Month: March 2017

Creating command-line tool in Swift

Creating command-line tool in Swift

This question comes up often on Swift mailing lists. Once you learn Swift, you’ll get addicted and want to use it everywhere. It’s not quite as straightforward writing a script in Swift as it is in python or bash. However, there are lots of benefits.

  • It’s a great entry point into learning Swift for those that typically write scripts rather than applications
  • You want to execute a bunch of shell commands, but you can use Swift’s rich data structures, straightforward programming language, and the huge Cocoa API.

Here’s what you can do:

  • Launch Xcode
  • File > New > ProjectChoose macOS
  • Click on Command Line Tool
  • Name it and save the project

  • Click on main.swift in the sidebar
  • Replace the Hello, World line with this code.
import Foundation

struct Shell {
     func stripWhitespace(_ inString: String) -> String {
         return inString.trimmingCharacters(in: CharacterSet.whitespacesAndNewlines)
     }

     func executeCommand(_ command:String, echo: Bool = true) ->
…

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How to use dogfood testing

How to use dogfood testing

A number of companies use the word dogfood testing to describe part of their software testing process. I believe it’s a powerful and essential part of testing as I mention in My hierarchy of testing. However, it means different things to different people, so I wanted to describe how I think it should be used to make the most of it.

As great as QA engineers can be, it’s sometimes impossible to cover the breadth of a product and ensure high quality. Dogfood testing is the practice of installing reasonably current builds of a product on your own device(s) and living on them. Everyone has their own unique way of using their devices so it can be a great way to tease out bugs that otherwise would be very difficult to find. Historically, many of the most important bugs I’ve seen have come out of this process.

An …

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Multiple Macs, one location for screenshots

Multiple Macs, one location for screenshots

If you’re a software tester, use multiple Macs, and take screenshots, this could be very useful to you. I would sometimes use screenshots as a way to remind myself of a bug I found and needed to file.

My workflow was to find bugs on multiple Macs, take screenshots and then typically file bugs on my main Mac. Perhaps some of the Macs were in labs or busy installing new software when I needed the screenshots. Or perhaps I’m installing something on my main Mac and I can easily just slide over to another Mac and keep filing bugs.

Note: This works best if you set up screencapture on each Mac to name the file after the machine’s name. This is described in Custom names for screenshots. Also, iCloud Drive is required for this to work.

Here’s how you set up your single screenshots folder:

  • Open a Finder window
…

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Thoughts on scalability

Thoughts on scalability

While working in three different organizations that rapidly scaled by at least 10 times the number of employees, scalability became a huge problem each time.

I formed many ideas over the years about how things could have been done better. Everything I’ve listed here has a focus on improving productivity so that having more people doesn’t have to mean growing inefficiency. I feel that they could be taken one at a time, but in some cases there is a lot of cross-dependency. They are not in any particular order of importance.

Curated documentation

It’s easy to say you need more documentation. And in certain areas there is a lot of it, but people aren’t happy with it. Much of it is disorganized, hard to find, hard to search, poorly written, orphaned, out of date, or only understandable to the author. Just like with customer-facing documentation, internal documentation needs curation.

It …

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Common software usability issues

Common software usability issues

This is based on working in the software world for quite some time, ranging from technical support to consulting to quality assurance to software engineering. And from observing people at every chance I get. While some things improve in software, some pesky things stay the same and repeat themselves whenever a new application is created.

Here’s my list of things that I think most software needs to get better at doing. Most of the examples will involve tapping on a touchscreen device, but are often applicable to clicking with a mouse or trackpad. They are in no particular order.

Tap tolerance

You may be uncoordinated, elderly, or an a train when you tap on your screen. Your finger may shift a bit when you tap just because that’s how your body works. There is typically a threshold of movement after which the tap is registered as gesture rather than a …

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Using “Marks” in Terminal

Using “Marks” in Terminal

Marks are a little used feature in Terminal but can be insanely useful depending on how you use Terminal. I’ll explain by example.

Copying the output of a command

The usual way:

  • Start with a Terminal window where you’ve run a number of commands already
  • Run a Terminal command that spews a lot of output
  • Decide you want to move the output into a bug report or email
  • Hunt in the Terminal window for where you typed the command and manually drag or shift-select to get just the output of the command.

Alternative using Marks:

Hit Command-Shift-A and it selects all the output of the most recent command.

Navigate between commands

The usual way:

  • Run a series of Terminal commands that spew a lot of output
  • Decide you want to navigate between the various commands along with their output
  • Scroll around and use prompt color or some other means to
…

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Mailing list etiquette

Mailing list etiquette

As companies get larger, mailing lists get larger and noisier and generally less useful at disseminating information or fostering debate.

Here are some succinct tips on making the most of mailing lists while minimally impacting the productivity of list members.

Joining and leaving a list

Never email a list asking to join or leave it. At a small company where lists have less than 10 people on them, maybe that works, but mailing lists are typically controlled by:

  • Some sort of corporate directory application or website
  • Emailing a different address to manually or automatically subscribe or unsubscribe.

Lists like that have a separate email to manage membership typically list this information at the bottom of every email or it would be listed in some corporate directory.

Sending a message to a list

There are some important things to consider before sending a message to a mailing list.

Sending a message …

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Click in Terminal window to move cursor

Click in Terminal window to move cursor

When editing a document in Terminal, whether it be vi or emacs or your-favorite-text-editor, you can use keyboard commands to move the cursor around.

But unless you’re an expert, the commands can be hard-to-remember and tedious. It’s also not very Mac-like. A little gem in Terminal is that you can option-click inside an editor to move your cursor to that position. In the screenshot below, my cursor was near the bottom of the view and I option-clicked right between “option-click” and “here” in the middle of the document.

Note that this works regardless of whether it’s in insert mode or not (using vi terminology). For example, when I’m in command mode in vi, I can option-click anywhere in any line and type “dd” to delete it.

A simple tip and perhaps obvious to some, but in my experience, I see people waste a lot of …

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Editing text with Cocoa text shortcuts

Editing text with Cocoa text shortcuts

In any user interface element that accepts text, there are a set of text editing keyboard shortcuts that work in almost every application. Most are not listed in menus or only in certain applications.

Here’s a great link that documents most of the shortcuts. Note that the document is missing a few newer ones and there are a few that have changed since it was published, but this is the best resource I’ve found.

Cocoa Text System

Here’s a subset of them that I find particularly useful.


…

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The last time I saw Steve Jobs

The last time I saw Steve Jobs

I wrote this little anecdote shortly after Steve Jobs passed away. Despite it happening more than 5 years ago, it still is imprinted on my brain and does a great job of illustrating the person I felt he was.

I was leaving the main building on the Apple campus. Just ahead of me was Steve. This was not an uncommon sight despite being such a large company. He was often seen walking in the halls or in the courtyard in the center of all the buildings. He always seemed to have a spring in his step, like he was walking on his toes. And the glint in his eyes that you’ll see in photos. Sometimes he was seen eating lunch with Jony Ive, one of his closest friends.

On this day, though, the spring in his step was gone. I slowed down a little bit to match his pace. Although …

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