Posts

To Mock or Not to Mock

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Applications depend on data to function, and in the modern world that data is usually stored somewhere up in the nebulous concept known as the "cloud" but is actually a computer processing your requests and spitting back data. During the development of an application decisions about how to supply the required data and service those requests for more must be made.  Here is a non-exhaustive list of options: Real live production Actual Data. That poor lil computer in the cloud did nothing to deserve being pummeled with malformed and/or repeated requests for the same data during live testing. Let alone tortured with automated testing on every commit. Be a considerate developer. Local Representative fake Data This is a good starting point. It has the unfortunate side effect of having to be manually updated, maintained, and carefully constructed with every edge case.  Local Cached data captured from live session. Few downsides, requires vigilant maintenance and api level checks and...
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One Week of KDE & some Tokodon.

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After a week of poking and prodding, installing, configuring, and much studying of documentation, code, infrastructure and general vibe & culture, and in the spirit of my new motto, " You can complain or you can help ", Here is where I am on Tokodon: The Bug that brung me: I haven't even filed it. Bad developer. Quote post do not display properly in notifications timeline. Added code to display the quoteposts but header still missing. These unknown posts fill the More->Posts list for some reason when present. That reason is the quote type I added was not excluded from the any of the exclusive lists, boosts, replies, mentions, follows...FIXED it also wasn't handled properly anywhere else FIXED This was likely missed in test as notification test data json was missing QuotePosts I mangled the json data, KDE CI let me know via email after I had gone to bed. Basically the equivalent of pushing unreviewed/untested commits just before clocking out on Friday at 5:01pm....
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Developer Environment

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The Developer's Environment: Building Lighting Desk & Chair  PC/Laptop/Mobile Mouse Keyboard & Wristpad Display(s) OS Desktop Environment Language Tools IDE Target Source Control Code Reviews Milestones Test Plan Network, Intranet, Internet Continuous Integration Documentation StyleGuides Code Of Conduct Licenses Forums Wikis Messaging Apps Email Maintainers Release Managers Users Developers Team(s)  Upstream UI/UX Accessibility Marketing Social Media Home Life Existing CodeBase Your Code At any given point in any (or every) day, one or more of these can become disfunctional. Although it is not great for your productivity, Development can usually continue to get done in this Environment. Onboarding is critical in a large organization to familiarize a Developer on the finer points of the Environment that the organization supports, supplies, requires, and expects you to integrate into without with little to zero disruptive disfunction introduced anywhere else in the Deve...
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New KDE app, who dis?

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  We interrupt your regularly scheduled kde dev updates with the following important applications. As an enthusiast, early adopter, bleeding edge techno-wizard Linux greybeard, you'll find that you have developed preferences over time. On the one hand there is a lessening of the insatiable need to know about EveryNewThing. You have gathered enough data to make an informed choice and the matter is resolved. You settle back into primarily learning about any new thing out of necessity. Those begin to happen less and less frequently. Until they become either annoyances or novelty. Or you make it a necessity... & so I shall. One of this greybeard's preferences decided long ago was the choice of linux desktop. I gathered much data, but ultimately and consistently choose KDE.   #YMMV Keeping up with updates, news and generally lurking about. I had less and less to say as more and more of my needs were met. Apps have been chosen for tasks that have not changed & continue...
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Welcome to 2026 You can complain, or You can help.

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Welcome to 2026 You can complain or You can help. Software Development is hard. Really hard. You just won't believe how vastely hugely mind bogglingly hard it is. I mean, you think molecular chemical biology is complex, but that's just peanuts to Software Development. My apologies to sir Douglas Adams. "Space," [the Hitchhiker's Guide] says, "is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly hugely mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space. This sustained level of difficulty and complexity is mentally exhausting. every original line of code I've ever written has been weighed and tested and considered and tortured before the first letter was typed, and the "work" has just begun. In many scenarios some entity is paying you to exhaust yourself to design, run, support and maintain a fictional rube goldberg machine in your head for anywhere from a mo...
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Pablo knows art.

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Ubuntu 14.04

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Ubuntu 14.04 LTS The good folks over at Canonical have released the newest Long Term Support version of their Free Linux operating system Ubuntu codename Trusty Tahr. After waiting for the update to show up on a previous LTS 12.04, impatience won out and a fresh install of Trusty Tahr was inaugurated on a 64bit AMD box's spare drive. Desktop Despite it's name, Unity has a pretty vocal community of detractors. With past versions, Unity quickly got under my skin and ends up as a spare session rarely, if ever, used, instead opting for a lighter more traditional desktop experience. LXDE worked well and stayed out of my way and was the first post installation package. To render a fair judgement for this review, Unity has been the primarily used session since installation, but it is comforting having the old standby ready and a re-login away. Many users complain about Unity's rearrangement of applications menus to the top of the screen for the currently focused window ...
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