Niko Heikkilä 💉💉 @nikoheikkila@mastodon.technology

Dad rock is strong in my Spotify wrap-up for 2021.

David Byrne's American Utopia is effin mind-blowing. 🕺

Lately I've been dipping my toes into developing in Windows without WSL. To that end, I've found https://scoop.sh/ to be particularly nice for installing stuff.

Next, I should learn more about PowerShell and UWP.

iOS Focus Mode is such a great feature. I couldn't go back to a world without one.

I've set up the work focus to only allow notifications from work-related apps and calls from family and coworkers*. Then there is the personal focus for evenings and weekends, which blocks work notifications and allows only family calls. Finally, the sleep focus mutes everything while also handling scheduled alarms.

*) repeated calls are allowed

If you first pour the liquid metal on a surface and then try to mould it for the desired outcome, you'll burn your hands and end up with something completely different from what you designed.

Writing code is like producing steel: you create the mould (tests) first, then pour the liquid metal (implementation) into the mould.

For me, this was a great revelation when I was learning #TDD.

There are so many obstacles preventing you from writing untestable code, and that's a good thing.

With test-driven development, the whole situation gets flipped upside down.

If I now try to write code to make the test pass and find it difficult, it's an obvious sign that I need to take my ideas back to the design board. This saves me precious time as I have likely uncovered a design flaw or a defect early on in the process.

Fixing it now is faster and cheaper as opposed to fixing it after release.

When I work the "usual way", I write my automated tests after the production code, which often feels difficult. I tend to judge that it's impossible to write a good test for this particular code. Thus, I skip writing the test.

In this initial version of my software lifecycle guide, I focus on automated tests and documentation. I reserve the liberty to update this guide later.

You can do it too by sending me a pull request via GitHub.