macOS Catalina: Fixing Emacs After an Upgrade
Since the upgrade to macOS Catalina, I’ve had two serious annoyances with Emacs. Here’s a little insight into how I fixed them.
Development
Commit Your “One-Time-Use” Scripts to Version Control
You’ve probably written a script that was intended to be used only once. But what do you after it has served its purpose? It’s easy to throw it in the digital trash bin when you’re done, but I believe these “throwaway” files should be tracked in version control.
Keep the Flow Going: Four Tips for Distraction-Free Programming
At Atomic, many people have read and enjoyed Cal Newport’s book Deep Work. This book is all about the importance and the art of achieving great things by eliminating distractions and maximizing flow.
Four Tips for Dealing with Poorly Documented Libraries
Every developer has had to deal with the struggle of sifting through documentation that is incomplete, incoherent, outdated, or simply non-existent. Whether it’s libraries, frameworks, or platforms, the presence of good documentation can mean the difference between success and failure. The absence of good documentation is a serious enough downside to justify avoiding a certain […]
Your Mocks Should Be Blowing Up
It happened again the other day: A team member was using a mocking library for unit testing and setting up the mocked members they knew they needed. The test didn’t fail, exactly, but it was behaving in a very strange way. When they asked me for help, I had a feeling about what might be […]
Tighten the Feedback Loop with Published Storybooks
On a recent React web project, we updated our continuous integration server to automatically publish Storybooks. It’s been an exciting change. If you aren’t familiar with Storybook, you can check out any of these other Spin posts for an intro. Short version: It’s a tool that lets your development team build pieces of a web […]
Five Ways to Engage in Productive Code Reviews
Code reviews are a common practice at many software companies. Being a good recipient of a code review is just as important as producing quality reviews for others. The key to handling both of these situations well is to approach them as learning opportunities. A good code review should maintain code health, encourage healthy team […]
Straight to the Source (Code): Getting up to Speed on New Libraries
I started my career at Atomic Object about four months ago. During that time, I’ve needed to get up to speed on a tech stack where I only had bits and pieces of experience. I had to learn to navigate a far bigger project than anything I had worked on during my time in college. […]
Easily Getting into Data Visualization with AWS and Redash
Being the IT Operations Engineer at Atomic Object means that I’m responsible for all of the internal infrastructure. That involves making sure everything is properly running, as well as forecasting when we might need more resources for our makers or leadership to complete daily tasks. One of the tasks our leadership handles daily is running […]
Four Techniques for Making Sense of Legacy Code
At some point or another, many developers will need to confront legacy code. The difficulty of this task can vary drastically, depending on several factors. If the codebase is relatively small and developers who have actively worked on it are available, it might not be that painful to figure out what is going on. However, […]