rjrowland

Prototypes and Feedback

October 02, 2020

Feedback

adopt a workflow that gives you a tighter feedback loop sometimes you need to play to figure out what you are building this is different from TDD

  • hard to start with TDD if you do not know what you are building
  • starting from a repl/sandbox assumes minimal environment varaibles

    • helps you start off with a modular design
  • gives you enough context to then switch over to TDD, if you choose

minimize your surface area of problems

Prototypes

sometimes it is easier to work on new features in isolation before pulling them into your app. this lets you focus on the code at hand and will keep you from following unrelated rabbit hole when you run into a problem

use a REPL for functions

  • example: save an api response in a repl then write your function to parse the data

    • much faster than using breakpoints, making a change, then hitting refresh to recall the api

use a sandbox for environments

  • example: working with gatsby themes; create a sandbox app that only imports one theme so I can make changes in isolation
  • example: working with gatsby themes; create a sandbox app that only imports one theme so I can make changes in isolation

work in vertical slices

  • example: when creating a new app, get your end to end setup done first

    • connect the fontend to the backend to the database and deploy the minimal version before building out any part more; much easier to debug when the
    • focus on completing sections of an app

Musings by Randal Rowland

A collection of thoughts from a programmer