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derickbaileyon How to Test Private Functions in JS Modules

exposing methods for the purpose of testing is bad design, whether or not you are only doing it in a test environment. if you have a method that is sufficiently complex and warrants its own testing, put it in it's own module file and test that module file on it's own - no need to break your design and modify your runtime module exports based on runtime environment checks

http://lostechies.com/derickbailey/2014/01/03/semantics-modu...

derickbaileyon SaaS Builders: Beware The Free Trial

"saying you don't need to own/run servers for things like a podcast is just pissing money into the wind." - that's probably true. i may end up doing something like your suggesting in the future. right now, the streaming side of things is not something i want to concern myself with. i have other things that need my attention.

linode's $160/mo plan would cover me for a while. i'm transfering around 4TB a month right now, and that would cover 16TB.

thanks for the feedback and suggestions! this is something i'll need to keep in mind in the near future.

derickbaileyon SaaS Builders: Beware The Free Trial

I'm serving files from Amazon S3. This gives me the benefit of world class storage and streaming, without having to own / run the servers myself. Bandwidth from them is "cheap" at $0.12/GB... but with an average podcast of 30 minutes being 25meg file, an episode with 1,000 downloads is 2.5GB of bandwidth.

i have a customer that averages 20,000 downloads per episode, and a bunch of others with close to 1,000 downloads per episode. it adds up fast.

derickbaileyon SaaS Builders: Beware The Free Trial

good point. maybe a shorter trial to start with, for the early version though :)

derickbaileyon SaaS Builders: Beware The Free Trial

true! i tried to make that point at the very end of the post... maybe should have emphasized it more

derickbaileyon Stitching Together A SaaS of SaaS (and never owning a server)

thanks! :) i totally get the need to move things in house, too. i'm pretty happy that i can get the right experience for my users without having to do that, at this point. IaaS is definitely amazing! "oh, i need more servers? (fiddles with a knob) DONE!" :D

derickbaileyon Stitching Together A SaaS of SaaS (and never owning a server)

definitely things that need to be considered - vendor lock in being the worst, IME. i'm less worried about API call integration, as i tend to isolate 3rd party APIs from my code... but that doesn't prevent all vendor lock-in.

for me, being able to focus on features is more important than these concerns, right now. i expect that over time i will take some of these tasks in and write the code myself, but at the moment i'm more concerned with feature growth.

derickbaileyon Stitching Together A SaaS of SaaS (and never owning a server)

good points that need to be considered in building your startup! it's a balancing act, i think, and that balance will change over time. for me, with an early stage of my service, being able to focus on my system's features and functionality is more important than the performance and customization that i would get out of writing some of these services myself. i imagine that later on in the lifecycle of this system, i will remove some of the 3rd party services in favor of my own code. but right now, being able to get features done quickly is more important than the monthly subscription costs. i don't expect everyone's situation to be the same, but i think it's a good place to start when you are bootstrapping your own apps / services

derickbaileyon Stitching Together A SaaS of SaaS (and never owning a server)

I really like http://www.karmacrm.com - probably should have included that in my list

derickbaileyon Injecting add-ons and plugins into non-AMD libraries, with RequireJS

http://lmgtfy.com?q=JavaScript+AMD

Asynchronous Module Definition - a method of defining JavaScript modules, to be loaded when needed.

derickbaileyon Abstraction: The Rule Of Three

site is back up now

derickbaileyon Abstraction: The Rule Of Three

site seems to be down. too much traffic maybe?

derickbaileyon Recipes with Backbone.js

If you're writing BackboneJS apps, you need to buy this book. There's so much great information in there. It's the book I wanted to write, but they beat me too it. :)

derickbaileyon Variable Scope In JavaScript: A Commercial Screencast

Thanks for the feedback on that first episode! I heard similar statements from other buyers as well, and I've taken it to heart for this episode.

I took the time to script out the code and the talking points this time around. I also recorded the audio separately so that I could really focus on the code and on the audio, independently.

I hope this episode shows the level improvement I think it has! If not, I'm always looking for feedback on what I can do better.

derickbaileyon Backbone vs Knockout

I thought about that when I first wrote it but decided not to, because it's not a ruby app. The backbone-rails gem provides some convenience generators and other things... but I'm not sure I see the value in packaging the modelbinding plugin as a gem. Is there a specific reason you would like to see that?

derickbaileyon Backbone vs Knockout

an event aggregator in Backbone:

var vent = _.extend({}, Backbone.Events);

done.

see also http://lostechies.com/derickbailey/2011/07/19/references-rou... for more info on using it, and http://lostechies.com/derickbailey/2011/11/17/introduction-t... for more info on creating larger apps w/ backbone

derickbaileyon Backbone vs Knockout

disheartened? we've basically said the same thing.

as for the wizardry - it's jquery (or zepto or something else), not backbone that does this. while backbone integrates with and uses jquery heavily in the views, i don't think it's a fair claim to say backbone creates facilitates those user experiences. it helps us organize our code effectively so that we can create those user experiences in a well structured manner.

and come on, Jeremy... you know how much I love backbone! it's 80% of what I blog about these days! :)

derickbaileyon Backbone vs Knockout

that's one of the benefits and drawbacks of them, really. it's great to have flexibility, but it makes learning them more difficult because there's no hand-holding. it may require someone that has already formed opinions, to guide you through the learning process.

derickbaileyon Backbone vs Knockout

yes, that's an accurate statement.

backbone and knockout focus on two different problem spaces: app architecture (backbone) and UI wizardry (knockout).

there are several plugins for backbone that bring model binding and other user experience enhancements to it, though. plus, backbone integrates directly with jQuery, so you have access to all of jQuery's libraries and plugins, still.

derickbaileyon Backbone vs Knockout

It looks like LosTechies.com is down - maybe all the traffic from HN :) It's being worked on as fast as we can! Sorry about that!

derickbaileyon Backbone vs Knockout

"It depends" - the only viable answer :D But seriously, it largely does depend on the behavior of your application.

If you're going to use Knockout to provide wiz-bang editing and binding on single page (as opposed to a slew of jQuery code everywhere), then you might not need much more than Knockout.

If you're going to be creating multi-page JavaScript applications within a single page of your site, you should look at combining something like Backbone.js with Knockout, using the Knockback library I linked to in that article.

Alternatively, if your looking for good structure for JavaScript applications in general, I have another post that introduces a few of the concepts and links to some great resources, here: http://derickbailey.lostechies.com (unfortunately, I can't get the exact URL at the moment... site seems to be slow / not responding. just look for the "Intro to composite JavaScript apps" post)

derickbaileyon The Jasmine Standalone Test Runner: A Free Screencast

Any reason why, or just offering an opinion?

My opinion: I've used qunit and I don't like it. It's better than nothing, but not what I want in a testing framework. The syntax is awful.

derickbaileyon A Screencast On Refactoring JavaScript

FYI - I had been incorrectly advertising the screencast as 120 minutes. It's actually 1:21 - 1 hour, 20 minutes. I'm terribly sorry about that. I've corrected the site.

derickbaileyon A Screencast On Refactoring JavaScript

FYI - I've knocked the price down to $9 for the next few days. :)

derickbaileyon A Screencast On Refactoring JavaScript

Wasn't me - I thought your breakdown was quite informative. My pricing fits squarely within your range, at just under $0.12 per minute.

derickbaileyon A Screencast On Refactoring JavaScript

Interesting that you say that... I've often though exactly the opposite on what I want to see.

In my experience, a project set up is such an un-common occurrence (it only happens once per project, after all) that there is really nothing special or customized about doing it. When I set up a project, I download and install everything as if I had never done it before. I don't use any special tools or scripts. I just use whatever the framework and plugin system I choose comes with.

My intention with this screencast was specifically not to show project setup, but to show the later stages of a project. I find most of the breakdown and slog through code happens after something has been in place for a while, and now needs to change - hence the need for refactoring.

... but, I do have some ideas that would play well in to what you're wanting. I'll definitely keep this in mind as I'm looking at what I'm going to work on next.

derickbaileyon A Screencast On Refactoring JavaScript

Yeah, that blog post is a companion to the screencast. The purpose of the post is to provide some additional thoughts on the high level refactorings that I did, while the screencast is intended to show _how_ to do the refactorings instead of just why.

derickbaileyon A Screencast On Refactoring JavaScript

Re: short videos - great idea.

I've got a few 5 or 10 minute videos on getting started with Test-Driven JavaScript using the Jasmine framework. I can give those away and then have a much longer episode on really diving deep into Jasmine. Hopefully I'll be able to get this done soon.

derickbaileyon A Screencast On Refactoring JavaScript

that's a great idea

derickbaileyon A Screencast On Refactoring JavaScript

It is a risk buying from someone that you don't know. At one point, no one knew who PeepCode was either. Geoffrey grew his brand and became well known.

As for the price - PeeCode sells all their recent videos at $12 each, for ~1hr of content. So, $14 seemed reasonable to me (also based on the price I've paid at Tekpub, DestroyAllSoftware and other screencasting sites) considering the length of the content that I've produced.

But, you may be right. Maybe I should drop it since I am an unknown person in the screencasting world.