In Things You Should Never Do, Part I, Joel Spolsky narrates Netscape’s ruinous decision to rewrite their browser from scratch. This introduced the following concept to me: “It’s harder to read code than to write it.” I believe this is true. Today I’d like to explain why. ...
Screenshots of code are common in developer communication, but they come with real drawbacks. Here’s why I try to avoid them. ...
Conditional logic has its place, but often there’s a better alternative. Today, we’ll look at a Ruby solution: a hash with .fetch. ...
I recently completed a winter survival course where we built shelters in just ten minutes with only the contents of our packs. The pack I brought was nearly empty, so I made a tent out of my parka. It was ugly, but it could have saved my life. How does this apply to software? When building a feature, first get it working, then make it look good. ...
RC files, thought to stand for “run command” files, are read by a program during startup. The file that configures the PostgreSQL REPL psql is called .psqlrc. In this post I’ll share my personal psql configuration. ...
How does one exit Vim “Ex” mode? But first… how did you even get into “Ex” mode? ...
A stumbling block for many people when debugging is reading the stack trace. Today I’d like to discuss this important skill. ...
Ruby’s RSpec describe block has two common syntaxes. Which should you use? ...
When building a demo application, I believe you can often skip authentication. ...
I remember the first bug that I shipped to production. I was upset that I’d broken something and was anxious to fix it. But I noticed something curious: the calm demeanor of a senior mentor helping me. They refused to meet my intensity. While the world burned, they wanted to instead discuss the bug and its relative importance. ...