Martin Joiner's Blog Writing about software development, climbing and life.

Category: Software

29 December 2025

I made a prettify for Bruno files

As all the engineers in my team gradually went offline for the last time in 2025, I found myself spending my final day helping the QA guy in our team with some end-of-year housekeeping. On his laptop were hundreds of .bru files containing over 27,000 lines of automated tests. Months of work and none of […]… Read more »
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18 October 2025

De-jQuerification of Open Mic Finder

Let us mark this momentus event: Today I finished stripping all uses of the jQuery library from my long-running side-project Open Mic Finder! Replacing hundreds of uses of $(".item") with document.querySelectorAll(".item") it was a satisfying cull, tinged with a hint of sadness. I remember so fondly, those special years circa 2013. My fellow veterans of […]… Read more »
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24 September 2025

If I could fix 1 thing about Screwfix

Screwfix's systems are undeniably slick, but if there was 1 small improvement I could make it would be a text formatting tweak in both their self check-in interface and the SMS message notification. User journey When my order is ready I get a notification to my phone, travel to the shop and use the self […]… Read more »
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21 February 2025

Solution of the month: Endpoint rename

Sometimes I think we forget that the "I" in API stands for interface. Those endpoints are often a third-party developer's only insight into your database's model. What words you use shape their understanding and affect how they build their integration. For the API that my team maintain, I actually got an outsider's perspective a year […]… Read more »
Category: Software
10 January 2025

Did the Trump election just make 110,621 Americans search for an open mic?

The month of November has never been particularly special for visitor numbers to openmicfinder.com. November 2022 saw 15,144 unique visitors and November 2023 got 16,606, both inline with the other months. The highest month in 2024 was October with 41,843 visitors, until November happened and saw a surprise 198,710 unique visitors, that's a 374% increase […]… Read more »
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22 November 2024

Events from the future Vs strict API validation

The first time you install an SSL certificate is very much like the first time you make love to a woman...… Read more »
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11 August 2023

Essential skills to learn to land a junior developer role

My girlfriend has taken the brave choice to career switch, now retraining as a software developer. I am doing my best to support her as she starts from absolute scratch. I have mentored juniors before as part of my professional role as a senior but never a complete beginner. It's a weirdly nostalgic experience witnessing […]… Read more »
Category: Software
28 July 2023

Realising PHPUnit is not just Unit tests

It is far too easy to assume that PHPUnit only does Unit tests. I was guilty of this until a recent shift in thinking and now the latest linguistic faux pas on my list of things to hate is when colleagues casually refer to the PHPUnit tests as "the unit tests". They are not the […]… Read more »
Category: Software
23 March 2023

Open source contribution: Open API validator

I wonder if others experience the same rush of excitement that I do when I discover a bug in an open source package? Spotting an opportunity to contribute an improvement is novel and exciting. I anticipate my pull-request being welcomed with great enthusiasm, celebrated and immediately merged... but that's rarely what happens. For example take […]… Read more »
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26 May 2022

Redefining what Open Mic Finder is to me

I first published the open mic finder website way back in January 2010. Within a few years it was the top resource for information on open mic nights in the United Kingdom. A few months ago I was about to shut it down permanently, but then I changed my mind. One thing that's always been […]… Read more »
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