Refactoring: be eager, not reckless
The illustrious Chris Eppstein recently tweeted:
If some code should be refactored, stop what you are doing and refactor it.
I was about to respond, but realized I had more to say than would fit in a tweet. (Waiting for someone to fix that prob...
Refactoring: be eager, not reckless
The illustrious Chris Eppstein recently tweeted:
If some code should be refactored, stop what you are doing and refactor it.
I was about to respond, but realized I had more to say than would fit in a tweet. (Waiting for someone to fix that prob...
September 7, 2010: On Writing Bad Code
I’ve been working on my tutorial session for WindyCityRails (tickets still available…). The session is about how to test when you are working in a legacy app that doesn’t have tests. Naturally, that requires some legacy code for the attendees to work with during the tutorial. My own worst Rails messes are either back in...
XP or not XP, that is the question. The answer is XP.
While I’m commemorating anniversaries this summer, I just remembered another one. Ten years ago this summer was when I first read the original Kent Beck “white book”, Extreme Programming Explained, which is one of only a couple of books that completely changed the way I approach whatever it is that I do. Considering that I’ve...
July 16, 2010: Why Not Four?
Not much time this morning, not many accumulated links. So just a little bit today. Book Status Still writing the new parts of the legacy coding chapter, last night a little bit on removing dependencies. I think only one more section to go before that’s a complete draft. Next up, I think, is making the...
Pair Programming, or Two of a Kind
Repeating yourself is clearly an occupational hazard of blogging. I’ve been trying to put together a post about pair programming for a while. Somewhat randomly, I found myself wandering through my blog archives at Pathfinder, and I came across this little essay, which was the last thing I wrote at Pathfinder before, shall we say,...
July 9, 2010: Beta 4 Released and More
Update Beta 4 of Rails Test Prescriptions is now available, with two new chapters, one on Rcov and coverage in general, and one on writing better tests. Buy here. While I’m in the self-promoting mode, the book is also available for pre-order at Amazon and other exciting locations. More Promotion And while I’m here, I...
Gartner: Agile is Mature And Proven
Michael Blechar, vice president in Gartner’s Applications Architecture Research division, just posted his thoughts on Agile development, a development method we at ELC prefer to achieve superior results. Blechar’s post go back to a recently publis...
June 16, 2010: What Shoulda We Do?
Top Story Thoughtbot talks about their plans for Shoulda moving forward. The big takeaway is that, while the context library will be separated out for use in Test::Unit, both Shoulda style and Shoulda effort will be focused on RSpec integration. I have some complicated thoughts about this one. I’m thrilled that Shoulda is being maintained...
May 17: The Happy Streets of Wilmette
Book Status The Cucumber chapter is nearing final edit for beta. I cleared up a handful of errata, of which probably the most serious was a mistake on how to get the fixture data to pass the first test in the book. I’m hoping to get Beta 3 out later this week, and then I...
May 13, 2010: The Rules of Agile Estimation
Top Story JRuby 1.5 is out. Highlights include improved Rails 3 support, better support for Windows, better FFI support, better startup time (yay!) and a lot of other tweaks and fixes. Book Update Still Cucumbering, hope to finish today. The book is still on sale, of course. And I’d still love to see more comments...
April 15, 2010: The Library of Congress Recommends the Following Tweets
Top Story As part of the Chirp conference, Twitter and the Library of Congress jointly announced that the Library will be storing Twitter’s entire public archive. I’m sure your expecting an easy joke about how many sandwiches the LoC now knows about in their archive, or about how scholarly papers about the archive will be...
