Programming Leftovers
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Undeadly ☛ Game of Trees 0.97 released
Version 0.97 of Game of Trees has been released (and the port updated).
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Nicholas Tietz-Sokolsky ☛ Work on tasks, not stories
This has it all backwards. User stories are great for tracking what users should be able to do and how to deliver value. But they're not great for understanding the work to be done.
A story can require a surprisingly large or small amount of work. You don't know until you break it down by analyzing how to do the task that's behind the story. We end up doing this and using stories in a way that leads to convoluted ticket titles, which all but tell you what the hidden task actually is.
Instead, tickets should be honest and be a straightforward task: [...]
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Josh Justice ☛ Simple Design: Passes the Tests
I could talk at length about the general benefits of testing for catching bugs, positively influencing design, communicating intent, fostering conversations with the business, and letting you know when you’re done a unit of work. But instead, in this post I want to talk about one specific benefit: comprehensive tests are necessary to enable Simple Design. In this series I’ve presented the benefits of the other three Rules of Simple Design. But unless you have a suite of comprehensive tests, you’ll be severely limited in your ability to get the benefit of those three Rules.
And in all three cases, the reason the tests are needed is to support change. Let’s talk about why.
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Anil Dash ☛ Make better documents.
The most common, and most serious, problem people have in creating documents is that they don't consider who they're speaking to and what they're trying to accomplish. This can manifest in many ways, but most often the result is an end result that is technically not wrong (things like grammar and spelling may be correct, or the facts and figures may be accurate) but that is completely ineffective in achieving its goals. Ask yourself a few questions:
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Bryan Lunduke ☛ Tabs more popular than Spaces. But Spaces users are happier.
Do people who prefer Tabs... prefer Emacs or Vi? Do "Spaces People" prefer editors like Notepad and Nano?
We presented those surveyed with four options: Emacs, Vi, Nano, & Notepad. They had to chose one. Here's how it broke down (according to those who preferred either Tabs or Spaces).