Craig Atkinson
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  • Ten communication tips for staff-plus engineers

    Jan 4, 2023 career team

    As a staff-plus engineer, you likely advanced through your career solving challenging technical problems. And now that you've reached the staff-plus level, it'll just be more of that - won't it? Sorry! While in well-crafted staff-plus roles you will have sufficient focus and time for helping teams solve technical …

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  • Four keys I look for when reviewing software pull requests

    Dec 10, 2022 development team

    Over the past 15 years I've reviewed hundreds upon hundreds of pull requests. From pull requests against projects I built and maintain to PRs submitted as promotion portfolio reviews in projects I've never seen or worked on, and everything in between. Over time I've developed a set of four key items I look for in each …

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  • Mock API servers for Maestro Android testing using MockServer and Gradle

    Nov 17, 2022 Android mobile Gradle testing

    Maestro is a great library for writing high-level UI tests that verify your Android app works from your users' perspective. For a more detailed intro into Maestro, please see my recent Maestro intro post. If you're testing an app that makes REST API calls, you'll need a way to verify those parts of the app work …

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  • High-level Android UI tests with Maestro

    Oct 30, 2022 Android mobile testing

    For fun I've recently been building an Android app with Kotlin and Compose. With this app, I can set goals for the week and track my progress towards those goals. My schedule is too varied day-to-day to successfully finish daily goals of say, read X minutes a day. But I found that setting goals per week helped me …

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  • Running Android emulator tests in GitHub Actions

    Oct 20, 2022 Android CI github github actions

    Tests for your Android application can come in a couple different flavors: Unit tests Connected Android tests You can execute the regular unit tests under the app/src/test directory without any special setup, but for the connected Android tests under app/src/androidTest you'll need a real device or an Android …

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  • Five ways to be a force multiplier in software engineering

    Apr 24, 2022 career development

    As you move along in your software engineering career, one of the biggest ways you can have a larger impact is to be a force multiplier. What does it mean to be a force multiplier, you might ask? Having an outsized impact on others beyond your direct contributions. For example, helping level-up the skills of other …

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  • Stop lighting money on fire: Seven tips to improve developer productivity

    Oct 27, 2021 development productivity observability

    Software engineering teams are a critical component of many companies, where the effectiveness of these teams can have a significant impact on the company's success. Making investments in areas such as these in improving developer productivity will pay off significantly, giving development teams more time to focus on …

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  • Lessons learned from building an open-source side project

    Sep 18, 2021 open source side project

    On Twitter you'll see jokes about folks purchasing domain names in the hopes of launching a side project. Then that domain comes up for renewal, taunting those never had the chance to launch that side project. A couple of years ago I did the unthinkable - I built and released an open source side project and then …

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  • Why write code comments?

    Aug 21, 2021 code development

    We've all seen it, code comments that are so obvious they add nothing but noise to the codebase. Redundant comments restating exactly what operation the code is performing. For example, this function's purpose is obvious from its name - adding a comment as well doesn't add any value: 1// Verifies if the auth token is …

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  • Cypress browser testing leveraging React Testing Library

    Aug 19, 2021 Cypress React testing

    If you're writing unit tests for your React components these days, there's a good chance you're using React Testing Library. It supports user-focused testing with reliable selectors to find elements, such as the data-testid attribute or finding an element by role. Specific and reliable selectors are key to make sure …

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Craig Atkinson

Software engineer, continually curious, highly caffeinated.
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Featured Posts

  • Ten communication tips for staff-plus engineers
  • Four keys I look for when reviewing software pull requests
  • Five ways to be a force multiplier in software engineering
  • Lessons learned from building an open-source side project

Recent Posts

  • Ten communication tips for staff-plus engineers
  • Four keys I look for when reviewing software pull requests
  • Mock API servers for Maestro Android testing using MockServer and Gradle
  • High-level Android UI tests with Maestro
  • Running Android emulator tests in GitHub Actions
  • Five ways to be a force multiplier in software engineering
  • Stop lighting money on fire: Seven tips to improve developer productivity
  • Lessons learned from building an open-source side project

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