miniblog.

Sometimes programming tools are so good that you miss them when using other languages. I see these mentioned the most frequently: * IntelliJ (for Java) * Slime+Emacs (for Common Lisp) * Pharo (for Smalltalk) I'm struck that they all have bespoke UIs.

"Example Driven Development" using Glamorous and Pharo Smalltalk: https://medium.com/feenk/an-example-of-example-driven-development-4dea0d995920 Tests returning values and composing is a really interesting model. It establishes structure and shows which test failure is the most 'fundamental'.

TIL Advent of Code and Project Euler will deliberately look for puzzles where the naive solution is worse than quadratic. This ensures that people can solve them with any programming language. You don't want fast languages to be able to use the naive solution.