kerrizor

The Selfish Programmer

Using Ruby at work is great… but sometimes it feels like a job!

This year, I rediscovered the joy of writing Ruby apps for nobody but myself—and you should, too! Solo development is a great way to learn skills, to find inspiration, and to distill what matters most about programming.

Building an entire app by yourself can be overwhelming, but this talk will make it easier. We'll start with a minimal toolset that one person can maintain. You'll learn how many "bad" coding practices can actually reduce complexity. You may be surprised how selfish coding can make you a better team member, too!

Details

kerrizor

require 'set'
require 'find'

class Array
  def to_h; Hash[self]; end
  def to_set; Set.new(self); end
  def freq; group_by {|e| e }.map {|k,v| [k,v.count] }.to_h; end
end

kerrizor

I'd like to share some git aliases that you might find useful if you handle pull requests from others.

Add these to your ~/.gitconfig in the [alias] section:

copr = "!f() { git fetch -fu origin refs/pull/$1/head:pr-$1; git checkout pr-$1; } ; f"
prunepr = "!git for-each-ref refs/heads/pr-* --format='%(refname:short)' | while read ref ; do git branch -D $ref ; done"

Now you can "git copr #{pr_number}" (check out pull request is the mnemonic) and it will pull down the PR in a local branch of pr-#{pr_number} and check it out for you. To do it right, you must pronounce it "Copper" with a James Cagney gangster accent.

kerrizor

[alias]
    review = log -p --reverse -M -C -C --patience
    review-topic = !sh -c 'git review ${1}^1..${1}^2' -
    view-topic = !sh -c 'git log --reverse --stat -M -C -C ${1}^1..${1}^2' -

kerrizor

@tectonic's notes for Kerri Miller's (@kerrizor) RailsConf 2015 talk -- http://railsconf.com/program#prop_980

Interview Day
- Set and communicate a schedule (“two-three hours, no laptop needed, we will get lunch, no need to dress up”)
- Set expectations (“we will be writing some code together”)
- Have a diverse set of interviewers
- Allow for breaks

Make a game plan
- assign areas of focus (you do SQL, I’ll do OO)

kerrizor

Step 0:

Get Homebrew installed on your mac if you don't already have it

Step 1:

Install highlight. "brew install highlight". (This brings down Lua and Boost as well)

Step 2:

kerrizor

Venue Considerations Checklist

• Facility
  • Security/Maintenence
    • Will venue provide staff person(s) day of event for coordination?
    • Who is contact point in case of problems
  • Room(s)
    • Number of individual meeting spaces
    • Capacity of each
    • Relative arrangement of rooms (are they close to each other)
• Outdoor/shared space to facilitate hallway track

kerrizor

Step 0:

Get Homebrew installed on your mac if you don't already have it

Step 1:

Install highlight. "brew install highlight". (This brings down Lua and Boost as well)

Step 2:

kerrizor

Deploying a Rails 3 App with EC2 + S3 + Ubuntu + Capistrano + Passenger
=======================================================================

EC2 Setup
---------
1 Launch New ec2 instance - ami-1634de7f
2 Create elastic IP [ELASTIC_IP] and associate it with instance
3 go to domain registrar DNS settings, @ and www to ELASTIC_IP
4 set the `:host` in `config/deploy.rb` to ELASTIC_IP

kerrizor

Originally published in June 2008

When hiring Ruby on Rails programmers, knowing the right questions to ask during an interview was a real challenge for me at first. In 30 minutes or less, it's difficult to get a solid read on a candidate's skill set without looking at code they've previously written. And in the corporate/enterprise world, I often don't have access to their previous work.

To ensure we hired competent ruby developers at my last job, I created a list of 15 ruby questions -- a ruby measuring stick if you will -- to select the cream of the crop that walked through our doors.

What to expect

Candidates will typically give you a range of responses based on their experience and personality. So it's up to you to decide the correctness of their answer.