Programming

Get Stronger With Geek’s Night Out

HOT TIP: Ted Young’s "Make Your Code More Testable" class is coming up August 23rd. The class is excellent (and covers much of what I talk about below), Ted is a wonderful teacher – and I scored you a discount code. Go to MakeTestable.com and use code GEEPAW when you sign up to get $75 off! Programmers will ask me how they can become stronger at programming. A very good way, one I use currently, is to get together once […]

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Ten I-Statements About TDD

HOT TIP: Ted Young’s "Make Your Code More Testable" class is coming up August 23rd. The class is excellent (and covers much of what I talk about below), Ted is a wonderful teacher – and I scored you a discount code. Go to MakeTestable.com and use code GEEPAW when you sign up to get $75 off! Folks, I see a lot of ideas and opinions about TDD fly around, passed off as holy writ. By way of counter, I offer

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On (Not) Using Mocking Frameworks

I’m long past on record that I think the use of auto-mockers outside of legacy rescue situations is bad policy. First, it’s easy to write "psuedo-tests" using an automocker. Psuedo-tests are tests that appear to prove things about your code that they don’t actually prove. Now, note, I’m not saying auto-mockers force one to write psuedo-tests. They don’t. But they do make it awfully easy. How? The combination of "don’t care" arguments in mocked method specs with hardwired returns makes

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Path-Focused Design

"Path-focused design", of stories, architecture, code, is design that understands that we can only reach a distant City on the Hill by taking one stride-limited shipping step at a time. Sunday muse-day, comfort food for the geek in me and in you, but please remember, we don’t really just want to change code, we want to change the world. Stay safe, stay strong, stay angry, stay kind. Black Lives Matter. In the software design theory of the ’80s and ’90s,

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Big Batch Releases

Big-batch releases, coordinated and controlled by a central intelligence, fail, and fail frequently. Several aspects of this are fascinating, because of the interplay of hard mathematical reality with human frailty. Let’s take a swing. It’s Sunday muse-day, comfort food for the geekery-inclined. Enjoy, take respite, but don’t forget we want to change a lot more than just code. Black Lives Matter. Stay safe, stay strong, stay angry, stay kind. We can characterize releases by the number of stories in them.

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The UI Monolith Making App

The ultimate making app for a shipping multi-service system is actually a one-machine monolith with a UI. If your team is experiencing the most common pains from working in a large SOA environment, the productivity payback will be enormous. It’s important for me to take a second to remind you that there’s much more to this world than geekery. Please keep working for change all around you, including, especially, outside the monitor. Stay safe, stay strong, stay angry, stay kind.

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Rice & Garlic & More Smaller Steps

My rice’n’garlic advice, "take many more much smaller steps," can be said another way: reject any proposed path that requires a step size larger than the limit you’ve set for that particular domain of activity. Time for Sunday geek comfort. It’s meant to be respite. There are more important things than geekery, so please remember to think outside the monitor. Stay strong, stay safe, stay angry, stay kind. Black Lives Matter. "Rice’n’garlic advice" is blind advice, for when people ask

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A Making-App UI

Once armed with the idea of a shipping app and a making app, a whole range of possibilities open up. Among the most powerful: give your making app a UI just for making. It’s Sunday, which is geek comfort food day for me. Remember, tho, to think and feel and work outside the monitor. Please help me in opposing the multiple ongoing efforts to suppress the votes of millions of American citizens. Black Lives Matter. A "making app" is when

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Scenario Builders

In a data-rich environment, we can use the Builder concept to make DSL’s for our Making application. This often makes testing the hard business core of our code both faster and easier. Folks, I love sharing my geekery with you. For me, it brings much comfort. I hope, tho, you’ll join me in working for change that isn’t just about code, but about the larger world. Black Lives Matter. We’ve spoken in the past about using our codebase to do

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Web-To-Database Potshots

HOT TIP! Click the image below to get $75 off Ted Young’s new interactive online class running March 8th-11th 2021. Use special code "GEEPAW" at checkout. Thanks! Listen to this Blogcast: "It puts the database on its browser skin, or else it gets the hose again." This task occupies the daily life of a great many programmers. Today, I want to throw out some random sparks of advice for people working in that setting. Folks, my ideas about changing code

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