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Tom Dalling (@tom_dalling) profile picture

Tom Dalling

@tom_dalling

Software developer & writeabouterer. Hot takes and grumbling into the void. 👉 https://teapaw.org/t.co/k489cIc1J1 👉 https://teapaw.org/t.co/Qx1ncDWJFb

 Melbourne, Australia
tomdalling.com
Joined February 2014
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I'm pleased to announce v1 of Tom's Data Onion — a programming puzzle in a text file. Let me know what you think! #TomsDataOnion tomdalling.com/toms-data-oni…
Tom's Data Onion - A Programming Puzzle In A Text File

Tom's Data Onion - A Programming Puzzle In A Text File

This text file is a puzzle. Decode it correctly, and it will turn into another puzzle. There are many puzzles wrapped inside each other, like the layers of an onion.

tomdalling.com
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I don’t think he realises how much of a self burn this is.
DHH (@dhh) profile pictureDHH
@dhh21 Jun 2023
If you're unable to create a majestic monolith with basic programming tools like encapsulation and namespaces, you don't have what it takes to improve upon the situation with a distributed swarm of microservices. Your spaghetti code will just be on five different plates.
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Continuing from last week: Against Must-Haves (Part Two) tomdalling.com/blog/software…
Against Must-Haves (Part Two)

Against Must-Haves (Part Two)

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And here is todays post: tomdalling.com/blog/software…
Against Must-Haves (Part One)

Against Must-Haves (Part One)

tomdalling.com
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New Tom Dalling post just dropped (last week, actually): tomdalling.com/blog/software…
Agile Is A Glass Cannon

Agile Is A Glass Cannon

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Trying cucumber again (the Ruby gem, that is). Can’t shake the feeling that they got it right, and they didn’t see adoption because the typical Rails developer treats testing as an afterthought. Less so now than 5 years ago, but still.
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Like, just take a look at your highest level RSpec tests, typically called “system” or “end to end”, and they are usually a Frankenstein mess. Maybe that’s the eventual fate of Cucumber features too, but at least Gherkin is an attempt to avoid that.
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BDD is one of those things that I believe makes a big improvement to an engineer’s ability, yet it’s not well understood even amongst seniors. This video is pretty decent as an intro: youtu.be/gXh0iUt4TXA
An Ultimate Guide To BDD

An Ultimate Guide To BDD

Behavior Driven Development (BDD) is widely misunderstood, so how d...

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In today's episode of #WTAFRails I get omakase'd for a couple of hours by this cool feature:
Image from Tom Dalling (@tom_dalling)
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A group of 3+ people pointing out each others' Birkenstocks is known as a "birklejerk".
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I am inordinately happy about this little bit of extra RSpec output, and the amount of inconvenience it helps me to dodge.
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I don't disagree with any of these points, but I'm still skeptical that the alternatives are substantially better, on the whole.
Justin Searls (@searls) profile pictureJustin Searls@searls15 Sep 2022
Out-of-context Slack screenshot responding to someone's question as to why I recommend avoiding RSpec. I was a huge RSpec fan through 2012 or 2013 but gradually flipped to thinking it was more harmful than helpful in practice.
Image from Justin Searls (@searls)
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This jives pretty well with my opinions of TDD.
Hillel (@hillelogram) profile pictureHillel
@hillelogram16 Aug 2022
I thought I'd spend an afternoon writing out my thoughts on TDD. Three days and 2500 words later I've barely scratched the surface. And that's why this week's newsletter is a little late. buttondown.email/hillelwayne…
I have complicated feelings about TDD

I have complicated feelings about TDD

They're not all good and not all bad

buttondown.com
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No you don't know what its like, When no ministerial appointments feel alright. You don't know what it's like to be Prime Minister like meeeeeee.
It's cute that @up_banking auto-classifies my cake purchase as "Gifts & Charity". It's a gift for myself. I'm the charity case.
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Eventual consistency is a dishwasher that can’t clean the dirtiest 10% of the dishes, so you have to run those 10% through again. The dishes aren’t “still dirty” they are “eventually clean”.
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Australian real estate value graphs be looking like projectile motion right now. CoreLogic playing some Scorched Earth.
Image from Tom Dalling (@tom_dalling)
Image from Tom Dalling (@tom_dalling)
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In case you were wondering “will Scrum help us beat our competition.” It was celebrated as a success at Skype but our more nimble competitors out-executed us without it. More on why Scrum is absent from fast-moving and nimble companies: blog.pragmaticengineer.com/p…
How Big Tech Runs Tech Projects and the Curious Absence of Scrum

How Big Tech Runs Tech Projects and the Curious Absence of Scrum

A survey of how tech projects run across the industry highlights Scrum being absent from Big Tech. Why is this, and are there takeaways others should take note of?

blog.pragmaticengineer.com
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I like to call this UX design pattern the "low contrast meteorite". Also the form never actually submits, so guess I can't have a password.
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Also every page starts off blank for about 10 seconds before the content pops in. Big turbolinks energy.
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I'm getting back to writing with something a little out of my wheelhouse. tomdalling.com/blog/random-s…
Context, Costs, and Benefits

Context, Costs, and Benefits

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