Aug 15Member-onlyIs Your Agile Team Incremental, or Iterative?“Waterfall until it hits the development team” is still waterfall. — At the heart of Agile Development are two key concepts: Increments — where work is broken down into tangible pieces completed within the bounds of a Sprint. Each increment is a building block toward the larger project and facilitates the gradual release of functionality. Iteration — the cyclical process where…Software Development11 min readSoftware Development11 min read
Jul 26Member-onlyCode Generation in React with RTK QueryThe last year has seen a lot of talk about AI assistance to help developers write our code — Chat-GPT, GitHub Copilot, etc. However, there’s a much older approach that doesn’t get much attention, but in the right circumstances, can be much more powerful— code generation. In this article, I…Software Development12 min readSoftware Development12 min read
May 11Member-onlyWe’re Writing Too Many TestsCreating and maintaining a test automation suite is a time-consuming endeavor, yet the value of those efforts is often questionable. — Creating and maintaining a test automation suite is a time-consuming endeavor, often rivaling the time spent developing the code changes they are there to support. Yet the value of those efforts is often questionable. …Software Development12 min readSoftware Development12 min read
Feb 1Member-onlyAre TypeScript Barrel Files an Anti-pattern?Barrel files are a popular pattern in Typescript projects for managing imports and exports. Rather than importing dependencies straight from the source file location, we add an intermediary index.ts file that re-exports a module’s dependencies. …Programming12 min readProgramming12 min read
Published inSerious Scrum·Jan 22Member-onlyHow Blocking and Wait Times Impeded Our SprintsWhile we strive for tasks that are independent of one another, interdependencies can be challenging to avoid in practice. Developers are often nervous about changing areas of the codebase also being worked on by other developers — and for good reason. It isn’t easy building on top of a shifting…Serious Scrum8 min readSerious Scrum8 min read
Published inBits and Pieces·Jan 11Member-onlyWhy Is My Jest Test Suite So Slow?The simple mistake undermining Jest’s performance — Our team is a couple of months into developing a new application, and our suite of unit 240 tests takes 46 seconds to run. That duration is not excessive yet, but it’s increasing in proportion to the number of tests. …JavaScript12 min readJavaScript12 min read
Published inJavaScript in Plain English·Jan 1Member-onlyOptimizing Jest for Faster CI Performance with GitHub ActionsRunning tests for a front-end application is no trivial task. There’s TypeScript to compile, dependencies to mock, a virtual browser to run, and code coverage to track. Jest is a powerful ecosystem, but all of this functionality comes with a cost. Jest can be very slow, and while its default…JavaScript7 min readJavaScript7 min read
Nov 17, 2022Merge Branches Sooner with Synchronous Code ReviewCode review has the potential to be one of the most impactful activities we do in our day. It ensures our codebase remains readable and maintainable, catches bugs, spreads knowledge across the team, and increases our confidence in what we are about to release. However, poorly structured code review processes…Programming14 min readProgramming14 min read
Apr 14, 2021Member-onlyHow to Choose the Right Branching StrategyTrunk-Based Development vs Feature Branching For how important branching strategies are, we don’t talk about them as often as we should. We pick our approach, alongside the core languages and tools, at the start of a project and then never think about it again. At most, we might make minor…Software Development12 min readSoftware Development12 min read
Published inThe Startup·Nov 18, 2020Member-onlyImproving Your Team’s Code Review CultureCreating a system that empowers your team. — Code reviews are one of the most productive tasks we do each day. When done well, they ensure code quality, promote knowledge sharing, and strengthen the team. Code reviews give developers the confidence that the code they contribute is as good as possible and let everyone in the team have…Software Development22 min readSoftware Development22 min read
