Tool Sharpening: Nov. 1, 2014

Saturday, 1 November, 2014 — development improvement

For some background on what’s going on here, see the first tool sharpening post

Environment + Process tweaks

• Upgraded to BBEdit 11, which was released Oct. 22
• Improved my tmuxinator profile for my Pomodori project and created one for my Dayplan project (see below)
• Updated MsgFiler to work with OS X Yosemite
• Updated OmniFocus Clip-O-Tron to work with OS X Yosemite

Project work

• I started to update my Dayplan script to improve how the files for previous days archive and decided that I wanted to get it under testing, so I’ve started a Gem project around it

Skill improvements

• I went through two Ruby lessons on typing.io
  • The first lesson gave me 46 words per minute with an unproductive keystroke overhead of four percent
  • The second lesson gave me 34 words per minute and 10 percent unproductive keystroke overhead
    • This one was pretty humbling with far more curly braces, which my fingers don’t naturally know how to find
    • I’m also realizing as I type that I really move my right hand around far more than I should to type far keys with my index and middle finger when I should be using my ring finger. My right pinky largely goes unused. For command keys, on either side, I favor my index and middle fingers vs. my ring or pinky fingers
• Reviewed the BBEdit 11 release notes and a related TidBits article on changes to BBEdit 11 in order to pick up some of the new built-in editing functionality

• Learned that I can rename files in a more efficient fashion. Instead of typing:

  1
      mv foo-long-file-name.md bar-long-file-name.md
  

  I can instead type:

  1
      mv {foo,bar}-long-file-name.md
  

  That’s much nicer. This also works with git mv

Articles read

• “Stability as a Deliverable”
  • Rust approaches 1.0 and announces how they’re going to be predictable and stable
  • In contrast with other news this week, I really like this
• “Laughter in the male dominated room”
  • Uncle Bob Martin gets introspective about how some of his recent presentations and blog posts have been met with criticism and how he may be contributing to women leaving the industry

Screencasts, podcasts and presentations

• Listened to Accidental Tech Podcast Ep. 86: “Moving the Party to the Bar Down the Block”
• Listened to Accidental Tech Podcast Ep. 87: “Not an Accurate Representation of my Mousing Skills”
• Listened to Ruby Rogues Ep. 178: “Refactoring Ruby with Martin Fowler”
  • There is a ton of great insight in this episode. Lots of great questions and discussion top-to-bottom I’m going to be giving this a relisten very, very soon.
• Listened to Planet Money Ep. 576: “When Women Stopped Coding”
  • A worthwhile 17 minute 12 second trip into part of why the 1980s saw a significant dip in the number of women pursuing a computer science degree
• Listened to Is TDD Dead? Ep. 1: “TDD and Confidence”
  • I let this sit for a while to get some distance from feeling immediately negative towards David Heinemeier Hansson’s bomb-throwing assertions that TDD is harmful in a series of blog posts and his RailsConf 2014 keynote and just came back to it after hearing Fowler on Ruby Rogues
  • The entire series of five conversations between Martin Fowler, Kent Beck and David Heinemeier Hansson is available in audio or video and, at least in the first episode, offers good examples and nuance, particularly in unpacking the term “test driven development”. I’m looking forward to the remaining four episodes
• Listened to Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots Ep. 118: “Scare Yourself” with Dan Martell
  • In the interview, Martell used an interesting turn of phrase that I’m still turning over in my head; “compassionate detachment”