Developer on Fire
Developer on Fire
Episode 160 | Todd Gardner - Tracking Success
Guest:
Todd Gardner talks with Dave Rael about JavaScript errors, social lubrication, a business that supports itself and its partners, and the web
Todd H. Gardner is the president and bootstrapped co-founder of TrackJS JavaScript Error Monitoring. He has founded and failed several smaller businesses before TrackJS, but don’t hold that against him. With over a decade of experience building software systems, Todd has built large enterprise systems and complex software products.
Chapters:
- - Dave introduces the show and Todd Gardner
- - Origins of PubConf
- - NDC Conferences
- - TrackJS - Todd's business and service to track. log, monitor, and report JavaScript errors from your web application
- - The joy of a being a small organization with a big impact
- - Businesses that can support their founders and partners - being an advocate for the business and product and not just a developer
- - How Tood shifted focus from only development to product and business and marketing
- - "Marketing gets a bad name only when you're marketing something that sucks."
- - The things that "light Todd up"
- - How Todd got started in software
- - Todd's story of failure - Depending on unreliable services and suffering quality of life problems relating to the struggle to keep the lights on
- - TrackJS and coming out of the low point and lessons learned that color future outlook and operation
- - Todd's success story - TrackJS being used on websites and applications he admires and "holds in awe"
- - Todd's thoughts on having "made it"
- - How Todd stays current with what he needs to know
- - Todd's book recommendation
- - The things that have Todd most excited
- - The things about which Todd likes to geek out
- - Todd's prediction for the future of software
- - An emphasis on simplicity
- - Todd's top 3 tips for delivering more value
- - Keeping up with Todd
Resources:
- TrackJS
- The trackJS Blog (including posts by Todd)
- PubConf
- NotepadConf
- NDC Conferences
- Eric Brandes
- Warcraft II
- Chad Fowler on Developer On Fire
- Google Now
- John Papa on Developer On Fire
- Not Even Close: The State of Computer Security (with slides) - James Mickens
- Domain-Driven Design: Tackling Complexity in the Heart of Software - Eric Evans
Todd's book recommendation:
Todd's top 3 tips for delivering more value:
- Look outside software and focus on things that will drive the most impact for people, business, and society (software is a cost, not a benefit)
- Write as little code as you can
- Some things don't need to last
