Top all-time · #1001
Test Double Blog
Company blog · blog.testdouble.comprogrammingcareer
Test Double Blog is the company blog at blog.testdouble.com, writing about programming and career. Since 2013, 66 different Hacker News readers have linked it 159 times, most often “The Failures of "Intro to TDD"”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-29, and you can follow it by feed.
Explore our blog for software developers, product managers, and tech leaders. Find favorite tools, quick tutorials, and opinionated hot takes on tech trends.
Most-linked posts?
- The Failures of "Intro to TDD"5 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2014-01-27
- My favorite way to TDD4 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2015-09-11
- The TLDR on Ruby's new TLDR testing framework4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2023-10-03
- The looming demise of the 10x developer4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2023-07-12
- The Slippery Slope of Docker Dev Environments3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2020-02-19
- How to build a search engine with Ruby on Rails3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2021-09-09
- Crafting a conference talk.3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2014-04-07
- Must have 10 years experience with Lineman.js3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2023-10-16
- Never Staff to the Peak3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2023-04-03
- Understanding the Law of Demeter3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2022-06-16
What Hacker News says?
I wrote a blog post about this: http://blog.testdouble.com/posts/2020-04-07-favorite-things/ Outside of that, I'd say linters and code formatters have a huge impact on my productivity and code quality. ShellCheck in particular has taught me oodles about shell scripting.
Comment linking /posts/2020-04-07-favorite-things/
on “Ask HN: Which tools have made you a much better programmer?”Submitted Keep Ruby Weird Again [video] as a story · 197 points
HN discussionSeems like Nix is having a bit of a moment. After devbox[1] was released I started looking into Nix, and there's a lot happening. I'm staying away from these Nix wrappers and learning how to do some basic nix-shell work, myself. Until it's proven the wrappers are adding real value, not just trying to hide scary scary Nix from devs who only feel safe in YAML files. For the curious, this post[2] describes mixing Nix a…
Comment linking /posts/2020-02-11-the-slippery-slope-of-docker-dev-environments/
on “Devenv.sh: Fast and reproducible developer environments using Nix”Submitted How to build a search engine with Ruby on Rails as a story · 196 points
HN discussionI have adopted the same philosophy. A few resources on this, part of the so-called London school TDD: - https://github.com/testdouble/contributing-tests/wiki/London... (and the rest of the Wiki) - http://blog.testdouble.com/posts/2015-09-10-how-i-use-test-d... - Most of the screencasts and articles at https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/screencasts (especially this brilliant talk https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/ta…
Comment linking /posts/2015-09-10-how-i-use-test-doubles
on “Write tests. Not too many. Mostly integration”Submitted The Failures of "Intro to TDD" as a story · 169 points
HN discussionYou might like http://blog.testdouble.com/posts/2014-01-25-the-failures-of-... It's a tad long, but worth it. tl;dr: the first half agrees with you, and the second half describes a process that does help you test useful stuff (and design your software decently along with it)
Comment linking /posts/2014-01-25-the-failures-of-intro-to-tdd.html
on “Why Most Unit Testing is Waste [pdf]”Submitted The Slippery Slope of Docker Dev Environments as a story · 107 points
HN discussionJustin Searls' "The Failures of Intro to TDD" is relevant to this discussion: http://blog.testdouble.com/posts/2014-01-25-the-failures-of-...
Comment linking /posts/2014-01-25-the-failures-of-intro-to-tdd.html
on “Giving up on test-first development”Submitted Standard Ruby 1.0 as a story · 103 points
HN discussionI came across Plausible from this article on Test Double https://blog.testdouble.com/posts/2021-03-02-why-privacy-min...
Comment linking /posts/2021-03-02-why-privacy-minded-analytics-can-fix-marketing/
on “Simple and privacy-friendly alternative to Google Analytic”Submitted The Failures of “Intro to TDD” as a story · 100 points
HN discussionJustin Searls' recent talk "The Social Coding Contract" has a nice take on why expectations get so out-of-sync: http://blog.testdouble.com/posts/2014-12-02-the-social-codin... Nobody is "the bad guy", but creators and late adopters have very different understandings of what OSS is for, why it exists, and what to expect.
Comment linking /posts/2014-12-02-the-social-coding-contract.html
on “Design and Implementation of CSV/Excel Upload for SaaS”Submitted Great Technical Talks as a story · 71 points
HN discussionI work mainly with front-end JavaScript developers, who generally speaking got into programming through HTML and CSS and see testing as something someone else does after they've built the thing. (Which also perfectly describes me up until a year ago.) I don't have a reference for start-to-finish automated testing, but I like the way in which Justin Searles explains the difficulty of such a thing here: http://blog.te…
Comment linking /posts/2014-01-25-the-failures-of-intro-to-tdd.html
on “Ask HN: Tutorial teaching a team new to testing and CI how to get started?”Submitted Returning to the office is costing you untapped talent as a story · 62 points
HN discussionAaron's post was incredibly touching and inspired me to share this https://blog.testdouble.com/posts/2022-12-07-the-best-kind-o...
Comment linking /posts/2022-12-07-the-best-kind-of-brilliant/
on “Chris Seaton passed away on Dec 3rd”Submitted Video: Make Ruby Great Again as a story · 59 points
HN discussionSubmitted Downloading Large Heroku Postgres Backups as a story · 36 points
HN discussionSubmitted Benchmarking Your Ruby with time_up as a story · 34 points
HN discussionSubmitted JavaScript Testing Tactics [video] as a story · 29 points
HN discussionSubmitted Arcane knowledge needed to write a test in Rails as a story · 15 points
HN discussionSubmitted Improve equity in software by not negotiating salaries as a story · 11 points
HN discussionSubmitted How to build a search engine with Ruby on Rails as a story · 9 points
HN discussionSubmitted Talk: Please Don't Mock Me (and Other Test Double Advice) as a story · 9 points
HN discussionSubmitted Isomorphic ClojureScript with Reagent and Node.js as a story · 8 points
HN discussionSubmitted My favorite way to TDD as a story · 8 points
HN discussionSubmitted Migrating from Mongo to Postgres as a story · 8 points
HN discussionSubmitted The TLDR on Ruby's new TLDR testing framework as a story · 6 points
HN discussionSubmitted Healthy migration habits as a story · 6 points
HN discussion
