Justin Searls

Portrait of Justin Searls

Programming is inherently difficult, but most innovations heralded by the industry attempt to paper over its complexity, inadvertently making it harder for people to understand how to build and maintain working software. My mission is to identify, explain, and mitigate this phenomenon.

Hash An icon of a hash sign Code Name
Agent 002
Location An icon of a map marker Location
Columbus, OH

  1. Rake without Rails.

    A lot of ink has been spilled over how to get “real” unit tests working in Ruby on Rails projects. The first time I encountered it was when Gary Bernhardt and Corey Haines started the “fast specs” meme.
    Time An icon of a clock Publish Date
    December 15, 2016
    Person An icon of a human figure Authors
    Justin Searls
    Category An icon of a paper organzier Categories
    Ruby

  6. testdouble.js vs. sinon.js

    I hate “X upstart vs. Y incumbent” technology posts. They’re reductive, provocative, and they cherry pick contexts favorable to the Shiny New Thing™ over the older, broader standard-bearer.
    Time An icon of a clock Publish Date
    March 13, 2016
    Person An icon of a human figure Authors
    Justin Searls
    Category An icon of a paper organzier Categories
    JavaScript
    Testing

  7. Good migrations.

    We wrote a gem! It’s called good_migrations and we recommend you add it to all of your Ruby on Rails projects and subsequently forget about it. Just do it. There’s no reason we can see not to blindly copy-paste this command right now:
    Time An icon of a clock Publish Date
    February 5, 2016
    Person An icon of a human figure Authors
    Justin Searls
    Category An icon of a paper organzier Categories
    Ruby

  8. Debugging gems with git bisect.

    One of your project’s dependencies just released a new version you want. You run bundle update as you ritualistically cross your fingers. All your tests are now broken. What do?
    Time An icon of a clock Publish Date
    January 12, 2016
    Person An icon of a human figure Authors
    Justin Searls
    Category An icon of a paper organzier Categories
    Development

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