harlow

Make it real

Ideas are cheap. Make a prototype, sketch a CLI session, draw a wireframe. Discuss around concrete examples, not hand-waving abstractions. Don't say you did something, provide a URL that proves it.

Ship it

Nothing is real until it's being used by a real user. This doesn't mean you make a prototype in the morning and blog about it in the evening. It means you find one person you believe your product will help and try to get them to use it.

Do it with style

harlow

My issues with Modules

In researching topics for RailsCasts I often read code in Rails and other gems. This is a great exercise to do. Not only will you pick up some coding tips, but it can help you better understand what makes code readable.

A common practice to organize code in gems is to divide it into modules. When this is done extensively I find it becomes very difficult to read. Before I explain further, a quick detour on instance_eval.

You can find instance_eval used in many DSLs: from routes to state machines. Here's an example from Thinking Sphinx.

class Article < ActiveRecord::Base

harlow

# Install Git needed for Git based gems
packages:
  yum:
    git: []
    

harlow

module YourApp
  class Application < Rails::Application
    # Convenience for loading config/foo.yml for the current Rails env.
    #
    # Example:
    #
    # config/cleversafe.yml:
    # 
    # production:
    #   url: http://127.0.0.1:8080

harlow

class NotesController < ApplicationController
  def create
    @note = @project.notes.create params[:note].merge(
      creator: current_user, subscribers: extract_subscribers(params[:note]))
    
    @note.subscribers.each { |subscriber| Subscriptions.note(@note, subscriber).deliver }
  end
end

class Subscriptions < ActionMailer::Base

harlow

# Bulk API design
#
# resources :posts
class PostsController < ActiveController::Base
  # GET /posts/1,4,50,90
  # post_url([ @post, @post ])
  def show_many
    @posts = Post.find(params[:ids])
  end

harlow

# autoload concerns
module YourApp
  class Application < Rails::Application
    config.autoload_paths += %W(
      #{config.root}/app/controllers/concerns
      #{config.root}/app/models/concerns
    )
  end
end

harlow

# MODEL

class Case < ActiveRecord::Base
  include Eventable
  
  has_many :tasks

  concerning :Assignment do
    def assign_to(new_owner:, details:)
      transaction do

harlow

backend default {
  .host = "127.0.0.1";
  .port = "8000";
}

# We go BACK to varnish to get it to generate an ESI template that 
# generates a JSON-P response.
backend jsonp_template_backend {
  .host = "127.0.0.1";
  .port = "8070";

harlow

#!/bin/bash
# from here: http://www.codingsteps.com/install-redis-2-6-on-amazon-ec2-linux-ami-or-centos/
# and here: https://raw.github.com/gist/257849/9f1e627e0b7dbe68882fa2b7bdb1b2b263522004/redis-server
###############################################
# To use: 
# wget https://raw.github.com/gist/2776679/04ca3bbb9f085b192f6aca945120fe12d59f15f9/install-redis.sh
# chmod 777 install-redis.sh
# ./install-redis.sh
###############################################
echo "*****************************************"