Matthew Lang // My Programming Journal

About Me

My name is Matthew Lang, and I'm a software developer based just outside Glasgow in the UK.

I'm very interested in using agile methodologies such as XP to deliver projects with languages such as Ruby and open source frameworks such as Ruby on Rails and Sinatra.

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Snippets #125

It must be TDD Thursday or something.

Ken Beck's Test Driven Development Screencasts - Mark Needham's summary on the TDD screencasts. Based on his notes, I might need to check out this series myself.
Write the first one ugly - I feel better now after writing some really ugly code last night.
Listen to the tests .. they tell smells in your code! - Tests are great for indicating your ugly lines of code. Think of it as a follow up to 'Write the first one ugly'.

Filed Under // TDD

Posted on 29th of July, 2010

Snippets #124

Roadmap for Learning Rails - An excellent guide on what you really need to know when you're learning Rails.
Flutie - I might be tempted to use this just for the fact it has formtastic styles included.
The Road to Rails 3 - Officially we're not there yet, but there's no harm in preparing your application at the moment for a future upgrade.
What's New in Bundler 1.0.0.rc.1 - Bundler is nearing that big release.
Rails 3.0 RC1 - No long until the official release now.

Filed Under // Gems Rails

Posted on 27th of July, 2010

Snippets #123

Read Metaprogramming Ruby last week, but I think I'll read it again this week just to get my around a few things.

Creating Duplicate Objects - Took me a couple of reads to get this.
minitest 1.7.0 released - The nimble replacement for test/unit hits a new milestone. I wonder how fast this is over test/unit?
Rails best practices - Amey Dhoke has compiled an interesting list of best practices for Rails. I wonder how it compares to other best practices developers might have?

Filed Under // Rails TDD

Posted on 20th of July, 2010

Snippets #122

Even if you're implementing such a basic feature as single table inheritance, always write unit tests for it to ensure everything is right. I found out the hard way last night.

Suspenders now with RSpec, jQuery and more - Thoughtbot's Rails project template gets a few updates and is available as a gem. Much easier to start a project now.
Pair Programming, or Two of a Kind - Noel Rappin has some interesting observations on pair programming. I've not done any pair programming yet, though it is a practice I would like to try.
CouchDB hits 1.0 - Well done to everyone involved in getting CouchDB to this milestone.

Filed Under // Agile Rails

Posted on 15th of July, 2010

Snippets #121

Firefly URL shortener in less than 2.5 minutes - A screencast of how to clone and deploy the Firefly URL shortener for yourself.
Rails 3 Upgrade Handbook - With Rails 3 just round the corner, now is the time to start considering what apps you want to upgrade and how.
sinatra-bundles 0.3 is out - Daniel Huckstep's asset packaging gem for Sinatra now allows you to define your own location for stylesheets and javascript. Check out the full range of features on Github.

Filed Under // Heroku Rails Sinatra

Posted on 13th of July, 2010

Matthew Lang