Grammar guide
English Verb Tenses for Developers
Understanding verb tenses is the difference between sounding fluent and sounding hesitant. These are the nine essential English tenses with real examples from standups, code reviews, and retrospectives.
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Present Simple
When to use it
Use it for habits, routines, permanent states, and facts. In a dev context: describing what tools or systems do, daily processes, and technical facts.
Developer examples
- “She reviews pull requests every day.”
- “The API returns a 200 status on success.”
- “We deploy to production on Fridays.”
Present Continuous
When to use it
Use it for actions happening right now or temporarily. In a dev context: what you're currently working on, what's running at this moment, or a project in progress this sprint.
Developer examples
- “I'm refactoring the authentication module this week.”
- “The CI pipeline is running the tests right now.”
- “We're migrating to a new database — it should be done by Friday.”
Present Perfect
When to use it
Use it to connect the past to the present: recent actions, experience, or something that happened but the exact time doesn't matter. In a dev context: things you've done today, your experience with a technology, or the current state of a task.
Developer examples
- “I've added the ticket to the backlog.”
- “We've merged three PRs today.”
- “She has never used this framework before.”
Past Simple
When to use it
Use it for completed actions at a specific point in the past. In a dev context: standup updates about yesterday, what happened in the last sprint, or what caused a bug.
Developer examples
- “She opened a pull request two hours ago.”
- “The team shipped the feature last sprint.”
- “We fixed the outage before any users noticed.”
Past Continuous
When to use it
Use it for actions that were in progress at a specific moment in the past, or two actions happening simultaneously. In a dev context: describing what you were working on when an incident happened, or what was running during an outage.
Developer examples
- “I was reviewing a PR when the server went down.”
- “The team was deploying the new release when the alert triggered.”
- “She was debugging the issue while the client was waiting on the call.”
Past Perfect
When to use it
Use it for an action that was completed before another past action. In a dev context: explaining the sequence of events in a post-mortem, or clarifying what had already happened before a problem occurred.
Developer examples
- “She had already merged the PR before the review was finished.”
- “The server had crashed twice before we identified the root cause.”
- “I had pushed the fix to staging before the standup started.”
Future Simple (will)
When to use it
Use it for spontaneous decisions, offers, predictions, and promises. In a dev context: committing to help someone on the spot, making predictions about how code will behave, or promising a deliverable.
Developer examples
- “Don't worry, I'll fix that bug for you.”
- “I think this approach will cause performance issues later.”
- “If you share your screen, I'll help you debug it.”
Future Continuous
When to use it
Use it for an action that will be in progress at a specific point in the future. In a dev context: describing what will be happening during a meeting, a deployment window, or a future sprint.
Developer examples
- “This time next week, we will be deploying the new release.”
- “At the standup tomorrow, I will be presenting the new architecture.”
- “By 3pm, the pipeline will be running the full regression suite.”
Future Perfect
When to use it
Use it for an action that will be completed before a specific point in the future. In a dev context: committing to deadlines, sprint goals, or milestone deliverables.
Developer examples
- “By Friday, we will have shipped all the features in the milestone.”
- “By the time you review this PR, I will have addressed all the comments.”
- “We will have migrated to the new database before the quarter ends.”
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