Bearded Programmer

code-quality Featured

A bit of perl trickery

I wanted to understand how this snippet worked, and now I do, but at what cost? I have stared too long into perl's abyss, and now it stares back.

Eulogy for an internet friend

Before I get to the actual eulogy, I want to remark on how bizarre and isolating the death of an internet friend is. My dad died when I was 19. I was surrounded by co-mourners, and it was helpful to know I wasn't alone. Even people who didn&

learning Featured

Self Care: a Geek's Perspective

Self care doesn't seem to be well understood outside of certain circles these days. My hope with this article is to arm you to take better care of yourself - a skill whose importance has come into sharp relief in the current pandemic.

testing

Quickening: Mocking in Jest

Brian [https://twitter.com/myotherpants] and I sat down this morning and it took us an hour and a half to bang out two solid tests using Jest's mocking capabilities. When I realized that he and I together represent 40 years of software development experience I thought "

testing

Interlude: Test data randomization

I have nothing against the practice of randomizing test data. It's a practice like any other and I'm sure some day I might find a valid use case for it. But there are risks that come with test data randomization that shouldn't be ignored

tdd Featured

Driving code design, through tests (IV)

In the context of TDD, tests that only exercise the unit level are some of the most restrictive tests you can write, especially if you are maintaining a 1-to-1 relationship between implementation code and test code.

tdd Featured

Driving code design, through tests (III)

The mechanics of Test-Driven Development are pretty easy to grasp, but the addition of a couple of heuristics will really make the practice sing.

tdd Featured

Driving code design, through tests (II)

The mechanics of TDD are pretty easy to learn, but take special care that your tests will be readable to Future You, who has to solve any issues with the code.

tdd Featured

Driving code design, through tests (I)

"Test Driven Development" is not a testing strategy. It's a design strategy.

learning

Exploring AWS IoT Analytics

I've had my eye on IoT space for a while (motto: "IoT: the 'S' is for 'Security'") because it's a really cool intersection between embedded (i.e. blinking lights) and cloud. But where to start?

learning

JavaScript for people who knew JavaScript 15 years ago

I was assigned a project that used JavaScript everywhere, and I got a taste for how complex the landscape had become. And my experience is not uncommon - there are plenty of engineers with years of experience that are unsure of this "modern JavaScript" thing and/or can't find a way to approach it.

communication

Non-expertly talking about language

I want to talk about a particular language feature and I don't want to be held back by a little thing like "not having any expertise in linguistics".

team

The Debt metaphor sucks, Part 2

Not too long ago I wrote on my dissatisfaction with the 'technical debt' metaphor, to much applause and adoration. And also some browbeating.

team

The Debt metaphor sucks

As I was packing dirty dishes into the refrigerator and oven I found myself reflecting on my current project. "How is this frantic 'cleaning' any different than when we made questionable technical decisions to help the client make their deadlines?" I asked myself.

git

Forkin'

If you're like me, you use git an awful lot. Primarily through the command line. Though sometimes from EMACS. And also there are ponies for some reason. Even if you're not like me (but you still use git), a fork-based workflow can be confusing sometimes. How

mocks

On tests and testing

Hello, gentle reader. Please allow me to rock your entire human face by dropping this truth bomb: > Tests are about more than testing. "Obviously!" you yell, your riposte ringing out triumphantly against what is seemingly a rather anemic statement. The truth bomb has failed to detonate. Your

team

Team Dynamics from the Perspective of a 4th-level Bard

Have you ever played a pen-and-paper role-playing game? You create a character. You define whether this character is human, dwarf, elf, or whatever. You decide the character's height, weight, age. You're given an amount of gold with which to equip your character. Will they be a

feedback

Feedback, anonymity, and self awareness

Did I ever tell you about the time a manager pulled me into a conference room and told me I had a week to finish the project I was working on or I'd be fired? When that effort started I was on a team of three. The other

estimation

Estimation without estimating: how long will it take?

It’s a question that development teams dread: > There are 100 stories left until our major release. When will they be finished? Let’s try to answer this without doing any guessing about how big stories are or how long they will take, which I’ve never been super

agile

Refactoring and clarity

TLDR > The purpose of refactoring is to improve code clarity. Introduction I refactored some code lately and I want to talk about it. Actually, let me back up and cover a few foundational points first, because without those it's going to appear like I'm ranting.

continuous-integration

Builds should fail sometimes

Inception > Well, you don't want your builds to succeed all the time... I remember hearing that for the first time a year or two ago and thinking to myself "that's probably one of those counter-intuitive truths that make a lot of sense in the