How to Stop Cucumber Becoming Technology Roadkill

Posted on April 15, 2012 by

I’ve worked on a number of projects with Cucumber now, and I think it is a terrific tool. However, I’ve been seeing it used in ways that it was not originally intended for, the consequence being acceptance-test suites that grow increasingly slow, brittle and difficult to maintain.

These problems occur when developers start using Cucumber to drive overly-detailed tests. The problem of excessive UI testing with Cucumber has been blogged about in the past by Aslak Hellesøy – the creator of Cucumber – but I thought I’d cover some of my own experiences and opinions in this post.

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Posted in Testing, Tools | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Bootstrap makes me look good

Posted on March 7, 2012 by

Before we begin, let me give you a quick background. I’m a web developer who likes to dabble a bit in UI design. The majority of the projects I work on are non public facing, so they are often without the aid of a graphic designer. This usually leads to the production of a fully functioning web app that looks like a mixed bag of CSS tutorials. Sounding familar?

Enter Twitter Bootstrap.

Bootstrap is an open-source, cross-browser collection of CSS and HTML conventions. It is essentially a front-end toolkit for rapidly developing stylish web applications. It covers everything from forms, typography, tables and buttons to layouts and dynamic components like tabs, menus and pagination. It is built on with the power of LESS and has support for many jQuery plugins (modals, dropdowns, alerts etc).

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Posted in Javascript | 1 Comment

Processing Huge JSON Files with Jackson

Posted on December 23, 2011 by

Weird Al's not the only one who knows how to go large with Jackson

A couple of months ago I was asked to build a processor that would take a JSON file; perform a few elementary checks and transformations and upload the resulting records into a Couch DB. I hadn’t done any JSON, or Couch and, naturally, the whole thing had to be done yesterday – but at first glance it didn’t look like much of a challenge.

However, looking a little deeper, my processor was going to be part of a replication process across two databases housed in separate enterprises. The replication was going to be based on a daily snapshot – each JSON file would be a copy of the entire database – and a few back-of-the-envelope calculations suggested that the files may become rather large (40+GB) over time.
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Posted in Java | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Yow! Developer Conference Brisbane.

Posted on December 12, 2011 by

Yow! Brisbane 2011

I recently had the pleasure of attending the Brisbane Yow! Conference.  This was a great conference with talks to interest developers across many languages platforms and experience.

This blog is a summary of the more interesting talks that I attended and my thoughts on them.
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Posted in Agile, Cloud, Continuous Integration, Java, Javascript, Mobile, Node.js, Opinion | 2 Comments

CouchDb on Android

Posted on November 14, 2011 by

Synchronising advanced data structures with a backend sucks. Especially when the sync is both ways; user updates to server, server updates to user. Couchbase for Mobile attempts to solve this issue by bringing CouchDb and it’s spiffy replication to Android. Continue reading →

Posted in Android, NoSQL | Leave a comment

A Good Look at Android Location Data

Posted on October 14, 2011 by

Getting started with the development of location-based services on Android is relatively easy thanks to the well documented location API. However, getting more serious shows there is still much uncharted territory. One such area concerns the accuracy of real-life location data, which I have recently taken a close look at. In short, location data can be far more accurate than Google’s conservative estimates – at least with the phone that I used.

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Posted in Android, Mobile | Tagged , | 7 Comments

Swipe Conference Highlights: Gamification

Posted on September 9, 2011 by

Swipe Conference

Of the many excellent sessions at this week’s Swipe Conference, the one titled “Build Better Cocoa Apps Using Game Mechanics” by Paris Buttfield-Addison was unique in its topic. In it, Paris outlined how gamification is currently viewed as something that can be quickly slapped onto an existing product in order to increase its appeal, whereas in reality, successful gamification requires carefully thought-out integration, for when done correctly it should form a core part of your app’s user experience.
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Posted in iPhone, Mobile, Opinion | Leave a comment