The Good Diagnostics Paradox

If you want your system to have good diagnostics (aka logging) I find there is a kind of catch-22 in achieving it. And that is regardless of if we are thinking about diagnostics in order to understand why things went wrong or if it is to do business analysis. And rather than calling it catch-22 I'll call it a paradox. Because it sounds cooler...

The NoMemoryStream

The say there are two hard problems in computer science; cache invalidation, naming things and off by one errors. Hence I can proudly present the NoMemoryStream.

First vs Middle names or how the US immigration renamed me

For anybody planning to move to the US I have one important recommendation; sort out your name situation before you apply for visas etc. The US is obsessed with your name since it and your birth date more or less identifies you.

When do your chickens show up?

One thing with Scrum that I never really saw happen was chickens showing up for the daily stand-up and get a feel for where the team was heading. Essentially I never saw chickens other than in sprint demos. That was until recently.

When generic exceptions are useful

So this is not about catching the base exception but something kind of like using tuples; having an exception template using generics.

What's on tap? And stay hydrated!

Recently when I was experimenting with Spark and Scala I encountered two patterns that I liked; Tap and Hydrate. So I decided to add them to the toolbox as LINQ extensions.

Who writes acceptance criteria?

In the past I've seen two different approaches to user story acceptance criteria writing. My current team introduced a new variant I like. And it is related to how the military works.

Going swimming with kids in the US

Several years ago Eminem was interviewed by a Swedish journalist for a TV show targeting teens in Sweden. Eminem accidentally said fuck. Immediately he stopped playing cool and apologized like a little kid for using the f-word. The interviewer just laughed ans said he could say whatever he wanted on Swedish TV. This is an example of something Swedes (and probably most of the people living outside the US) find weird with people from the US; nudity and bad language is terrifying on TV while guns is OK. Something similar has happened to myself and friends when going swimming with the kids.

Testing with fakes or stubs? That is the question!

I like testing with stubs. But once in a while I encounter people that rather use fakes. And that is a pattern I try to avoid.

Spies and Stubs

I was reading this article which is a response to an email from a person liking mocks but disliking spies. Before starting to read I was confused since I personally dislike mocks and spies sounded even worse. However it turned out I was wrong.