iteration

Building to Last

Episode Summary

This week we talk about trends in the industry, NPMs, owning your stack and the value of tests.

Episode Notes

Building to Last

Welcome to Iteration: A weekly podcast about programming, development, and design through the lens of amazing books, chapter-by-chapter

On following fashions

• What are short-lived trends? What will stand the test of time? How to approach hot new techniques:

Ask yourself:

1. Does the code feel easier to read and change after refactoring?
2. How did the complexity increase or decrease
3. Did you run into any new issues?

• John: If you keep changing with the trends “your codebase will be a patchwork of different styles making it very hard to understand or change”

there are no silver bullets

Surviving the upgrade pace of Rails

• Gems increase the cost of upgrades (so do NPM modules)
• 👀 react navigation
• Don't live on the bleeding edge

Owning your stack

• Own the gems you put in.
• How do you decide on if a gem is worth including in your library? should you just write some small helpers yourself to accomplish it?
• Idea of maxing out your current toolbox first
• Should you use redis? or can you just use another sql table?
• John: When you pull in dependencies - YOU OWN IT. IT’S YOUR CODE NOW.

The value of tests

• We're a broken record here. one thing to point out is that this lets you release often!
• You can also work on one part of the app in isolation without having to worry about the rest
• John: Test suite is like a light in a dark house - give you enough coverage so you know there isn’t a monster lurking

Picks:

https://www.notion.so/ - How meta - we use Notion to manage this podcast.