Backend Banter #014 - Building the Best Tools and Tests with The Primeagen
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Aug 14, 2023 The Primeagen, expert in unit tests and building cli tooling, talks about coding experiences, job dissatisfaction, and the value of building command line tools for back-end developers. They also discuss their preferences for concise tools, the Unix philosophy, and their interest in trying out OCaml and Rust for string processing and tool development.
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Coding Origin
- The Primeagen started coding in 6th grade by modifying levels and NPCs in a game called Grail Online.
- This early exposure helped him grasp programming concepts like if statements and loops.
QBasic Blackjack
- In high school, The Primeagen coded a blackjack game in QBasic and encountered a stack overflow bug.
- Refactoring the game's structure taught him valuable lessons about code organization.
Mockless Unit Testing
- Write functions as if you'll unit test them without mocks.
- This encourages better code design with separable IO and data processing.