Career Dev Treasures
A big part of my job is helping other engineers grow their careers. I’ve collected resources that have personally helped me, and helped me help others.
Rogan Murley
Adventures in programming and game design
Latest posts
Something a lot like Pokémon Yellow
When I was 7 years I old got my hands on the Pokémon Yellow Master Guide. I devoured it, leaving it dog-eared from multiple cover-to-cover readings.
Game rules with a Free Monad DSL
This post is about how and why my multiplayer card game GALGA uses a Free Monad DSL for its game rules. If that’s gobbledygook to you, read on and hopefully it’ll make at least a little more sense by the end!
Unable to verify the Docker daemon is listening (Digital Ocean / docker-machine)
I practice continuous deployment on my side project GALGA. Every time the continuous integration pipeline finishes green on master the application is deployed… if all goes well. Earlier in the week all deploys broke 😱
Tripwire Tests
Introduction Tests are usually written to check that code is correct. This is a lofty and noble goal, which makes it easy to forget that they can be used in other ways too. I like to use tests to communicate with future developers who are making certain predictable changes, reminding or warning them through the failure message. I call these tests “tripwire” tests.
Install an older version of Stack
The Haskell Tool Stack is a great tool for reliably building Haskell projects. Unfortunately its latest release deprecated the stack image command, a vital part of my build process. I needed to keep my CI working until I have time to wrangle a replacement for the command, but I couldn’t find an easy way to install an older version of Stack.
The bug I wish I hadn’t caught
When I catch a bug before release I’m usually glad, because I’ve narrowly averted ruining someone’s experience or eating their data. Today I found a bug that I wish I hadn’t caught, a bug that I wish I’d released into the wild to witness in its full glory. I found this bug in my digital card game Ring of Worlds, and I’ll tell you its story.
Your project has constraints
I’m working on a digital card game with a focus on simple but deep gameplay, and I have implemented lots of interesting cards. However, my artistic skills are… somewhat lacking. Why, then, did I copy other card games by trying to illustrate each card with beautiful art? This ties what I’m good at to what I’m not good at, so I can’t scale what I’m good at. That’s not a recipe for success.