So much going on today.

I got up this morning to make fresh mochiko chicken rice balls for boys’ lunch - that is where all the mochiko (made a whole 2lbs and stored it) chicken went, paired with pickled daikon (forgot the avocados) and cucumbers. Sent them off and dragged hubs for a walk in this beautiful, sunny Dutch morning.

Looked at python unit tests with Jon, and had a short discussion about the decorator pattern used in mocking for unit tests. We have used mockito for Java a while ago, but only out of necessity as Java becoming as cucumbersome as it is. It does seem that we have just discovered it. Haha. I love my husband!

I pointed out that in a corporate large codebase, unit tests are also part of documentation:

• it lives and progresses with the code itself
• it is a way of documenting what goes in, what is expected out, assuming the code is a black box
• you build the tests (from the originating developer’s perspective) that you are also able to incrementally build as a suite of development regression suite for your codebase. I know there is a lot of talk about quick development turn arounds, moving with speed and CD/CI but if your codebase is solid with thorough testing as it progresses each stage of hardening through testing, it makes for a solid foundation to build upon, roll back on, fall back on as needed.
• it will stand the test of time, providing outlined benefits, provided the development culture is to update and maintain those tests with care.

Though practice, I should practice in order to write these quicker. For me, it requires thinking from a different perspective and communicating via documenting and hilighting what is important. I should look into evaluating AI coding assistants to do this, and laughably evaluate their thought process although I know there is no thought process behind it yet.

I happily sat down to look at my task list, of which is getting long as my mind gets fired up and inspired of late. I need to finish that board game chore chart that I am thinking of doing.

My 80+ something Dutch neighbor rung the doorbell - I had forgotten that I invited her and her rescued dog for tea. The whole charade really is to see if their dog was comfortable to stay at our place if she ever needs to leave him - it is a barking dog. I’ve had one of those, I know how difficult it is emotionally and stress-wise to have your neighbors complain. SHe is the loveliest lady, out of this world sharp, and if I abide by the Dutch rules of simply speaking frankly and borderline rudeness (in American culture), we have the loveliest time. I love Jonne! She is old, she glows. She dresses like a fashionista (not a Dutch norm). She lived in China to study Mandarin for a few months, she learnt Swedish when she felt bored. Piano, as well. She is a killer gardener. She also loves me. Ha.

Back to my desk and this is what I have for today. Trying to avoid paying for Illustrator and tried Inkscape (nonstop new shit — another tangential thought).

Installed Aider AI. I will document this portion in Obsidian (deployed through Starlight) - maybe I’ll publish it, maybe not. It has my ManaBurn notes in there which I need to keep under wraps about - I love Carey and its what he would prefer.

Spent the evening checking in this new astro site, Netlify is tossing out errors. WHat I do dislike about Astro is that the templates are only as robust as you make it, optional parsed fields or not, error handling is poor at its base. It takes a while to figure out what is off, even the simplest thing.

So, I figured out that Netlify has a CLI (of course! Why wouldn’t they?!). I’m a big fan of CLI-extension of anything, they make development so much more elegant.