Author Archives: shaun

About shaun

Web programmer into Flash, Flex, PHP, JavaScript, Ruby, Scala etc..

Readme

Have I mentioned that I love GitHub? When you put a readme file into a folder that file is formatted and presented nicely through GitHub’s file browser. For example: https://github.com/visionmedia/uikit Scrolling down a little we can see a nicely formatted readme file.

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RL Reloaded

I’ve been worried for quite a long time. Robotlegs 1 is small and simple but a little difficult to extend. I want Robotlegs 2 to be flexible without becoming overly large or complex. Timing To extend any framework you need to be able to hook into that framework’s initialization process. That Damned Context The Robotlegs 1 context class was, to be frank, rubbish – it set defaults, configured dependencies and controlled initialization. Worse, to hook into the initialization process or … Continue reading

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Unit Testing: My problem with assertThat()

I write “ass” a lot while I’m coding.

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Commit Messages

When reviewing a commit I’m not interested in what you did. A commit is a codebase transformation. I’m interested in what will happen to my codebase when I apply your commit. Bad “I did this” form: I had a cup of coffee, went for a walk, and changed some code.   Better “This commit does this” form: Adds unmap() to the command map API. A commit message should describe the commit, not the process you went through to create it … Continue reading

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Unit Testing: Why I prefer assertThat()

Consider: [Test] public function null_criteria_should_not_match():void { assertFalse(“passing null should return false”, instance.match(null)); } When reading the test above I have to do a lot of scanning.

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Show Me Your Tree!

What does your display list look like? While doing some work on multi-context view auto-wiring I wrote a little utility that iterates through the containers in a given display object container and builds some useful stats.

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Robotlegs – The Book

It’s here! The ActionScript Developer’s Guide to Robotlegs: http://oreilly.com/catalog/0636920021216 Written by the amazing @stray_and_ruby and @jhooks

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Why X Is Better Than Robotlegs

While the core Robotlegs developers do some preparatory undercover work on Robotlegs 2, some adventurous Robotlegs users have decided to take things into their own hands and start building their own ideal frameworks. I think this is great. The best ideas will almost certainly make their way back into RL2 in some shape or form.

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Too Much Of A Good Thing

As an enthusiastic programmer I tend to get overly excited when I discover a new technique – nails, nails everywhere for my shiny new hammer! It’s not a bad thing. I’ll abuse my newfound technique until I fully understand where it is and isn’t appropriate. Sometimes this takes a while. 

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Robotlegs 2.0

I’m super excited to be meeting with Stray, Till and Robert (sadly, Joel can’t make it) in a couple of weeks to discuss Robotlegs 2.0. We decided to keep the initial meetup small and focused, but development of the framework itself is completely open and anyone is free to contribute once we’ve nailed down some core priorities. More info over on the Robotlegs forums: http://knowledge.robotlegs.org/discussions/feedback/20-robotlegs-20-how-to-get-involved

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