Green software book club, git log tricks, and pro bono work in tech

Hi folks! I hope you've all been doing well and, if you live in an area that's getting colder as winter approaches, hope you're staying warm.

I love the colder weather because I get to bust out all the warm soup and stew recipes I have on hand. Earlier in November I tried a new stew (Red Lentil Barley Stew) that has a very "autumnal" flavour profile that's now a regular on my meal prep list.

I'm not big into Halloween so I didn't do much when it rolled around a few weeks ago, but Ada got a haircut the day after and dressed up a little bit for the "after" photo:

Things I'm musing about

What pro-bono IT work could look like beyond open-source software

In the October edition of the Green IO newsletter, the author argues that incorporating the concept of pro-bono more widely into the IT industry, beyond the open-source software movement, could serve as a mechanism for "greening" IT across the industry.

It got me thinking about the history and current state of pro-bono in the legal profession (which the author references as a source of inspiration for the IT industry), what pro-bono looks like today in IT (e.g. open-source, civic tech), and what barriers exist from having this adopted in the IT profession similar to its adoption for the legal profession.

I've started to do some research into this so a blog post on this might be published in the coming weeks, but if folks have any initial thoughts they'd like to share, feel free to reach out.

Fun things I've been up to

Learning cool git log tricks

I had to figure out when some variables were first introduced into the codebase at work recently, and I ended up learning about a couple of cool options for this command.

You can read more about them in a post I wrote here.

Spoke at QT Conference in Toronto

I gave a 15-minute version of "Living on the Edge" at the 3rd edition of QT Conference.

This was the first conference I've given a talk at in Toronto since 2018, and it was a great feeling to connect with other tech folks that I know I'll be seeing at other meet-ups in the city in the near future.

Joined the "Building Green Software" Book Club

The authors of the book are running an online book club where we'll all be going through a chapter every month, starting in about a week.

I'm excited to meet other software engineers/technologists who are equally as passionate about building greener software as I am, and I'm looking forward to hearing what folks have been doing in this space so far.