BL Blog

So we have a bunch of models and are doing stuff with them in service objects. The next thing we might need is to process some code in the background.

Not everything can be done inline from the API request. For example, we might need to…

The last post in the TaskRabbit architecture series was about service objects. This an example of what I call minimizing “surface area” of the code.

Frankly, I might be using the term wrong. It seems possible “surface area” usually refers to API signature…

This is the second post in what is now indisputably a “series” of articles about how we build things at TaskRabbit. Over time, we/I have internalized all kinds of lessons and patterns and are trying to take the time to write some of the key things down.

This is the first post in what I hope will be a series of articles about how we build things at TaskRabbit. Over time, we/I have internalized all kinds of lessons and patterns, but have never written them down explicitly and publicly. So let’s give that a try.

In March, we had a hack day at TaskRabbit and I did a demo of posting a task using a borrowed new-ish (at the time) Amazon Echo via Alexa. For the first time in a year, I made a new engine that would handle all these new-fangled conversational UIs and bots…

I’ve been thinking a lot about the book The City & the City by China Miéville. It describes a town in which two sets of people share the same physical space but do not acknowledge each other. For that matter, they are forbidden to do so.

Yesterday, we launched our updated Tasker app to our Android community. As noted before on the iOS launch, this is the app that Taskers use to get their work done. This completes our migration to React Native.

This week, we launched our updated Tasker app to the community. This is not the app on the app store, but rather the one the Taskers use to get their work done. Functionally, not much has changed since the last release. But underneath, the app has been completely rewritten in React Native.

Coming from a Rails background, we are very familiar with testing our code. While writing our new React Native app, we found ourself missing a way to test it and ship with confidence. I’ve updated the sample app with the approach we are using for integration tests.