In software development, understanding the difference between being effective and being efficient is crucial for delivering high-quality products.

Effectiveness is about doing the right things - choosing the correct features to implement, solving the right problems, and aligning development efforts with business goals. An effective developer ensures that their work has a meaningful impact and contributes to the project's success.

Efficiency, on the other hand, is about doing things right - optimizing code, reducing resource usage, and minimizing development time. Efficient developers focus on speed and resource management, ensuring that solutions are implemented with minimal waste.

Balancing effectiveness and efficiency leads to better outcomes. For example, writing highly optimized code for a feature that users don't need is efficient but not effective. Conversely, delivering valuable features slowly or with unnecessary complexity may be effective but not efficient.

In summary, successful software development requires both: building the right solutions (effectiveness) and building them well (efficiency).

I have a git repository with 25k commits in it and 7k+ files.

Under Windows 11 using WSL, I noticed that git operations were significantly slower compared to running them natively on Windows.

I have a script that I use to synchronize many branches that was taking forever to execute, but should have been relatively fast.
It also had trouble with line endings which caused issues when merging branches but reminded me of a setting I used to configure in my ~/.gitconfig a very long time ago.

Given that git configuration under Windows and WSL are separate, I had to update the ~/.gitconfig file in my Linux environment with the following.

[core]
    autocrlf = true

This immediately fixed my problem and git was fast again.

When I started using WSL on Windows 11 I had slow network performance issues.
We're talking running speedtest-cli and getting ~3 Mbps download speeds while my connection can reach 400 Mbps.

After searching online for a while and trying a variety of things I finally found a solution.

In %USERPROFILE%\.wslconfig add the following:

[wsl2]
networkingMode=mirrored

With this fix applied I'm now getting ~400 Mbps download speeds in WSL, matching my native Windows performance.

• Meet with colleagues to discuss ongoing projects and hand off responsibilities
• Write down knowledge transfer documents
• Download pay stubs and tax documents
• Ensure accounts that should still be accessible use a personal email address (e.g., insurance, stocks)
• Return company equipment (laptop, phone, etc.)

Trigger

Every week, on Friday.

Duration

15 minutes.

Steps

• Gather feedback from team members.
• Review feedback and identify key themes.
• Identify action items based on the feedback.
• Identify a date at which to revisit the feedback and the action items.