The ES6 arrow function – a usage story

One of the most famous features of ECMAScript6 is the arrow function. The arrow function is a shortcut for `function() {}` which can now be written like so `() => {}`. And it embeds a second feature: lexical `this` binding. I have struggled with it and enjoyed it. Read about why it sucked and where […]

By |May 13, 2015|JavaScript, Technology|Comments Off

Explicitness over Language Sugar – array vs. object

Tuesday the monthly Agile Tuesday took place, my first one. Thanks to Mario Gadet who invited me a long time ago and made sure I didn’t forget about it. Already this put the bar quite high for me and I was quite nervous about it because I didn’t expect the typical tech audience. And […]

By |April 16, 2015|JavaScript|Comments Off

Get real with ES6 (and webpack)

After the last post, where I briefly described how to setup mocha with ES6 (using traceur, a transpiler to working JavaScript) I couldn’t stop and had to prove, that getting it to run with on a real site was doable. It had it’s hurdles but voila it does work. See the github repo if you […]

ES6 and TDD at work, with traceur, mocha and sinon

It was this little itch, that I had for quite a while, but you know how it is, you never get around to scratch it.
Now was the time to do so. I had ES6 working already a couple of times using webpack but did always switch back, due to not having taken the time […]

JS CodeRetreat #3 Highlights

First and foremost I would love to thank all the attendees that made the #jscr #4 such a cool event, which obviously made it worth spending another Saturday on working on our coding skills. And of course I would love to thank Martin Ruprecht who facilitated the event with me and Irene who has […]

JS CodeRetreat before JSConf EU, Berlin

I know the JS CodeRetreat from its birth, and I’m really happy and proud to see how fast it is evolving. This time there are several news, too many not to list them in a blogpost. The Global JS CodeRetreat, that regularly takes place every 3 months, is planned for the 6th of September, […]

Integrating jasmine and mocha for TDDbin.com – two tragedies

It was up in the air for a long time and finally I got around it to start open sourcing the code behind tddbin.com. After fiddling around with the existing code base I quickly arrived to the conclusion there is some major clean up, actually simplification and modularization very necessary. So I started to […]

Test public API, not implementation details

There are good reasons why programmers perform tests themselves in contrast to letting an external testing department (QA) perform the tests. The programmer is able to discover errors in code and in general design decisions much faster and can react immediately, as one might say, the feedback loop is very short. On the other […]

How to remove AMD artifacts for deployment

You are working with require.js (AMD modules)? And you want to have a very simple way to build your project into one file? And later apply the minifier of your choice? Here is the easiest it gets.
But a bit of history first. David Aurelio has built undef already over a year ago, which we […]

How to use Google Spreadsheets for TDD

The idea is from 2008 by Dave Nicolette and Karl Scotland and they first presented it in their talk “Manager’s Introduction to Test-Driven Development” where they are showing managers how to do TDD with Excel and VBA. Inspired by this talk see how to do it with Google Spreadsheet and JavaScript as I tweeted last night.

JS CodeRetreat: facilitator’s skills

Soooo many people are asking us which skills and abilities a facilitator should have. Here we are then, with a small list of suggestions!

 
General skills
First of all, he/she (probably “he”…) should be able to speak in public, trying to give a personal touch to every talk. He (I’ll just continue assuming that the facilitator […]

Our JS CodeRetreat: sharing knowledge from both sides

“Knowledge sharing”: even though I’m getting used to this mindset, this is something that still surprises me quite a lot. Our JS CodeRetreat was all about sharing: we shared our TDD knowledge, giving you all the chance to attend a free course for an entire day, and you shared your experience and much more during the […]

Defactoring In Action

I would just add a tiny little bit to Kent Beck’s If you can’t make it better, make it worse. (Kent Beck) and that is “in order to make it even better“.

How to host a JS CodeRetreat in your city

The aim of this blogpost is to encourage and help those of you who are willing to host a JS CodeRetreat in your city. I’m pretty sure that lots of people thought “nice idea! I’d like to take part to it…but where to start?”. It’s simple. Requires some energy and effort to organise it but, […]

67 Days Left – JS CodeRetreat #2

Number 2 is on it’s way – JS CodeRetreat #2! After the success of the first JavaScript CodeRetreat in February the second one must not be too far out. And it isn’t. Sixty seven days from today. Want it near you? You want a JS CodeRetreat to take place in your city? Make it happen!