How a cold DM in 2016 changed my life
How a single message kick started my consulting business, personal brand, and niche expertise.
Archives
Everything I've ever published on my site, in reverse chronological order.
Being more intentional in 2023
Too many days last year ended with me feeling like "I didn’t get anything done." Here's how I'm hoping to fix that in 2023.
Free Ruby on Rails communities
I use online communities to ask for help, offer advice, and keep up to date with the latest trends. Here are 10+ of my favorites.
My favorite podcasts
The podcasts I listen to every week – mostly about Ruby on Rails and bootstrapping.
Zero to App Store in 7 weeks
New record! I ported a client’s Ruby on Rails app to iOS and went live in the App Store in 7 weeks.
Custom Rails configuration
TIL about ActiveSupport::OrderedOptions and config_for. Here's how I'm using them to configure my Rails app.
RailsConf 2022 slides
Slides from talks and presentations at RailsConf 2022.
🎙 Positivity and RailsDevs - guest on The Ruby on Rails podcast
I was on another podcast! We talked about building RailsDevs in public, challenges I have faced, and the technical decisions I am proud of. Also, a bit about my upcoming workshop.
My sane approach to test fixtures in Rails
My approach on how I keep my test fixtures manageable, sane, and obvious. Not hard and fast rules, but guidelines to help you implement the same in your app.
RailsDevs has a gender diversity problem
It is not OK that RailsDevs represents 180+ developers but fewer than 10 identify as women. This is how I'm learning to create a more inclusive platform.
How I took my SaaS from idea to sold in 14 months
I built an MVP in one month and grew the product for a year. But now it’s time to pass the torch. It’s official, I sold Mugshot Bot! Here’s how it all went down.
Hybrid iOS apps with Turbo
How to build hybrid iOS apps with Turbo and Ruby on Rails. An ongoing series covering authentication, the JavaScript bridge, architecture, and more.
Hybrid iOS apps with Turbo – Part 6: Tips and tricks
Tips and tricks I’ve picked up over the years that help make the app feel more native and development easier.
Hybrid iOS apps with Turbo – Part 5: Native authentication
Authenticated requests, how to share cookies, and Devise-specific helpers to implement native authentication.
Hybrid iOS apps with Turbo – Part 4: The JavaScript bridge
The JavaScript bridge is the intersection of client and server. It enables passing messages between the two worlds without waiting for someone to tap a link.
Hybrid iOS apps with Turbo – Part 3: Forms and basic authentication
How to install Turbo in Rails 6, custom iOS form handling, and web-based authentication in hybrid apps.
Hybrid iOS apps with Turbo – Part 2: URL routing
Part 2 covers visit actions, path configuration, error handling, native view controllers, and more with Turbo iOS.
Hybrid iOS apps with Turbo – Part 1: The Turbo framework
Hybrid mobile apps powered by Turbo: Basecamp's not-so-secret formula for producing large scale apps with small teams.
XCTest tips and tricks that can level up your Swift testing
10+ of my favorite techniques that I've picked up over the past few years of testing Swift code.
Improving XCTest test name readability
5 lines of code go a long way in making your test names much more readable.
Clean up your Swift test suite with XCTUnwrap
Learn how to avoid force unwrapping optionals in your test suite without any trade-offs.
How to set WKWebView's title under test
Learn how to "set" a computed property by taking advantage of the internals of WKWebView.
Dynamically verified Swift mocks
How to verify which messages a Swift mock receives with less boilerplate and no third-party code.
Swift mocks without protocols
How to reduce boilerplate by abusing inheritance to create mocks in Swift.
Roll your own dependency injection in Swift
Our own DI without third-party libraries. Build a robust, extendible micro-framework you can use in all your apps.
Testing the UI without UI Testing in Swift
Feature tests: three techniques to try before reaching for XCUITest.
Redirect www traffic to a naked domain in Rails
A single Rails route gets you what you need, but watch out for a small gotcha.
Regexes with multiple slashes in Ruby
A tiny tip to make regexes with multiple slashes a bit more readable in Ruby.
My Product Hunt launch: what worked and what didn't
Yesterday I was the #5 product of the day on Product Hunt. Here's what I learned.
Idea to paying customer in one month
A month ago I ran into a problem. One week later I solved it. And three weeks after that I turned it into a (tiny) business.
Tailwind CSS everywhere and a new Masilotti.com product
It’s been a busy month! I’ve gone all in on Tailwind CSS, launched a new product, and started building a newsletter. Here’s what’s been keeping me busy.
How to test deep links with UI Testing
Embedding a tiny HTTP server inside our test suite opens up a world of opportunity.
How to manage multiple sheets in SwiftUI
A step-by-step journey on how I refactored an app to handle any number of sheets with ObservableObject and an enum.
Zero to Tailwind CSS over the weekend
How I built a landing page and redesigned my blog in Tailwind CSS over the weekend. And why I’ll never go back.
How to play board games online with your friends
BGA, TTS, Steam?! This guide is for anyone who wants to play board games online with your friends but isn’t sure where to start.
Better unit testing with Swift
Ideas and best practices for real world Swift testing, including protocols, dependency injection, and Equatable.
Great two-player board games
Deck-builders, card games, tile placement, and more. Some of my favorite board games to play with only two players.
I just deleted 2500 records from production 😬
1249 records in prod. 3775 records in dev. Something's not right.
How to Test UIAlertController
Learn how to test UIAlertController with protocols, mocks, and dependency injection. No swizzling required.
BeerMenus & Turbolinks
How our small team supports 600k+ monthly users on four platforms with Turbolinks.
Where has Joe been?
What has Joe been up to since his last post?
Waiting in XCTest
Waiting is hard, and waiting in Xcode is no exception. Learn a new approach with classes introduced in Xcode.
XCTest documentation
Apple has officially sent me a cease and desist letter to take down my host of the XCTest Documentation.
SwiftCoders podcast
Earlier this month week I spoke on the SwiftCoders podcast. The host and I talked about getting started in Swift, and, obviously, testing.
Testing Dictionaries with Swift and XCTest
A type-safe approach to testing dictionaries in Swift with clean failure messages.
UI Testing with stubbed network data
Learn how to stub network data when running UI Tests with the magic of some "secret" XCTest APIs.
Flattening Asynchronous Tests
Shave time off your test suite by flattening asynchronous tests. Learn how to mock more of URLSession to test response data, network errors, and status codes.
Joe's favorite things
All the stuff I'm enjoying right now: iOS apps and games, Mac productivity apps, card games, and programming books.
Mocking classes you don't own in Swift
Not owning a class doesn't mean you can't mock it! Learn how to unit test URLSession with Swift and protocol-oriented programming.
Concepts in Code podcast: Testing
Last week I spoke on the Concepts in Code podcast. The cohosts and I chatted about testing in Swift, TDD, and pair programming.
Custom helpers in XCTest
How to extract XCTest helper methods and keep sane failure messages.
UI Testing cheat sheet and examples
Answers to common "How do I test this with UI Testing?" questions. A quick reference for everything from tapping buttons to reordering table cells.
Three ways UI Testing just made test-driven development even better
Generic querying syntax, first-class support, and native asynchronous assertions make for a great TDD experience on iOS.
Capture completion blocks with Cedar BDD
Flatten out your asynchronous tests with and_do_block().
One macro to help Objective-C dependency injection
Better dependency injection on iOS with NS_UNAVAILABLE.
Getting started with UI Testing in Xcode
How to navigate around an lightly documented but powerful framework in Xcode 12.
NSDate Manipulation in iOS
Create and modify dates by taking advantage of iOS 8's NSCalendar APIs.
Building NSURLs with NSURLQueryItems
Build and manipulate complex URLs with NSURLQueryItems. No more ugly string concatenation to append query items to URLs.
How to test PDFs with Capybara
Use familiar HTML testing tools to test drive PDF generation by combining wicked_pdf with some asset pipeline knowledge.