The Rabbit Hole: The Definitive Developer's Podcast

In agile development, it’s important to eliminate work in progress (WIP) as much as possible, since it can reduce productivity, scatter focus, and increase wait time for new functionality. But what if the same were true for WIP challenges we face in life? That was the revelation of today’s guest, Brian Lam, whose recent new role as the father of a newborn has presented him with some tricky WIP issues in his daily life.

In today's episode, we delve into the testing tango and the art of Arrange, Act, and Assert (AAA), a practice that is essential when writing tests in order to structure them in a way that is coherent to other developers who may come across them. We discuss how to go about Arranging variables, how to use those variables (or Act), and then Asserting those specific behaviors. You’ll learn about the importance of having only one assertion per test and the benefits of leaving blank spaces or new lines for future reference.

The red, green, refactor approach helps streamline testing and development processes, improve code quality, and foster collaboration. It promotes a disciplined and iterative approach to software development, resulting in more reliable and maintainable systems. Join us in this captivating episode as we explore this mysterious testing approach that transforms software development.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has the potential to bring significant benefits and advancements to various fields, including healthcare, transportation, education, and more. It can automate tedious tasks, improve efficiency, and enhance decision-making processes. However, AI also presents challenges and risks that need to be addressed. It is crucial to promote responsible AI development, ethical guidelines, and appropriate regulations to harness the benefits of AI while mitigating its risks.

Today on The Rabbit Hole we are sharing an episode from Scaling Tech with Debbie Madden, who is the Founder and Chairwoman here at Stride. The podcast is well worth checking out and listeners can expect to hear some great conversations between Debbie and top tech leaders and experts on a wide variety of contemporary issues facing the industry. Here we are airing the chat that Debbie had with Josh Seiden, in which they cover the valuable idea of outcomes over output, a subject on which Josh has literally written the book!

Have you tried GitHub Actions? In this episode, we talk about experimenting with GitHub Actions and why YAML will be the programming language of the future. You’ll hear what GitHub Actions is and how it works, using the example of the creation of a pull request. We discuss other things that GitHub Actions can do and the biggest problem we’ve run into with it when it comes to testing.

Created by occupational therapists, a “sensory diet” is a treatment strategy designed to help children feel calm, ready to learn, and in control of their bodies. Do you ever fidget with a pen during a meeting? Or take a walk to combat the after-lunch lull?

As we continue to learn from the XP book, Extreme Programming Explained, today we discuss what it means for software systems to go sour and how to prevent this from happening. We talk about what happens when the cost of making changes or defects rises so much that the system must be replaced and how XP creates and maintains a comprehensive suite of tests to counteract this risk. Tune in to learn more about how pair programming can help prevent the system from going sour, what to do when you are writing legacy code, the types of tests you should write and focus on, and so much more!

Continuing in the series of XP explained, today we discuss false feature rich, the idea that software has many potentially interesting features that are fun to program but don't provide much value to the customer.

According to the book Extreme Programming Explained: Embrace Change by Kent Beck, “The basic problem of software development is risk.” One of these risks is that of the schedule slip. In this episode, we discuss how to use XP to prevent schedule slips when developing software. Tuning in, you’ll hear about how XP addresses the problem of schedule slips through short-release cycles, what a Big Bang release is and why you want to avoid this, and the value of prioritizing the most important features in your schedule first.