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Showing posts from November, 2020

Slack DMs

At the moment, I'm working in an organization where almost 80% of the Slack messages are direct messages. We have a low threshold on contacting others - in private. While it is obviously good to share information the method is not the best. I don't need to enumerate the drawbacks of DMs compared to messages sent to public channels. The most obvious ones to me are the increase of tribal knowledge and the further reduction of us into separate silos (devs, marketing, sales, etc...). We recognize that most of the DMs are casual conversation. Yet, these contain information gold nuggets and ideas which should be shared with everyone. We have a couple of ways how we are to stop direct messaging If someone DMs you, actively move the conversation to a suitable public channel. No need to be polite in this. Use more threads in public channels (yes, this is a bit controversial) Have channels for hobbies and chit-chat

Bitrise CI template for a React native app

Here is a conceptual monopipeline for building and deploying a React native app to the app stores in Bitrise. The described pipeline serves us well, and I discuss the benefits and tradeoffs in the afterword. Setting up .env and release method The first step is for the CI machinery to overwrite or add relevant environment variables based on the branch/tag. You can already at this point determine if this pipeline will release the app to the stores or just run through the build. Run linters and tests, check test coverage For TS/JS, these can be just npm scripts in the Bitrise npm step. For native code, you can use the predefined steps or run some Gradle tasks. Prefer one-liners: avoid writing complicated initialization commands. npm run lint, npm run test:coverage... Set release versions You could simply use the git tag here for the version. You could also use automatic semver and tools such as commitizen to version the build. For private builds, X.Y.BUILD_NUMBER is enough. There is a Bit

Terrace bias

We often debate with my friends on the topic of saving money. For one couple I know, they have made being frugal their dearest hobby. They have made hunting for offers an art form, and the tiny amount of money they spend on essentials beggars belief. I truly admire their commitment, but I often pull my trump card and tell them that they most likely will buy the more expensive house of the two excellent options at one point in their lives. All that effort is nullified by a single choice made later on. It is hard to intuitively say what is expensive. I like making arbitrary financial comparisons between two things. One of my favorites is what I call the terrace bias. Let's say you want a terrace. It costs 4000e. It will bring joy in the summer evenings, have some BBQ and bask in the sun. For the money, you could also reserve a nice restaurant for two every two weeks for 2 years. Or even better, you could always choose the most expensive ice cream for the rest of your life. Or buy the