I joined Twitter in 2007 and my brain slowly morphed over the next 15 years from hopelessly verbose to nihilistically pithy. I've kicked the Twitter habit, but the takes keep flowing. That's why I post them here and format them as a social network of one. They're also cross-posted to my Mastodon account. You're welcome to bookmark any of these takes, though I'm not sure why you would.
By the way, the hearts and like counts are fake. They're just there to make you feel safe.
I started a new Rails app in January and I've now been hit by damn near decade-old bugs in 3 of Ruby's most popular gems. Who did I piss off? github.com/paper-trail-gem/paper_trail/issues/1464
Until yesterday, I had never heard anyone but me in the Ruby community express confusion over the fact that Rails produced both paper_trail the audit log gem and Papertrail the logging SaaS.
But seriously, how the hell did everyone else keep these straight in conversation? (My bet is that they didn't, actually)
I just wrote this utility class for my Rails app to ensure my Rake tasks logged their output to my terminal without screwing up anything else.
Was this actually necessary? gist.github.com/searls/a2a642520b36594bb9002e2f75761eec
Breaking Change v6 includes a (rather spicy) PSA detailing how Stripe may be inadvertently giving your product away for free—oops! Probably my best episode yet. justin.searls.co/casts/breaking-change-v6-pausing-doesnt-pause/
One of the most valuable things about writing automated tests is that they force you to run your code very many times in very many ways.
It's important to understand this is not a value of testing per se, though, and that there are other valid ways to achieve the same goal.
Two decades as a programmer hasn't made me any better at estimating how long it'll take me to write software, but it's made me MUCH better at estimating how long other things will take. I'm a master at intuitively timing multiple dishes to finish simultaneously, for example.
In hindsight, I think I may have spent a large number of years misdiagnosing myself as having a push notification management problem when I actually had a "too many people in my life" problem.
What's a framework feature you probably ought to use but you nevertheless avoid?
For me, it's file generators. I can barely remember why, but with the sole exception of database migrations I never take advantage of any of Rails' generator commands.
A lot of people are surprised Vision Pro's field-of-view is so narrow, but it makes sense if you think about it: even if Apple invents all the technologies needed to release a Vision product in an eyeglass form factor, it'll never be much wider than 90º.
Apple's resistance to proper VR features suggests they don't want us getting used to anything that wouldn't be possible in their ideal version of the product.
I thought programming was hard so I learned Japanese.
I thought Japanese was hard so I learned golf.
Golf was hard so
It's now been 20 years of fighting with it sporadically and I still can't figure out how to use launchctl to successfully automate tasks reliably on macOS. Such a frustrating piece of software.
If someone opens a half-baked pull request on your project and you really don't feel like doing the work to get it across the finish line, no reply will shut it down faster than telling them you'll merge it once they add tests.
Who the hell decided to name it @Dependabot and not @JohnnyDep?
January's Searls of Wisdom contained some big news about my new line of software products, including the launch of my first NEVER app, Beckygram. Subscribe to learn more justin.searls.co/newsletter/
Just survived my first flight with Apple Vision Pro. Watched 2 hours and 35 minutes of downloaded video and had 8% battery remaining.
If you've ever paid a significant amount of money for a seat upgrade, consider buying a Vision Pro instead. I literally forgot I was sitting in economy.
One of the strangest things about United Airlines is that booking a premium economy seat (of which there are only a dozen or so on this plane) has zero bearing on your boarding zone unless you buy an extra add-on. It's so bizarre because it results in United being wholly excluded from Premium Economy searches on sites like Google Flights. Feels strange paying twice as much to hang out in Group 5.
If you're curious at all about this Vision Pro thing and you've read the reviews and you want to go DEEPER, then I invite you to listen to me drill into all kinds of details for two hours. My takes are, if nothing else, incisive (if not outright biting) justin.searls.co/casts/breaking-change-v4-facial-computing/
I'm going to be cutting an episode of my Breaking Change podcast about what it's like to use Vision Pro. If you have any questions you want me to answer? E-mail me podcast@searls.co 💚
I wonder if anyone has attempted to fork VS Code to run under WebKit instead of Chromium. My M2 MacBook Air should get "all-day battery life" but has never cracked 3 hours and the only running app other than Safari is usually VS Code.