share what I learned this time around. I found a great question for a candidate to ask: “What else should I have asked you?” ...

This is a guest post from my wife, and co-Guardian ad Litem, Elizabeth Georgian. You can read more about our Guardian ad Litem work in this previous post. In a world that at times seems to grow increasingly uncaring, chaotic, and impossible to change, two sets of teenagers, a century apart, living remarkably different lives, may offer us a path forward. On March 25, 1911, 145 textile workers perished in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. They died of smoke inhalation, flames, or from injuries sustained as they leapt down the elevator shaft or out of the ninth story windows. The factory owners had locked these young, largely immigrant women in their building so they could inspect their bags as they left and on that day no one remembered to free them. ...

Like last year I’m keeping an extremely rough setup of notes from DrupalCon as a repository of things I’m picking up and tracking of sessions that looked like they would be interested but that I couldn’t attend because I was in another session. I’ll clean then up a bit and add to them over time. Thank you to everyone who worked so hard to make the event a success. I’ve assembled a playlist of the various sessions I though were good when I attended, or looked good but couldn’t attend. ...

Yesterday my wife and I realized that there was a March for Our Lives being held here in Aiken. When we saw a friend of ours describe her 3-year-old’s first pre-school experience with an active shooter drill we realized that if the local teens could get up early on a Saturday to speak up for themselves, we could not justify staying home. So I charged the camera battery, cleared the memory cards, and made sure I’d have pictures to share. Aiken is a small city in a state that’s hostile to gun control, so even a small crowd is an impressive turn out. The turn out was good, the people were energized, and the kids were clear in their ask: they want to be safe at school and they don’t think that should mean they have to be surrounded by armed guards (police or teachers). ...

The next installment in my ongoing set of posts to create a public record for things I couldn’t learn in one Google search is a process for using composer to track a Drupal 8 module in a private repository. It’s pretty common for Drupal agencies to have a small collection of modules they have built in-house and use on nearly all client sites, or to build a module for one client that has many sites. We are all becoming adept at managing our projects with Composer, but the vast majority of resources are focused on managing publicly available code via packagist. There are times these kinds of internally shared modules cannot be made fully public (for example they may contain IP belonging to the client). We have one such client that needs a module deployed to dozens of sites, and so I sat down a few weeks ago to figure out a solution. ...

My wife and I are fans of M*A*S*H. When B.J. first arrives in Korea Hawkeye takes him to Rosie’s Bar and tells him: “I can’t think of a single reason why we’re here, except that we’re needed.” Oddly I’ve found this to be true of a great many service opportunities in my life; often the most useful ways to serve my community seems to require doing a things that should be utterly unneeded. ...

One of the best practices for Drupal 8 that is still emerging is how to create modules with complex deployable configuration. In the past we often abused the features module to do this, and while that continues to be an option, with Drupal 8’s vastly improved configuration management options and the ability to install configuration easily I have been looking for something better. I particularly want to build modules that don’t have unnecessary dependencies but I can still reliably include all the needed configuration in my project. And after a few tries I think I’ve struck on an effective process. ...

Can your plan handle the bizarre? Last winter Dries, the Drupal Association, and the whole Drupal community, stumbled when concerns about a leading contributor’s potentially exploitive relationship got caught up in discussions of Gorean subculture and related sexual behaviors (warning researching this topic will quickly lead you to NSFW information). The intriguing details drew in an ever-expanding audience but were actually irrelevant the main concerns and the secondary ones that followed. The DA lost control of the message and the story and the entire community suffered as a consequence. Last spring and summer I was asked to step in to help them regain control of the message and start to resolve the crisis. It wasn’t the first time I was part of a crisis response with unusual details, and likely won’t be the last. ...