13 Apr 2006
David Black: Breaking Through the Programming Glass
Ceiling
Problems with getting his laptop hooked up to the projector. Apple, was it really a good idea to use a non-vga plug on your computers? (lazyweb: why apple doesn’t use vga?)
Changing topic to “Meditations on the Ruby/Rails Ratio”. Talking about the relationship between Ruby and Rails.
- “Is it important to learn Ruby if you’re using Rails” puzzled him (_who the enterprise was wondering that?_). This was a discussion somewhere online.
- Computer language aficionados fight more than musicians of different instruments.
I’m getting tried (was up til 5 EST last night) so my notes are going to fade out here. The campfire (I like it as a noun) has high praise for his book. Maybe we should get a few copies.
#canada-on-rails
13 Apr 2006
_I think this is his blog
- Full time Rails developer.
- I’m good at talking, but bad at slides. Lack of profanity or pornography in the slides.
- TDD is about Specification not Verification
Chai is good. Makes the body feel warm and my brain feel cushioned
- When changing your software change the tests first
He recapped a lot of what was covered in the testing chapter of the Rails book
- Tests mean that while you are writing your main code you know what to do next.
- Writing Ruby Support for Selenium
Q&A
- lot’s of questions about TDD and if it was really useful and how to apply to their situation.
- How to get TDD working at his job: “I just made sure everyone knew I thought they were stupid for not writing tests.” Humm sounds like someone I know (*cough* Doug cough).
Listening to people having a hard sell to get their bosses to allow TDD makes me glad to work at RS
#canada-on-rails
13 Apr 2006
Dave Astels on Behaviour Driven Development.. the step after TDD
Dave Astels’ Blog
Looks interesting now if only to see what a wookie looks like in real life
Act I
- Not about creating a bunch of test, but doing design via tests.
- Sapir-Wharf: language is important. The language you use effects and shapes your thoughts
- Think Different: yes I do have a powerbook.
- Not TDD but Behaviour DD.
- Danial North coined the term.
- classic mistake in TDD: do something look at state
- never write a private method.
- You should not be looking at the internal state of the object.
(state with a big red x thru it)
Act II
- rSpec (also in gems)
- a way to describe specs in code, then test against those specs
- rather than
assert_equal(a, b) do actual.should.equal expected
object.question? should be vocalized as “question, eh?”
The talk is bogging down into him showing every possible combo of this .should biz enabled by rSpec. This is great lesson about what I don’t think makes a good conf. talk
- Mocking API
- Mocks are auto verified, stubs are not
Act III
- Code, Questions and Discussion
DSL – Domain-Specific Language
- one more thing: shows up some code he hacked on the plane
#canada-on-rails
13 Apr 2006
Tooling Rails
I have RadRails on my system, it’s pretty nice. Used Eclipse at my last job as my primary Java IDE, so maybe I’m brain damaged
- Dev include a lot of Mnt. Dew
- J2EE require tools to keep up
- Rails does not, but can be made better with tools
- all comes back to control, with J2EE you give up control, you no longer can figure out what’s going on.
- RadRails is a joke on RAD systems that take away code, 95% code gen leads to 5% comprehension of system
- Less code is not no code
- Put the dev in the driver seat, but give him all the buttons he need close on the dashboard
- Then he gave a demo
- Lot’s of interest from the commercial world, just don’t get it about open source (RadRails is CPL).
#canada-on-rails