Rails is bloated and hard to learn. You’d love to use a really simple framework like Sinatra. But what if you need something from Rails that isn’t there? You can’t memorize all the hundreds of helper methods in Rails. But what are the important ones that will hurt you badly if you don’t know them...
This idea was rejected by GoGaRuCo (link to part one) as a talk. So you get to see it on this blog!
Quick summary: I’ve got a thing with a background thread. Clearly the code could have things go wrong. Oh Jeebus, how do I test it?
You can check out Hastur’s Ruby client as an example here – it has...
I took Amy Hoy’s 30x500 class awhile back. A buyer of my book asked whether I thought it was worth it. Here’s what I wrote back:
Yes, I’m a 30x500-er, and yes, I’d recommend it. “3x5er?” Not sure. We don’t have a good collective noun :-)
I’d say the course is absolutely worth it if you’re serious...
Have you guys seen BootSwatch? It’s awesome.
Relatedly, I just redesigned Rebuilding-Rails.com so instead of a horrific eyesore, it now looks pretty generic.
You know that complaint that designers mention, the one that goes, “and then your site will look just like all these other sites put together...
I proposed a talk for the Golden Gate Ruby Conference, and got turned down. Usually that’s it, but the excellent and classy Josh Susser offered to say why he’d turned people down (woot!). He said:
I think we had a good idea of what your talk would be about. But this year we are a bit tired of testing...
[Update: Rebuilding Rails is finished, and yes, the exercises are in it. So are solutions to them.]
A reader asked me whether the book was entirely cut and paste or if there would be exercises that required actually writing new code in Rebuilding Rails, or only cut-and-paste. Here’s my response:
Awkwardly, I just emailed out links to pay for Rebuilding Rails with “http://” in front. Like, not “https://”.
Not so good. I was immediately called on it by one of my list subscribers, using my own words! Can I just say how much I love you guys for actually paying attention? People on my mailing...
Patrick McKenzie mentioned in a Hacker News comment that it’s easy to leak database information with a timing attack, and that it’s silly to secure that information very much in other ways if you aren’t going to block the timing hole.
He says “Some folks think there are trivial ways to defeat timing...
Most people don’t know anything about a given skill. But it’s not as simple as “I know” or “I don’t know”. Skill is in categories – beginner, novice, intermediate, master or whatever.
Lately I have to learn a lot all at once, what with the whole selling a book thing. So I have far more skills to...
