Articles tagged 'rails'

HTML's Most Underrated Feature is Testability

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I’m an old programmer as these things go. One of the best things I provide is perspective. You’re probably thinking that means I’m going to reminisce about the good old days. But I think the good old days are hilariously overrated.

HTML-based GUIs get a lot of flack for being a cheap-to-build imitation of native-app. This is basically true. It’s a cheap imitation, so we can build (and test!) a lot more with a small team, for cheap. In return, they burn a lot more CPU and memory, which is sometimes okay and sometimes not. I’m building something like that right now, so obviously I think it has good points.

But I think the biggest advantage of HTML-based GUIs isn’t usually mentioned: testability.

Seeing Inside HTTP

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If you work in Ruby, you probably deal with HTTP a lot. There are various ways to see into the actual HTTP requests and debug them. I’d love to mention a few of them to you.

Why do you care?

If everything goes perfectly, you don’t. It’s debugging. So if you never write any bugs, you’re fine.

In case you write bugs like I do, let’s talk debugging.

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