If you’re familiar with web development, when you hear Ruby you likely associate another word with it: Rails. I’d like to introduce a new word to associate, as well: Hanami Ruby has been widely successful as a language and Rails has played a part in that. Learning the Rails framework helped transform my career in ways unimaginable. […]
RailsConf 2017 Slides: Your Views Know Too Much
I had the honor of speaking at RailsConf 2017 on refactoring views. I’m trying to put into words what the experience was like! Until then, here are my slides from the presentation. Your Views Know Too Much (Download Slides)
Views Are Not a Garbage Can, Clean Up Your Views
We spend so much time obsessing over where code belongs, except when talking about views. In Ruby on Rails, it seems to mostly be a conversation about business logic and the complexity that ensues. Skinny Controllers, Fat Models! Skinny Controllers, Skinny Models, Use Service Objects! Etc… Something happens once that conversation ends: we move on, and […]
The Importance of Scopes in Ruby on Rails
Using scopes in Ruby on Rails can help you write better, testable, more modular code. Let’s walk through a couple of use cases for scopes. First of all, if you’ve ever used Ruby on Rails, you’ve probably used ActiveRecord. (Hopefully not in your views!) ActiveRecord is a robust toolset. Specifically, let’s look at querying data. […]
Get ActiveRecord Calls out of Your Views
* This post is for those newer to Ruby on Rails and/or MVC. However, it might serve as a refresher to others. Ruby on Rails gives developers tools to build web applications rapidly. “Convention over configuration” means that a lot of decisions are made for you. Take, for example, ActiveRecord. You don’t have to concern yourself […]
Hatch by GoRails
Chris Oliver (GoRails) and I were talking about the Rails ecosystem recently when he dropped a bombshell on me: I’m making a way for people to provision their own own Rails’ servers As someone who admires the Laravel ecosystem, I had become increasingly jealous of Laravel Forge. When Chris broke the news to me that we’d […]
The Thing Holding Me Back
The majority of my goals and dreams are obtainable. I want to be healthy, not obese I want to be out of debt I want to be spiritually deeper (Christianity) I want to be a better friend I want to have more time with my family I want to build a software product Those are […]
Mindfulness Over Competition
I recently composed an article about my inner competitiveness. If you didn’t read it, it’s okay. The thought I was trying to convey is this: the drive to be competitive dampers my quality of work. I’ve come to realize the deeper issue, though. It’s not just competitiveness. I’m not mindful. I’ve dabbled with meditation in […]
If You Ain’t First, You’re Last
As it would turn out, one of my favorite movies to quote revealed something I’ve dealt with my entire life. I’ve never considered myself competitive. I realize now, though, that I am in fact very competitive. I’ve been telling myself I’m not competitive to avoid the hidden aggression I feel during competition. In third grade, I […]
Getting Your First Programming Job
In 2007 I was making part-time money at a local music store. I was fresh out of high school and felt like I had no direction. My life changed when I got interested in the web. I asked the owner of the music store if I could make their website. Kindly, he gave me a […]
Ruby Survey Results (Jan 2017)
I think a lot about Ruby; it’s community, and how people are using Ruby. I decided that I would run a survey to see if I could get some real data to accompany my thoughts. This survey was my first, and I’ve learned some better questions to ask in the future. I’ll likely be running this […]
Information Overload
As developers, the majority of our resources are online. In fact, I would say we have an over-abundance of resources available. Information is beneficial. Information is how we learn. Information is how we stay sharp. Information is power. What about too much information? We only have so much time during the day. We can only […]
Fear of Missing Out: Polyglotism
I want to talk about a different “fear of missing out” than my last post. What happens when you do find a new programming language or framework you like? Let me give an example. Lately, I’ve been envious of PHP for having Laravel. I think it’s a well put-together framework with great, modern features. I guess […]
Fear of Missing Out: Bleeding Edge
Having a severe case of “fear of missing out” doesn’t bode well for someone with Anxiety. At times I legitimately worry that I’m shooting myself in the foot if I don’t keep up with the latest, greatest technology. In my particular case, I love writing Ruby. The most popular career path for Ruby is to […]
A Fresh Start
I’m passionate about programming. Programming changed the trajectory of my career in a way I never expected; it allowed me to make money doing something I love. It’s become an addiction. When I’m not at work, I’m at home programming. When I’m not programming, I’m reading and looking for the next big thing in programming. But I’ve noticed […]
A Handy Look at Hanami (CodeDaze 2016)
I had the incredible opportunity to speak at CodeDaze 2016. I was able to talk about something that has sparked a lot of interest in me over the last year, Hanami.
Rails 5: Belongs to Is Now a Required Association
I ran across something the other night in Rails 5 that I want to share. Let’s say you have code similar to the following: This code works fine as long a user has an organization. If you try to save a user and organization_id is blank, you’d get the error: Organization can’t be blank. This […]
Anxiety
This post makes it with me no matter what blog I start. It was written in 2015. When I was a teenager, I noticed something was off about me. I couldn’t quite pinpoint what it was, though. Eventually, trying to figure it out and keeping it to myself became debilitating. I found that I could […]