Codefol.io, Latest Posts

Jul 10 2018| First article

A Ruby Troll Story

I’m going to tell two stories about the Ruby community. One happened this past May (2018), and another happened in 2007. Both are about the Ruby community. Both are about what we did and what we stand to lose. Both are about trolls and how we handle them.

One story is small, recent and has a happy...

Feb 21 2017| First article

HR and Rotting Culture

Rands recently wrote a post called “Your Culture is Rotting”. The short version is that he thinks if people are nervous about HR, it’s a sign of a culture problem. I partially agree - but I think being nervous about HR is perfectly normal and should be expected. It’s the degree of nervousness. Here...

Feb 1 2017| First article

Powdered Caffeine

Have a horrible revelation, from an appreciator of less sugar with my caffeine.

You can buy a brick of caffeine in pure powdered form for about $30. That’s for 500g – about a pound. Several years’ supply, easily. Weightlifters use it, so it’s going to be readily available for a long time. I got mine...

Jan 16 2017| First article

Why Did Empathy Just Happen Now?

Avdi recently asked in one of his wonderful SIGAVDI newsletters:

“I’m noticing that the topic of empathy is starting to be discussed more and more and developer circles. In retrospect, it’s strange that it has taken so long to come to the fore.”

Early tech companies were attempts to make something...

Jan 12 2017| First article

Brian Brushwood: the Day Teller Gave Me the Secret to My Career in Magic

This isn’t really my blog post – it’s Brian Brushwood’s. But as his blog slowly, visibly decays, it makes me want to keep a copy somewhere I’m sure I can find it. So, here it is:

Hey gang,

Lately a lot of young magicians have been asking me for advice, which has caused me to remember one of the most valuable correspondences of my life: one of the most mind-blowing letters I ever received, chock-full of insights that to this very day guide my career and philosophy in both creating and performing magic.

This is a pretty long post, but with Teller’s permission, I’d like to share with you the secrets he gave me 14 years ago to starting a successful career in magic.

Feb 25 2016| First article

Where Do I Put My Code In Rails (Updated)

Lots of you loved my old post on this. Thanks! But thanks to many fine questions, especially by one guy on Twitter, it’s time for an update! And also, naturally, the same things you loved last time. I’m not heartless.

Sometimes you’re sure that’s not the right place for that piece of code, but where...

Feb 11 2016| First article

A Quick Class on Migrations

Interested in taking your Rails migration code to the next level? Welcome. You’re in the right place.

What’s that? Somebody in the back says they’re not already up on the basics? No problem. The Rails Guide on migrations is like most Rails guides – pretty darn awesome. It’ll have you adding tables...

Feb 11 2016| First article

Deployment and Migrations

A question you’ll occasionally see: when do you run your migrations in production? There’s a standard answer, so let’s talk about it.

The Answer

You’ll run your migrations before you deploy new code. In general, that means “every time you push code to production, you run all the migrations since...

Feb 11 2016| First article

Migration Code Review

Migrations can be tricky, and it’s time-consuming to test them properly. One answer is to have other people look over your code.

In addition to the checks you can enforce with automated tools, there are a lot of things a human should look over. Let’s talk about some of the rules for code reviewing...

Feb 8 2016| First article

Good Strong Migrations

Remember that problem I had writing migration code where the whole site went down? Turns out I could have fixed that in advance by just following best practices for migrations.

There are several libraries meant to help you follow migration best practices. Two of them are “Good Migrations” and “Strong...

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You’ll hear about a variety of Ruby and Rails topics, including my books.