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 #116

Good to see that I can now have a little bit of the Rails community on my work desktop everyday.

NorthScale Unleashes Membase Server - Another NoSQL offering, this time from the creators of memcached.
Advanced Capistrano usage - 5 recipes to help ease the pain of application deployment and maintenance.
Sprinkle - If you're in the habit of setting up virtual machines and application stacks, Sprinkle could help you automate the process.

Filed Under // Deployment Gems NoSQL

Posted on 24th of June, 2010

Snippets #98

Looking to kill a Sinatra project that I'm just not that interested in anymore. As the project lacks any relevancy in the fields that I'm interested in, I think it's time to go.

MongoDB Cookbook - I've still not created anything using something like MongoDB.
2 Steps to Becoming a Great Developer - A great little article that I found quite motivating.

Filed Under // Craftmanship NoSQL Snippets

Posted on 22nd of April, 2010

Snippets #92

Still haven't nominated someone for Ruby Heroes. There's just too many people to choose from!

The Lowdown on Routes in Rails 3 - With such a big change in routes I'm going to have to make a point of remembering which Rails version I'm working with in different projects!
What does "scalable database" mean? - James Golick follows up his previous post about scalability in NoSQL db's.
All aboard! An introduction to Rails 3 - Good guide to Rails 3 highlighting important parts such as the new single rails command and Bundler.
SuperDo - A Sinatra and DataMapper To Do List - My favourite post this week.
Haml/Sass 3 Beta Released! - I tried Haml a few months ago, but never persisted with it. I might give it another try soon though.

Filed Under // DataMapper NoSQL Rails Sinatra Snippets

Posted on 1st of April, 2010

Snippet #88

Notes from Reading ActiveRecord::Base - A couple of gems in here I didn't know about.
Rails and Merb Merge: Rack - So is it now Ruby on Rails on Rack? Good write up of how Rack is used in Rails 3.
Base Debian Install on VirtualBox - Start of a new series in setting up CouchDB. I might go down this road for trying out CouchDB as well.

Filed Under // ActiveRecord NoSQL Rails Server Snippets

Posted on 18th of March, 2010

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.

Filed Under // Agile Caching NoSQL Rails Snippets Testing

Posted on 16th of March, 2010

Matthew Lang