Matthew Lang // My Programming Journal

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.

Posted on 15th of July, 2010by Matthew Lang

Tagged as Agile Rails Snippets

Snippets #113

TeamRoom - A good look at the key components of the agile team room. It's basically the opposite of everything in a typical waterfall development room.
Rails' Next Top Model - Adam Keys' slides from RailsConf, which looks at ActiveModel and ActiveRelation. I can see lots of uses for ActiveModel in some projects, but I need to spend more time looking at ActiveRelation.
The Road to Rails 3 - A look at the compatibility of Thoughtbot's gems for Rails 3.
Unobtrusive JavaScript in Rails 3 - A detailed look at a key feature in Rails 3. Having not spent much time using JavaScript in Rails projects, I'm going to make a point of using this more extensively in future projects.
Hampton's Ruby Survey - It's year 3 of Hampton's Ruby Survey. Take a few minutes out to complete the survey if you can. It's always good to see what trends are emerging in the Ruby community.

Posted on 15th of June, 2010by Matthew Lang

Tagged as Agile Javascript Rails Snippets

Snippets #109

Rubyist OS X Dev Setup – One developer shares his setup for developing with Ruby.
What Should an Agile Project Charter Contain – With all the emphasis on TDD and other popular aspects of agile projects, it’s good to see a guide to agile project charters.
What Pythonistas Think of Ruby – An interesting look at Ruby.

Posted on 1st of June, 2010by Matthew Lang

Tagged as Agile Ruby Snippets Tools

Snippets #87

Rails: Singularize and Pluralize - I usually find if a name doesn't fit for a model or controller, I've been too specific and think of something else.
Redis: Data Cheeseburgers - The Lists and Sets features of Redis look interesting.
Past-Blast: Think Less, Act More, Stay Awake, Ship Code - Writing code doesn't need to be complicated you know.
On Mocks and Mockist Testing - Now that I'm getting into the habit of unit and functional testing, need to start looking at how mocking can be used in my tests.
How to use Mail / ActionMailer 3 with Gmail SMTP - I did this on a previous project, but it was a long time ago.
Make Sure Your Rails Application is Actually Caching - I'm using Heroku for some Rails projects, but this is still good to know.

Posted on 16th of March, 2010by Matthew Lang

Tagged as Agile Caching NoSQL Rails Snippets Testing

Agile is not competing with Waterfall

Fragile is the evil twin of Agile. It is far worse than Waterfall. It's chaotic! Managers feel out of control, they say "I don't like this! I have no idea what the developers are wasting time on". Nothing gets finished, nothing is tested, and nothing at all gets delivered. There is not even the illusion of progress that you get with Waterfall.

via blog.new-bamboo.co.uk

Great post about adopting Agile over Waterfall. Agile isn't an overnight thing. It's a process of continual adoption.

Posted on 8th of January, 2010by Matthew Lang

Tagged as Agile

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Snippets #122

Snippets #113

Snippets #109

Snippets #87

Agile is not competing with Waterfall