## Look, I said it was a _weird_ trick, not necessarily an _effective_ trick... Every day, it seems, I get a digest from Medium that has a bunch of articles that are all titled "9 VS Code Extensions That Will Change Your Life". To be completely honest, I read a...

## Trying to Define Undefinable Terms: The Locally Sourced Story Previously on Locally Sourced: I’ve been writing about XP and Agile. Most recently, [pair programming](/blog/2020/07/entropy-essays-6-pair-programming/). And [how I think about technical decisions](/blog/2020/07/how-i-make-technical-decisions/). I started to write a different essay here, but then I realized that I was sort of depending...

## Maybe it'll help you out? _Previously on Locally Sourced: does anybody read this part? Hi, it’s Noel, how are you? Last time, I wrote about [pair programming](/blog/2020/07/entropy-essays-6-pair-programming/), and there were a couple of discussions on Twitter (where you can follow me [@noelrap](http://twitter.com/noelrap)) that came down to what would make...

## We hope that 1 + 1 = 3 _Previously on Locally Sourced: I’ve been doing a lot of these oddly titled posts about XP and Agile practices. Like [testing](/blog/2020/05/the-entropy-essays-xp-2020-1-test-speed/). Or [OO](/blog/2020/06/another-entropy-essay-3-flavors-of-object-oriented-design/). I wrote about [inclusion on agile teams](/blog/2020/06/entropy-essays-4-agile-teams-and-inclusion/). And about [team metrics](/blog/2020/07/entropy-essays-5-team-metrics/). Next up: pair programming. And even though...

## Or Why is a Software Team Like A Shortstop _Previously on Locally Sourced: I’ve been writing these Entropy Essays about Agile and XP practices. [Here’s the most recent one](/blog/2020/06/entropy-essays-4-agile-teams-and-inclusion/). You can see the rest [here](/tags/entropy). Tell all your friends and colleagues to [subscribe](https://noelrap.substack.com/subscribe)._ One of the great things about...

## It's hard to predict... _Previously on Locally Sourced: Well, we’ve been talking about the history of Rails and JavaScript: [part 1](/blog/2020/06/rails-and-javascript-part-1/), [part 2](/blog/2020/07/rails-and-javascript-part-2/), and [part 3](/blog/2020/07/rails-and-javascript-part-three/), and we’ve finally caught up to the present time, so I guess it’s time to talk about the future. Also, my [Rails and...

## The Webpackening _Previously on Locally Sourced: Rails came out and let [people do Ajax](/blog/2020/06/rails-and-javascript-part-1/), when Ajax was a thing. Then Ajax was less of a thing and Rails let people [write CoffeeScript, and use Sprockets](/blog/2020/07/rails-and-javascript-part-2/). Also, I wrote a book on [Modern Front-End Programming with Rails](https://pragprog.com/titles/nrclient/modern-front-end-development-for-rails/), which is relevant...

## UJS, CoffeeScript and Sprockets, oh my. _Previously on Locally Sourced: I wrote about the early years of [Rails and JavaScript](/blog/2020/06/rails-and-javascript-part-1/). Which made it to [Ruby Weekly](http://rubyweekly.com). Also, my [Rails and JavaScript book](https://pragprog.com/titles/nrclient/modern-front-end-development-for-rails/) is still on sale._ _A quick program note: If you’ve liked the [Entropy Essays](/tags/entropy/), I’m doing a...

## You got your Rails in my JavaScript... _Previously on Locally Sourced: Well, in 2005 I came across a cool web framework called Ruby on Rails. More recently, I wrote a book about integrating Rails and front-end tools. If you want, you could [buy it](https://pragprog.com/titles/nrclient/modern-front-end-development-for-rails/). Today, I thought I’d go...

## Or: Trust Goes Every Which Way, And Makes Agile Work _Previously on Locally Sourced: I attempted to justify [all this agile stuff](/blog/2020/06/why-am-i-writing-about-xp-and-agile-so-much/). Before that, [more](/blog/2020/06/another-entropy-essay-3-flavors-of-object-oriented-design/) [agile](/blog/2020/06/the-entropy-essays-2-why-did-you-hire-this-test/) [stuff](/blog/2020/05/the-entropy-essays-xp-2020-1-test-speed/). Also, I have a [book out](https://pragprog.com/titles/nrclient/modern-front-end-development-for-rails/), and good marketing practices would suggest I mention that from time to time._ _This time around,...

## I mean, really... _Previously on Locally Sourced: I wrote about an [XP practice](/blog/2020/05/the-entropy-essays-xp-2020-1-test-speed/). Then I wrote about it [some more](/blog/2020/06/the-entropy-essays-2-why-did-you-hire-this-test/). Then I wrote about [a different XP practice](/blog/2020/06/another-entropy-essay-3-flavors-of-object-oriented-design/). Then I wrote about it [some more](/blog/2020/06/object-oriented-design-from-the-90s-or-more-on-domain-vs-technical-modeling/). (Okay, it’s a bit of a stretch, but a domain metaphor was an XP...

## Maybe more about the past than you needed to know? _Previously on Locally Sourced: I wrote about [kinds of object-oriented design](/blog/2020/06/another-entropy-essay-3-flavors-of-object-oriented-design/). Before that, I asked [why you hired that test](/blog/2020/06/the-entropy-essays-2-why-did-you-hire-this-test/). I didn’t exactly set out to write 1300 words on the history of OO design, but I pulled out...

## Who doesn't love a taxonomy? _Previously on Locally Sourced: We talked about [test speed](/blog/2020/05/the-entropy-essays-xp-2020-1-test-speed/), and we asked [why you hired that test](/blog/2020/06/the-entropy-essays-2-why-did-you-hire-this-test/)? If you like this kind of thing, [tell a friend or colleague](https://noelrap.substack.com/subscribe)._ One thing that I see a lot in online discussion of programming styles is the...

_Previously On Locally Sourced: The Entropy Essays are a series of essays about how programming practices inspired by Extreme Programming such as testing, pair programing, and object-oriented design play out on modern web projects. The first one was [about test speed](/blog/2020/05/the-entropy-essays-xp-2020-1-test-speed/). And eventually we’ll get to why they are called...

## Yes, I really do need 700 LEGO bricks in order to flip that light switch... _Program note: This essay is timed to the release of the draft-complete beta of Modern Front-End Programming with Rails. They won’t all be about the book, promise. (There will be one or two more...

## Speed matters. But not precisely. There are only two things that matter when thinking about the speed of your automated tests: * How fast can you run the relevant set of tests to let the tests be helpful in development? * How fast can you run a complete, green...