acts_as

So i finally finished my initial work on an Android application that lets me walk off ranges using GPS.

The application doesn't have a flashy UI or anything but it does allow you to see your current long and lat, along with the accuracy of the position.  When you're ready you can mark your current position and walk to wherever you want, and when you mark again it gives you the total distance in yards between those two points in a straight line.

Essentially I made this app because it would be useful to me when I'm golfing to know the dstances I'm hitting my clubs.  Plus it ended up being a good exercise in writing a basic android app using the Location API.  There were a bunch of pitfalls I had to work out. Most of them got worked out by this helpful stackoverflow q/a.

Anyway here's the GitHub link:

http://github.com/mikeisgo/RangeWalker/tree/master

If I ever make a google android market account I'll post the app there, but currently this is too rough for me to care about that at the moment.

 

Today I found the following blog post from a site that has a few interesting rails-casts:
http://blog.edgecase.com/2009/6/2/a-rant-about-testing

It got me thinking about my feelings on testing in general. Yes, I'll raise my hand, I'm totally not the best person to talk to for being thorough with my testing. Honestly, I'm just not drawn to it. The way I learn new technologies and develop software is very much reactionary to a personal drive to do or build a given thing. Something in my head tells me that I need to drive a certain thing into the ground, and then I just do. Unfortunately, testing doesn't seem to get first billing with that drive. I have to say though, once I get into it I can in fact make good thorough tests and they inevitably save me later. Its just getting that kick-start to go down the road of testing is the tough part.

My worst flaw by far, though, is that while I may test a feature and ensure that it works how I intended it, I don't necessarily create a "Test" for that feature. What I mean by this is that someone who is not me, can't just run a test script to re-do my method of testing, and see if any changes have broken things. If i could get into that habit in general, whether it be at integration or lower, I'd probably be way better off when i start making some serious Rails applications. That or I need to find me a Testing Monkey. Someone who, for whatever reason, doesn't want to build things, but instead wants to break things.

Yeah I think i really need to go the route of a test monkey, that's the ticket....