Passionate Pragmatism

Hi! I'm Ben. This is my blog, where I use thousands of words to say "Keep It Simple".

Essays I have written

• Who am I (and should you hire me)?
• DTOs should contain as little code as possible.
• Cucumber is not helpful for most organizations.
• Object Oriented design patterns from the 1900s are mostly obsolete.
• The Scrum Guide is briefer than you might think.
• Here's how I built this website.
• Here's why this site looks the way it does.
• Some of the examples from Robert C. Martin's book Clean Code are very bad.
• The Google Doodle on July 12, 2023 was fun to automate.

Gadgets I have made

• Fish Tank

  This is a demo I created when I was learning about CSS Animations. The fish and kelp are dynamically-added, hand-rolled SVGs.

  Someday I'd like to make it more interactive. Maybe I'll let the user add more fish. Maybe I'll make the fish react to mouse movements.

• Password Generator

  This is a toy I made to generate maximally-secure passwords given a restrictive set of constraints.

  It is not suitable for general use. Use a proper password manager like 1Password, or a verifiably-secure generator like Diceware.

• Skirt Planner

  I created this tool to help my partner plan sewing projects. Play around with parameters like skirt length and fullness, to quickly get an idea if the skirt pieces will fit on your fabric.

  Someday I'd like to make it more user-friendly. Starting with pre-filled inputs would go a long way. Explaining the inputs and controls will help too. The rotation code could also use some cleanup.

• Flash Point Roller

  I created this tool to facilitate a board game my friends and I play remotely: a fan-made variant of Flash Point: Fire Rescue. One of my friends runs the physical board on a webcam, but the rest of us still need to draw cards and roll dice.

  The main advantage of this tool compared to any other dice roller app we could have used is that Flash Point board has a 6x8 grid system, and this tool can roll locations on that grid.

  Someday I'd like to add support for map variants; not all Flash Point maps are the same size and shape. We've all but completed the game though, so this tool is likely to stay as-is.

• Happy Duck Helper

  This tool analyzes the odds for a minigame in the excellent Aviary Attorney. It's a variant on Blackjack, with a single player and a dealer:

  • There are only 11 cards, with values 1 through 11.
  • The player is dealt as many cards as they like.
  • If the sum is more than 21, they lose.
  • If the sum is exactly 21, they win.
  • Otherwise, the dealer draws cards until their sum is greater than the player's.
  • If that sum is more than 21, the player wins.
  • Otherwise, the player loses.

  This is a small enough game that we can calculate win probabilities in no time - and that's exactly what this tool does. Click on the cards you've been dealt so far, and the tool will tell you the odds and give you a recommendation.

  It turns out that this is a losing game; the dealer has about a 53.5% chance of winning, even if the player makes optimal decisions. That's why the initial recommendation is always to stop gambling and get back to the main game.

  Oh, and the name! Aviary Attorney is set in Paris, and this in-universe Blackjack game is called Le Canard Joyeux.

• Resistor Code Calculator

  This tool translates resistor color bands into ohm quantities and tolerances. It's a straightforward implementation of the 4-band color code standard.

  I was able to neglect quite a few aspects of the standard — special colors, the 5-band format, and the 6-band format — because my use case didn't call for those details.

• Bootstrap Simplifier

  This tool helps you cut redundant CSS classes from elements styled with Bootstrap. For example, say you have <div class="col-10 col-sm-10">. The col-10 means that this element is 10 columns wide by default. The col-sm-10 means that if the screen is at least 576 pixels wide ("small"), the element will change to be... 10 columns wide! This is redundant; there is no need for the second class.

  I wrote this tool for myself, when I was trying to clean up a very verbosely-styled website. Hopefully, it will never be useful for you 🙂