justin․searls․co

Did you come to my blog looking for blog posts? Here they are, I guess. This is where I post traditional, long-form text that isn't primarily a link to someplace else, doesn't revolve around audiovisual media, and isn't published on any particular cadence. Just words about ideas and experiences.

Studying Japanese with a Nintendo 3DS & Google Translate

I was interested in using videogames to practice my Japanese reading and listening comprehension, so after some initial thinking, I decided to buy an imported New Nintendo 3DS. Here are some notes on how I went about that and what I'm doing to use games primarily as an educational tool.

Buying the device

There are lots of import sites out there that will get you a good deal on Japanese game products, but I wanted to (a) get fast, reliable shipping, (b) have some kind of return policy, and (c) not risk customs headaches. As a result, I decided to buy the device off Amazon's US site from a third-party merchant using Fulfillment by Amazon so that I could get Amazon Prime shipping and Amazon support for returns.

I ended up purchasing this model (Amazon referral link) and then hunted for an Amazon Prime-able merchant under the sellers list, like so:

Next, I picked up a new 64GB SDXC card (Amazon referral link) and formatted it to FAT32 using Mac OS X's Disk Utility (here's an instructional video if you're not familiar with how to do this).

Let's dive in and find out…

Will your iPad's Apple SIM allow you to buy ala carte prepaid data from AT&T?

When Apple announced iPad Air 2, I was most excited by the prospect of Apple SIM. That excitement waned when we learned AT&T would lock Apple SIMs to its network upon their activation (so much for that layer of indirection enabling competition). Still, I held out hope that maybe an Apple SIM could be used to purchase pre-paid data from an iPad and then be plopped into and used by an unlocked iPhone 6.

Let's see how that went.

But wait, there's more…

Unrequired Love

 This post presumes you're familiar with the concept of tools that introduce a module format (whether it's Require.js, Browserify, or something else) to JavaScript code that runs in the browser. I'll arbitrarily refer to the over-arching meme as capital-R "Require" for the rest of this post. Also, keep in mind that this post is only discussing "JavaScript that runs in browsers". It's not at all concerned with Node.js or npm or anything having to do with dependency management of JavaScript in that ecosystem.

Keep reading…

Jasmine Tactics

 Today, I had the good fortune to visit my friends at Sparkbox, where they host a Dayton JavaScript user group called Gem City JS. Today, I showed up to share some perspective on how to test JavaScript with Jasmine. Folks have been asking me to share a screencast of how I write Jasmine tests for a few years, so I recorded the session and am providing it online, completely unedited:

And before you knew it…

An Includes Trap

 Funny how just this week I felt compelled to blog about implicit knowlege, because a terrific example of the possible consequences of too much implicit knowledge came up yesterday. Please forgive me for the length of this post, because this is a surprisingly subtle problem. As with most subtle problems, the context and relevant background knowledge are necessary to arrive at a clear understanding of both the problem itself and the causes.

Okay, I'm interested…

Explicit vs Implicit Knowledge

 We lack much of a vocabulary to describe knowledge and how code can succeed to or fail at codifying it. The points made in this post are so popular as to be self-evident, but it seems I can always use more practice in articulating them. I'll start with an example that many of us are familiar with and then swivel into an issue I ran into today. code comments Inline comments in code are often maligned for two reasons: (1) well-factored code can be so expressive that additional comments shouldn't be too valuable, and (2) comments often fall out of sync with reality, as only the code must change to implement new behavior.

And then what happened?…

Upgrading Hacked Dependencies

 Today we set out to upgrade one of the third-party JavaScript dependencies on which our project relies and we inadvertently discovered that it had a number of custom hacks made against it. This blog post replays a similar experience and how we can reduce some of the risk in attempting to confidently upgrade the dependency with git diff and patch. introducing a new dependency It starts when we add a new 3rd party library to our project.

What happens next will shock you…

Say Hello to Lineman

 We've been hard at work on a tool called Lineman that helps you create web applications in JavaScript (and CoffeeScript!), and we're really excited to share it with you! Tonight I recorded an 8-minute screencast to show you the ropes: As time goes on, I'll go into more detail on both our motivations in writing Lineman as well as more advanced usage like overriding configuration defaults. In the meantime, please give Lineman a spin and tell us what you think!

You'll never guess what happens next…

API Design is Hard

 [Note: this post covers unreleased features of gimme, which are unreleased because of the issues described in this post. They need more time in the oven. You can peruse the feature branch on github] Working on gimme with Mr. Karns made me realize I'd painted myself into a corner on gimme's API design. I thought I'd share here, for hope that either (a) someone will respond with an approach I like better, or (b) the topic might prove independently useful, and some good will come of this after all.

Spoiler alert: there's more to this…

Purpose-Oriented Tests

 Lately I've been thinking a lot about how we can improve our code by reflecting on our mindsets and motivations with respect to software testing. A while ago, I wrote about the huge impact that prompts have on how we grow code (even the parts of speech we use to name objects). Later, I sat down to illustrate a taxonomy of the types of tests I tend to see in the wild.

Keep reading…

Blame the Code not the Test

 "This test is too coupled to the implementation." This complaint is commonly levied when—on account of test double setup—you have spec code that looks a lot like the subject's ("SUT's") implementation code. I hear this complaint most often in cases where the subject has little responsibility beyond passing a value from dependency A to dependency B and returning it. Because isolation tests specify not only the externally observable behavior of the subject, but also the subject's contracts with its collaborators, it should be obvious that isolation testing is going to bring complex interactions with collaborators to the forefront in a way that an integrated test would not.

Keep reading…

On Organizational Transformation

 I have a lot of empathy for people that work at big companies. No one should be required to use a crappy ThinkPad loaded with sluggish, productivity-monitoring software. No one should be forced to communicate through a regimented, politicized hierarchy to do their job. No one should have their actions decided for them by someone else, especially because no one else has a better chance of determining necessary actions than the person who is closest to the work.

Content warning: more content…

Language-Based User Groups Considered Boring

 Has anyone else wondered whether our habit of organizing user groups around a programming language (Java, Ruby) or a technical stack (.NET, iOS) has outlived its usefulness? Lately, a group's language preference seems to be an unhelpful way to subdivide our community's interests. JavaScript frameworks are all the rage at Ruby user groups. RubyMotion talks are about to inundate iOS user groups. And I've seen "mock objects rock" and "mock objects suck" talks at numerous groups of different languages (noting that mock confusion differs only in dialect from group to group).

And then what happened?…

A Note on Feedback

 Many people who practice test-driven-development completely surrender the practice when they undertake writing code for user interfaces. It's something I observe often as I try to sell people on TDD for JavaScript. The arguments I hear most often go something like, "testing DOM/jQuery/view code isn't valuable", or, "testing a view is a waste of time—I can see that it's working as quickly as I can run a test!" After all, it might take no longer to hit Cmd-R (or F5) in a browser than it takes to run a unit test.

But wait, there's more…

Types of Tests

 I want to spend some time documenting the different types of automated tests I encounter most often, detailing each type's distinct characteristics, advantages, and challenges. This is not a novel concept, but since many developers I interact with continue to conflate, confuse, and generally stumble over this issue, I figured it couldn't hurt to share my perspective. I'll take a first swing at this post by using the terms I prefer, but I will gladly update it in response to your feedback—after all, any taxonomy is only useful if everyone in a given group can largely agree on it.

Content warning: more content…

The Mythical Team Month

 I was honored to present this talk at Agile and Beyond 2012 today. Embedded below is a screencast of the talk (hosted on vimeo) as it was presented, with audio: Embedded below is my slide deck (hosted here by my gracious friends at SpeakerDeck): If you have any feedback—questions, comments, criticisms—I'd love it if you left a comment on this post!

jasmine-fixtures

 Update 2/5/2012: replaced the jasmine-fixture description with examples using the current "affix()" API method. One of the questions I'm frequently asked about test-driven development with Jasmine is a variation of, "how do I get my specs to see my HTML?" It's a completely fair question: JavaScript very often inspects or manipulates the DOM, so having a way to arrange the DOM's state with HTML is critical to writing tests. My goal this morning is to explain why exactly I recommend against loading HTML fixtures from external files when writing unit tests.

And before you knew it…

iCloud is Anti-Family

 My spouse and I share an Apple ID. But we also maintain separate Apple IDs. Paradox. Why? Because nearly a decade ago, it took us all of fifteen minutes to realize that we were purchasing the same songs multiple times from our separate computers. That realization—and the subsequent decision to share an Apple ID for purchases—has made each new Apple software upgrade increasingly complex over the years. So I made a chart!

To be continued…

The Limits of Metaphors

 All metaphors break down with sufficient mileage. [And they often break down quite quickly, like that car metaphor I just made.] Because metaphors break down, it's worth pondering the fact that most of humanity only comprehends software through the use of metaphors. The metaphors most users experience are graphical user interfaces (desktops, folders, round-rect app icons, back buttons, etc.) The metaphors our friends and family hear include our own attempts to describe how writing software is actually quite a lot like crafting sturdy Amish furniture The metaphors conveyed to business people—at least, the ones that pay to have software developed—are as boundless as they are inane (and they're usually quite inane) The metaphors that software developers themselves are steeped in are perhaps too complex to ever escape.

You'll never guess what happens next…

What's Wrong With Ruby's Test Doubles

 Prologue First things first: let’s square up terminology. For the sake of facilitating sane discussion on this topic, I’ve adopted the terms used in Gerard Meszaros’ XUnitPatterns book. He drew a complex table for this, but I’ll quickly summarize here: Test Double — a generic term to describe an artifical stand-in for code (usually an object) upon which the subject code you’re specifying depends. Mocks, spies, stubs, fakes, etc. are all specific subtypes of test doubles.

Keep reading…

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