How a codebase can be self-explanatory and act as its primary source of documentation. — Part I Towards self-documenting code I’m a firm believer that if you need comments, you’re doing it wrong in most cases. I’ll show you some ways to make…medium.com Aesthetics The visual aspect of a codebase helps enhance its comprehensibility. Keeping associated lines of code in visual groups documents the code. For example, defining a variable and using it right beneath (no newlines); writing tests with 3 groups only (Arrange, Act, Assert).

There’s a recurring hype nowadays. Everyone creates reusable web APIs to serve a single client, typically a React app. Most products don’t demand the separation of frontend and backend into two distinct apps. — Let’s talk about the alternative pragmatic alternative: a server-side rendered web app that condenses development into a single application and tech stack. We’ll follow a minimalistic approach with Kotlin, Javalin, and jte (the templating engine).

Focusing on delivering value and continuous improvement is more crucial than adhering to a 2-week timebox. — I’ll propose to stop using sprints and apply a continuous discovery and delivery mindset instead. Beware this advice follows The “Just Sharing” Principle. Performative work Sprints and their surrounding ceremonies are artificial concepts meant to solve a problem. What problem are you trying to solve? If you don’t know, you’re producing waste…

A user story is not a task, a request, or a requirement; it’s solely a user problem you need to work on. — User stories are not technical A “tech story” is an oxymoron because if it’s technical, it’s a task/chore, not a story. Avoid “tech stories” whenever possible. Instead, write the actual reasons. To do it, ask why until you see potential value for the user. Any story should have a connection with the business, and anyone…

What’s a unit test? A function test? Can it interact with the outside? That’s meaningless if we don’t start with why we do testing in the first place. — Why do we write tests? I heard sentences like “because we need to have coverage”, “if you have a public class it needs a test”, and “because it’s part of our methodology”. None of that addresses why we test things… and we end up with a mechanical and blind approach…

User stories can always be broken down into smaller, more consumable pieces. Let me tell you how. — Why split? The benefits of breaking down user stories How breaking down problems into smaller, more consumable pieces can improve predictability, feedback cycles, and…medium.com When to split? Splitting too early is wasteful as you shouldn't spend much time preparing stories that can be discarded at any time. Prefer to split in the last responsible moment — when you’re about to start working on it. To enable it, make sure that creating user stories is cheap: refrain from…

The benefits of segregating business and technical code extend far beyond replaceability. — ‘Domain’ is short for ‘business domain’ if the intent is commercial. However, the domain is used here in a broader sense to refer to the real-world problem the app is set out to solve (e.g., a to-do list, an online shop, or a game).

We will deploy a “Hello world” Slack bot to Railway, sourced from GitHub (written in Kotlin). — Now that Heroku has no free plan anymore, it’s time to find a new home for our experimental JVM apps. Railway does the job. 1. Codebase Create a new Kotlin project. If you haven’t yet made git init, you should do it now. Make sure you have a .gitignore file at the…

The Testing Library enables testing as a user. It’s available for multiple JavaScript frameworks (e.g. React, Vue, Cypress). I realized it was possible and valuable to bring it to Kotlin’s Selenium. — The more your tests resemble the way your software is used, the more confidence they can give you. (Kent C. Dodds) What I developed a set of custom Selenium locators (e.g. ByRole, ByText) that wrap the corresponding Testing Library queries (specifically, the DOM Testing Library):