Many projects have a very large number of automated tests. And, that’s good. It’s better than not having them. On the other hand, many teams feel like these tests are a yoke around their necks. Their build time keeps increasing. They spend more and more time dealing with test management, and at the end of the day, they know that things are getting worse.

This has been my experience at times. The tests that we have in place do not seem to catch new bugs, and adding more tests feels like just extending the build time and feedback loop.

I’m sure that at this point, you might think that I’m making an argument against automated testing. I’m not. I’m merely pointing out that at the end of the day, quality is a development responsibility and it has a lot to do with diligence.

I think you have to continuously improve and ask, “is this actually helping?” It’s not just good enough to have a process. It’s gotta work. The goal is not to have a huge number of tests. Rather, it’s to improve quality. And what this article points out is that sometimes things that worked before don’t work anymore.

If you focus on making your intentions clear, your code will be easier to maintain. If you focus on maintainability alone, it might backfire. You might get lots of unneeded code, inserted with the intent of making future maintenance easier, that makes maintenance harder.

This happens occasionally with apps that don’t behave politely. As a workaround, you can retrieve the window like this:

Alt-Space M <any arrow key>, then use the mouse to move the window.

What this does is open the command window and select the Move option. The arrow key then allows the mouse to take over the move.

@bentsai “d”amn it why am i still using svn

— Ben Lowery (@blowery) January 17, 2012

But what this feature does is reduce the friction of writing posts even more, and that is a powerful idea. Even though the text editor is fairly bare bones (no support for links, no HTML preview, no auto-save), it eliminates the overhead of navigating the file system, creating and naming a new text file, and typing in the proper header. John D. Cook wrote a post explaining this concept that a little simplicity goes a long way:

Sometimes making a task just a little simpler can make a huge difference. Making something 5% easier might make you 20% more productive. Or 100% more productive.

This is a huge reason why I’m so enamored by these blogging services that use Dropbox. There are plenty of blogging tools and services out there that make it easy to blog: Posterous, wordpress, tumblr, etc. Indeed, they’ve done a remarkable job of lowering the barrier of entry. But why do I like Scriptogram the most? It’s a little bit easier and simpler. There may actually be the same number of steps, but another component is the cognitive overload that it reduces. With Scriptogram, I’m simply editing a text file on my computer using Markdown. I’m limited by Markdown’s formatting abilities, which is a good thing. That little bit has been the deal-breaker and the reason for more posts as of late.

This also partly touches on why “simple” apps are all the rage and the notion that “less is more.” From 37 Signals’ Less Software chapter from Getting Real:

• Less software is easier to manage.
• Less software reduces your codebase and that means less maintenance busywork (and a happier staff).
• Less software lowers your cost of change so you can adapt quickly. You can change your mind without having to change boatloads of code.
• Less software results in fewer bugs.
• Less software means less support.

Software is incredibly complex. I want to have the minimum possible. It’s always a victory to me when I can get rid of code.

• Use Markdown for the post medium
• Use Dropbox for syncing and delivery
• Boast simplicity and ease-of publishing
• Emphasize clean design

I first heard of Calepin a few months ago. I liked the experience of creating posts locally using Markdown, hitting the “Publish” button, and seeing it live with minimal hassle. I even looked into migrating my wordpress blog to use Calepin exclusively. There was one minor niggle¹ I had with the service: there is no way to view all (or recent) posts on one page, nor previous/next links on posts. And no plans for that. I’ve always preferred to view a blog’s content on a single page and found it annoying to manually step articles post by post.

Then, in the past week or so, two new services cropped up: Skrivr and Scriptogram. The former seems to differentiate itself with emmaculate typography and attractive themes. The latter is eerily similar in many ways to Calepin, but plans to support themes. Two things I liked about the newer services is that they do display all your posts on one page.

Calepin

• First kid on the block
• Developer has a specific vision and good design sensibilities
• Premium plan in the works

I appreciate that Calepin’s developer is highly-opinionated and sticks to his guns. He’s decided not to allow custom themes or CSS, and each post gets its own page. It’s clear he has a vision for his service and a plan to sustain it.

Skrivr

• Beautiful themes out-of-the-box
• Quirky method for specifying posts
• Invite-only
• Customizable

Skrivr sports good-looking themes and a responsive layout out of the box. Creating a post feels kludgy; you’re forced to give every post a category, and metadata is pulled from the filename. The service is currently invite-only, though the owners quickly sent me an invite when I asked. The themes are also very customizable, but to a fault. I don’t want to mess with templates.

Scriptogram

Just like Calepin, but:

• Custom CSS
• All posts on single page
• Free

When Scriptogram first came out, I ignored it because it seemed like such a rip off of Calepin. The publish page had the same three-column layout and workflow, so I assumed it was some disingenuous script kiddie. But it’s become apparent that this is not copycat². In the past week, the developer has rolled out custom domain support and a nice CSS editor. It’s a bit worrisome that he plans to keep the service free. But for now, I like it the best. It’s easy to use and just flexible enough for my needs.