When running automated tests, or running things locally, I often want to use a different configuration to what I would run in production. A JSON file often suffices for local development, however this isn’t useful for automated tests where I want different configurations for different tests, or if my configuration is dynamic (e.g. I need to spin up a docker container during startup, and I have to get some configuration from that on the fly).

I’ve always been a big fan of testing, and often think about ways to improve the testability of our system. The most effective testing is to test what your users actually use, and that is to test in production. This can be quite a scary thought to some, shipping untested code out to our live system, with real users, and hope it doesn’t break! Of course, the simple solution would be to run two “Production Environments” side by side, and use one exclusively for testing, and only once you are satisfied everything is working, push the tested changes across to the other environment.

I’ve always had a “blog”, but I’ve never actually written anything for it. I’ve always been committed to doing other stuff. However, I can finally say that is no longer the case! I’ve got plenty of posts lined up, and a few even ready to publish in the next few days (I just need to polish off some templating bits and pieces before I do). What’s the motivation for this? Well, I’ve been advocating people use Hugo and Netlify for a long time now, but I don’t actually have a public presence using either of these two technologies myself.