Taming your tools
Have you ever met a carpenter that would pick up a wrench and hit a nail with it? Probably not, and if you saw that, you would probably be thinking in taking your business elsewhere. And if you wouldn’t, then you should. Here’s why.
How to find the problem
Applied skepticism
User minusSeven from the StackExchange community asked a seemingly uninteresting question that happens to be really deep and meaningful: How do you learn programming when you’re stuck and without access to the internet? All the answers there are really good and useful, but I think there’s an underlying theme worth discussing: how a methodical approach should be.
Code Complete, Second Edition
Aspects of software construction, deconstructed
Code Complete is like the reference manual of software development, regardless of the technology, industry or language you’re working in. And there are really good reasons for that. Let me tell you what I thought of this book.
Automatically logging your timesheets in JIRA
Having the tedious work done for you
A while ago I explained how I use Google Calendar as my time-tracking system. I did mention, but did not explain, how I made this into an automatic system of timesheets for JIRA, the system some companies I work for use for time tracking. It just involves Google Docs and a little bit of JavaScript.
Software Security
MOOC by the University of Maryland
Yes, I continue to go on courses. Now I just finished the Software Security course, from the University of Maryland.
As usual, let me give you a quick review of what it was about, what you need to get into it and what you can get out of it as well.
ATPS: Angular, Protractor, Travis, SauceLabs
Quick guide to get these bad boys cooperating
A few days ago I got the combination of Angular + Protractor + TravisCI + SauceLabs working together. There are a few quirks into making this work, but nowhere I found a comprehensive description to jump all the obstacles. Here I’ll describe what I did to get there.
MOOC: Android Dev Part 1
That little green trash can
Yes, I continue to go on courses. Now I just finished the Android Development Part 1 (or “Programming Mobile Applications for Android Handheld Systems: Part 1”), dictated by the University of Maryland.
As usual, let me give you a quick review of what it was about, what you need to get into it and what you can get out of it.
General Game Playing
Automatic players that don't complain when they lose
I’ve recently taken and finished the course on General Game Playing, by Stanford University. Let me tell you what it was about and what the experience was like.
My time tracker: Google Calendar
Boxes and colors, what's left to ask?
Long time ago I wrote about a proposal from a StackExchange user about how to use Google Calendar for task planning across projects and activities. The idea seemed good, and after months of making it my bread and butter, I think I have perfected it to address most of the problems I had with my workflow in Trello. It’s not the holy grail of productivity, but it has helped me a lot.
Let me explain it to you, because if you use Google Apps or GMail, you’re most likely to benefit from this.
How TDD pays off
A success story from the side of the doubtful
Software engineers, amirite? They keep blabbing about this fancy-pantsy weird wibbly-wobbly stuff nobody understands and they just want to keep things complicated. They want to test things even before they are done and then develop the app. Are they insane? And it even takes more time, so it’s a waste of money.
Well, my little friend-that-does-not-adhere-to-software-methodologies, they are right on what they do. And it does pay off. Let me tell you why.
(In here also: an update on the mongo-faceted project.)