The logistics of collecting and analysing behavioural event data can be tricky to get right. There are loads of services that offer to help, but now you’ve got two problems, right? In the second instalment of my series on behaviour data, I explain what tools I use and why.
Continue readingCategory Archives: Tools
Understanding your users – an introduction to behavioural data
Understanding how people are using your app is crucial to your mission as a developer. If you don’t know how your users are interacting with your code, how can you work out how to improve it? As the first instalment of my new blog series on behaviour data collection and analysis, this post covers some of the foundations. So, if you’re new to behaviour data and want to learn more, read on…
Continue readingMega mash-up: API testing with Postman, Azure DevOps and randomuser.me
Put on your aprons people – it’s recipe time. Today we’ll be cooking up a delicious batch of automated API tests. For this recipe, you’ll need a buttery Postman base, a squeeze from a random user data API, and a CI system to bake it all in (I used Azure Devops). The result is a set of golden-brown integration tests that use realistic fake data and run in the cloud on a schedule of your choosing. Sound like the sort of recipe you’d like to master? Read on… Continue reading
Making a hash of things – using #s in git commit messages
The policy at my new company is to prefix commit messages with the ID of the story they relate to. This week I tried doing an interactive rebase and came a little unstuck. Turns out that our use of hash symbols in commit messages upsets the interactive rebaser. Read on for the details…
New tricks for an old dog – what I learnt from VS Code
After nearly a decade of coding in Visual Studio, a recent change in employment has put me in front of VS Code. The experience has had its ups and downs, so I thought I’d post a few pointers for anyone else who ends up in my situation. Moving beyond practical matters, I’d also like to take a moment to reflect on what the experience of weaning myself off Visual Studio has taught me. Zooming out further still, I close this post by considering what VS Code says about the state of the .NET ecosystem and try to put it all in perspective. If you can stomach all that, read on…