My platform of choice is Ruby on Rails. In an early project, I implemented some reports by coding special purpose sql statements embedded within model methods. This worked well, and allowed the reports to run reasonably speedily. As I continued…
Rails to_xml, thar be dragons.
Ok, so I have been using to_xml to handle generating xml serialised lists for a restful xml interface. I came across this interesting situation. If you are serialising a collection which is implemented as a set of subclasses using STI,…
Quote of the Day
“A software developer is in the unhappy state that by the time he knows everything he needs to start work, he has probably finished” Who said that? Peter Morris, 2008.
101 Greate Computer Quotes
There is really nothing I can say about this…. Just, go there, go there NOW, and read.
Doctest, a ‘gateway drug’?
I am quite a proponent of TDD/BDD, my framework of choice being RSPEC within Rails But, I also understand that for people unused to TDD, the upfront investment seems daunting. So, I was very interested to be told about… DOCTEST…
Danger Will Robinson
I like RSPEC, I LOVE RSPEC. But, this morning, I found a flaw in its beauty. If you are using a lambda to verify that a block of code raises an exception it works fine. A problem occurs if you…
YES, that is RIGHT…. Warty AND Battle Scared.
I have been in the place of advocating ‘throw it away and start again’ several times. Sometimes it is required, when the code is fundamentally flawed, when the refactoring effort would be longer than the rewrite. But, I always worry.…
Joke: A project manager, a hardware engineer, and a programmer …
A project manager, a hardware engineer, and a programmer were in a car. Coming down a hill, a tyre got a puncture, the car went out of control, and a bad crash was only narrowly averted. The project manager wanted…
All the Phun of the Phair
Well, it is not often that I find something I really like. Maybe once or twice a year, someone does something that really makes me go WOW. Well, yesterday, I was amazed to hear of this… PHUN:“http://www.acc.umu.se/~emilk/” It’s a 2d…
Horrified, but not Surprised
A friend pointed me towards an interesting article. Steveys Blog Rants And after reviewing it, I can say I am both horrified and unsurprised. Why? Because I have met several people who claim they are coders, who, when actually confronted…