The Joel Test: work vs. home

Joel Spolsky, 18 years ago, wrote “The Joel Test: 12 Steps to Better Code“.  Granted, it’s 18 years ago, but I thought it would be amusing to score my home work environment with my work work environment:

One point for each yes:

Work:

Do you use source control?  1/2 (yes, but not properly)
Can you make a build in one step? 1
Do you make daily builds? 0 – no, manually initiated
Do you have a bug database? 0 – not that I’ve ever seen
Do you fix bugs before writing new code? 0 – hahahaha
Do you have an up-to-date schedule? 0 – schedule, what’s that?
Do you have a spec? 0 – do you count screenshots in Excel as a spec?
Do programmers have quiet working conditions? 0 – unless you count needing to wear headphones
Do you use the best tools money can buy? 0 – VS2015, .NET 4.5, etc.
Do you have testers? 1
Do new candidates write code during their interview? 0 – I wasn’t.
Do you do hallway usability testing? 0

Score: 2.5

Home:

Do you use source control? 1
Can you make a build in one step? 1
Do you make daily builds? 0
Do you have a bug database? 1
Do you fix bugs before writing new code? 1/2 (I really try to practice this)
Do you have an up-to-date schedule? 0 – my clients are pretty loose about schedules…
Do you have a spec? 1 – …but they’re good about specs.
Do programmers have quiet working conditions? 1 (as in, total silence)
Do you use the best tools money can buy? 1
Do you have testers? 1 (assuming the client doing the testing counts)
Do new candidates write code during their interview? 0 – don’t interview people
Do you do hallway usability testing? 0 – unless the cats count.

Score: 7.5

It’s sad how my home environment scores considerably better than my work environment.  No wonder there’s a “no telecommuting policy”, right?

 

Building a Web-Based Diagramming App with SVG and Javascript

I’ve been wanting to learn about SVG for a while now, and there are certainly any number of helpful websites on creating SVG drawings and animations. But I didn’t want to learn how to create static (or even animated) SVG drawings, I wanted to learn how to use SVG dynamically:

• Create, modify, and remove SVG elements dynamically.
  Hook events for moving elements around, changing their attributes, etc.
  Save and restore a drawing.
  Discover quirks and how to work around them.

That’s what this article is about — it will only teach you SVG and Javascript in so far as to achieve the goals outlined above. However, what it will teach you is how to create dynamic SVG drawings, and what better way to do this than to actually create a simple drawing program. Then again, I learned a lot about both SVG and modern Javascript writing this article.

Read the rest of the article on Code Project!

Code is also on GitHub.