When building a UI makes more sense than bloating your seeders

What do you do when you need to create some data, but you haven't built out the UI for that data yet? A seeder is a great approach, but is it always the right one?

In the latest episode of the No Compromises podcast, we dive into a real project where starting with the most complex feature made test data management painful. Instead of exploding the complexity of our seeders, we built a minimal UI to manage test data.

We also talk about some other unexpected benefits, and talk through the trade-offs and why detours like this should feel uncomfortable (and be tightly scoped).

• 00:00 Starting deep exposes messy user permutations
• 02:45 Seeder explosion vs. a minimal UI
• 03:45 Reframing the “detour” after using it
• 05:30 Why the mini-UI helped: faster iteration, fewer seed resets
• 07:45 Dogfooding + tester debugging benefits
• 08:00 Guardrails: detours should feel uneasy and stay tight
• 09:00 Silly bit

Listen Now (12 min)

And after listening, don't forget to subscribe to the podcast, so you don't miss future episodes.

Here to help,

Joel

P.S. Is there a part of your application that is slower than you would like? We can help with that.