Testing Email Workflows Using Disposable Email Addresses

A sometimes tricky and always mundane element of developing web applications is testing email workflows such as account registration or invitation. In this post I will go over some strategies for using disposable email to do just that. Email Workflows Almost universally, online identities are tied to one of three things: an email address, an […]

Four Tips and Tools for iOS Testing in Swift

Automated testing is an essential part of every development project we undertake at Atomic Object. In the past year, I have worked on multiple iOS applications in Swift. Here are four things I’ve discovered that make unit and integration testing more convenient and flexible.

Accept It: Software is Wabi-sabi

Last week, after dealing with a frustrating build and deployment issue, I reflected on what makes software development frustrating at times–specifically, the well-known feeling that code “rots” over time. I happened to glance at a small Zen rock garden my wife had given me long ago and was reminded of wabi-sabi.

Take Your Emacs to the Next Level by Writing Custom Packages

I wrote recently about using Emacs as a JavaScript development environment. One of my chief complaints was the inability to easily run JavaScript tests from within Emacs. I practice TDD frequently, and having to context-switch out of the editor I’m using to run tests is a big annoyance for me. I knew it was possible […]

Testing with Swift – Approaches & Useful Libraries

I’ve been working on developing an iOS app in Swift. It’s my first experience developing in pure Swift, without any Objective-C. This project has taught me a lot about the current state of testing in Swift, including different testing approaches and best practices. In this post, I’ll share some of my experiences and discuss how […]

Bye-Bye, Sinon – Hello, testdouble

UPDATE: Justin Searls, the author of testdouble.js sent me an email with some notes on this post. I’ve added some his comments below to provide some additional context. I’ve been working in JavaScript-land for the last little while, writing lots of Node.js code. Since I practice TDD, I’m always trying to keep my eye on […]

How I Test CSS

At Atomic, we practice Test-Driven Development for all the code we can, from single functions to entire stacks. But there’s one kind of code we’ve long neglected testing: CSS. We rarely have coverage of it, and we often discover bugs and style regressions long after they were introduced. We’re not alone. Most software developers don’t […]

Property-Based Testing for Serialized Data Structures

When I first heard about property-based testing, my instincts told me it was too academic to be of practical use. But, as is often the case in the art of software, my gut reaction failed to appreciate the value of something new. I originally felt the same way about functional programming, so I guess I […]

Evaluating Property-Based Testing Through a Random Walk

Lately, I’ve been interested in property-based testing. It’s a sort of “Monte Carlo”-esque approach where you execute your application randomly (rather than according to strict scripts) and test that it never reaches an invalid state. It has proven usefulness in lower-level software (such as implementations of data structures), but I’ve been wondering if it could […]

Continuous Validation for Mobile User Interfaces in iOS

Laying out the user interface of a mobile app (or any app for that matter) is not a simple process. As visual designs get more complex and the number of devices and screen sizes grow, the work of a mobile developer grows more challenging. Many developers choose to leverage open source tools to help with layout or […]

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