On the writing front #
I still have quite a bit of work ahead, but I’ve made solid progress on the edits for L’Enfant des Esprits. I was nearly satisfied during my last review, so I’m hopeful this time will be the one. Once the text is finalized, I’ll still need to finish the cover design for the print version before considering printing. In my opinion, it won’t be ready in time for the Printemps des Viennes in June. I also hesitate to promise it will finally be ready by the end of the year, but that would be a relief. I’ve been carrying this project for a long time, and I’m eager to share it with the public.
On the web front #
Two weeks ago, I discussed my work as a consultant and explained the approaches I’ve encountered throughout my career for regularly integrating technical maintenance into workflows. Today, I’d like to talk about practices around lint rules, as this is a very common issue I encounter with my clients. Lint rules are grammatical guidelines that prohibit certain syntaxes beyond what the programming language itself allows. For example, ESLint is likely the most common linter for web projects written in JavaScript.
Frontend frameworks (such as Ember, Svelte, Vue, etc) often provide an official ESLint plugin that applies a wide range of lint rules to the codebase, targeting potential bad practices that might accidentally be implemented. For Ember, this is eslint-plugin-ember; if you use Svelte, it’s eslint-plugin-svelte, and so on.
As frameworks evolve and new web development approaches emerge, older practices become deprecated, new recommendations surface, and the official lint rules for each framework are updated. It can then become impossible for the development team to fix all lint issues at once following an update. A common solution teams use is to globally disable certain difficult-to-address rules with the intention of “dealing with them later”. Unfortunately, this approach often leads to unfortunate consequences:
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If deactivation is not carefully documented, it becomes impossible for a developer without context to know whether the rule was deactivated permanently on purpose or if that was supposed to be temporary.
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More importantly, the problem the deactivated rule points out becomes instantly invisible. To fix the rule, you are constrained to manually re-enable the rules, fix the problem in a bunch of files, then manually re-disable the rule if you couldn’t fix all the files in one pull request.
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You have no idea how many occurrences of the problem there are. The absence of notification about existing problems tends to lower their priority for the team, allowing the codebase to accumulate more technical debt.
So, how can you manage the introduction of a new lint rule with many occurrences across many files? I’ll explain that next week.
In the garden #
Last weekend, I participated in the bird count at Lac d’Orient, organized by the LPO. Counting birds on a lake requires a spotting scope—you can’t do it with just binoculars. Binoculars let you identify groups of birds, roughly estimate their numbers, and possibly count them when they’re close enough. However, to count distant birds more accurately, binoculars quickly reach their limits, and you need a spotting scope. Even the scope can sometimes be a bit limiting if the birds are very far away, especially when species share similar features and are hard to distinguish.
If the count takes place in winter, you’ll need to add a few extra items to your birdwatcher’s kit: warm clothing. Bring warm layers, don’t forget your ears: hat; don’t forget your nose: scarf; don’t forget your feet: waterproof shoes; and most importantly—unlike me—don’t forget your hands: gloves. To count birds, you’ll need to hold your binoculars and constantly adjust your spotting scope, so keeping your hands in your pockets isn’t an option (unless you’re telekinetic skills allow you to bend this rule). Near lakes, the cold wind can be downright biting—don’t underestimate the weather by dressing too lightly.
On the culture front #
I’m not entirely sure how we got here, but my partner and I just finished the second season of Les Petits Meurtres d’Agatha Christie. It’s actually quite engaging, and you grow attached to some of the characters. For the season finale, they went all out and created a whole set of songs. It’s been three days, and my brain is still stuck on “Carmouille, t’es qu’une andouille. Viens me chercher.”
For what it’s worth #
My personal technique as a cat owner to avoid being bothered while working: I have a cozy cat bed on my desk. The results are very satisfying, but still, keep your laptop closed when you go refill your coffee if you don’t want to accidentally send kjl;mmmmkjl;; to your coworkers on Slack.