Do Devs Get Writer's Block?
I’ve always imagined a sort of similarity between writing copy and coding. There is a strong vein of creativity running through both functions. In both cases, it usually takes a bit of time between sitting at the keyboard and getting into the zone. And once you’re in the zone, things just flow. Don’t interrupt me.
And while devs might not encounter writer’s block per se, they certainly can be less-than-inspired at times. And it’s the little things that can impede them. Little, annoying impediments that make it difficult to get into that full stride that only happens in the zone.
From the Skyramp POV, we think many of these tiny, cumulative impediments get in the way of good testing. For example, mocks that come pre-loaded with garbage values (or even creating functional mocks for that matter). What if we could really understand the system under test and go from garbage to golden with values that effortlessly make sense?
Another impediment are mocks and tests that don’t live in sensible places — the repos and clusters where your stuff already exists. What if we could fix that so there are not proprietary walled gardens, and all of this testing goodness becomes easy to share and use?
And API frameworks. When you’re used to REST but you’ve got to build using Thrift or gRPC.
And what about consistency? Sure, inner dev loop integration testing might focus on a narrower slice than broader outer loop testing. But wouldn’t it be less of a PITA if the same tools and code could just work across the whole CI CD pipeline?
When you come down to it, Skyramp is in the friction-reduction business. Testing can be a drag, but it doesn’t have to be. Everything we do is designed to make testing easier. And that makes it easier for devs to get into their zone, where the real magic happens.
