Bienvenue! Welcome!
My goal is to help you work faster.
I must speak and teach until I hear 10 people say, "That thing you taught me? I used it! And it saved me time!"
(Ahem ... although maybe blogging slower than I'd hoped. Ugh, coders' repetitive stress injury.)
So check out the tutorials. Play with code. Tell me about your triumphs.
Frontend automated testing demystifier
07 Jul 2025
When it comes to authoring automated test code for web application frontends, it’s easy to get confused about what kinds of test go where in the “testing pyramid” and how to implement them – especially since all four levels of the “testing pyramid” potentially ask the question: “does this HTML/DOM element exist in this condition?”.
Continue ReadingCan usability testing be automated?
07 Jul 2025
Is there a place for browser automation (e.g. Playwright, Selenium, Puppeteer, Cypress) in the art of “usability testing” (à la Don’t Make Me Think)? Or should 100% of usability testing always execute on the platform known as “humans”? 😉
Continue ReadingWhat's the deal with IBM WebSphere Application Server?
05 Jun 2025
When I make a web site, the programming language I choose is typically Node.js (a flavor of JavaScript that can run on a server operating system’s (“OS”) command line (“CLI”), rather than needing to run inside of a web browser). I’ve played around a bit with Python, C# (via .NET), PHP (via WordPress), and Ruby (via Jekyll), but that’s about it. Despite years of Java-like programming experience via Salesforce’s Apex, I’ve never built a web site from scratch using Java.
Continue ReadingWhy use Ansible for infrastructure as code?
04 Jun 2025
Q: Why use frameworks like Ansible for infrastructure as code (“IaC”) efforts? Why are there ever situations when people use it instead of just writing shell scripts like Bash or PowerShell?
Continue ReadingWindows Firewall and BrowserStack Local
03 Jun 2025
For some weird reason, Windows (at least on my computer) doesn’t like to let the BrowserStackLocal.exe “binary” file doesn’t like to do its job unless I explicitly add a rule to Windows Defender Firewall letting that .exe file make outbound TCP connections over port 443.
Securing authenticated agentic AI
15 May 2025
I found 3 excellent blog posts by Stytch about the intersection of traditional IT concerns and AI agents:
Continue ReadingI don't use Python much anymore
19 Mar 2025
It just occurred to me that I don’t use Python much these days for scripting odd jobs.
Continue ReadingAzure Managed DevOps Pools make life easier
07 Mar 2025
Azure Managed DevOps Pools is a new service that allows Azure customers to provision privately networked Azure Pipelines agents that Microsoft automatically keeps at feature/fix parity with their public equivalents.
This is awesome, because you used to have to be a server administration and containerization expert to run privately networked CI/CD pipelines in Azure DevOps (“ADO”)!
Continue ReadingBuy then build
05 Feb 2025
I finally gave up on saving the planet by abstaining from LLMs and took a peek at Google NotebookLM. I have to admit, it’s done an amazing job helping me organize my thoughts about DevOps and SaaS (software as a service).
Hot take: there’s almost no such thing as “buy vs. build.” It’s “buy and also build” or “build and build more.”
Continue ReadingUse Git in the browser if you can
17 Dec 2024
Opinionated hot take: don’t bother downloading copies of Git repositories onto your desktop computer. Just edit them in your web browser.
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