Posted by Doug
Wed, 01 Mar 2006 22:51:06 GMT
I gave a “bootcamp” style presentation today at work on Test Driven Development on Rails. I was struggling to figure out what tool to use to actually compose and give the presentation. S5 is a tool from Eric Meyer that uses XHTML, Javascript, and CSS to make a web-based presentation. It’s really cool. Rather than all the typing needed to write valid XHTML, I wrote a Ruby script to convert Textile to S5. I’ve included the Ruby code needed and my TDD presentation.
BTW, you can view the live presentation here
Posted in Programming, Test Driven Development, Ruby on Rails | Tags Ruby, testing | 8 comments
Posted by Doug
Tue, 03 Jan 2006 16:56:01 GMT
I am so excited about this New Year! I was diligent about learning Ruby on Rails in 2005 and getting some practical experience. In 2006 I’m ditching my current gig as a Unix Systems programmer and taking a new job as a full-time Ruby on Rails Web developer!
As of this week I’ve gotten two production sites running with Ruby on Rails. One is a significant effort of more than 3000 lines of code. It took me most of the year working part-time hash out all the requirements and deliver the finished product. I know there’s more to come on this site, but I’m glad to finally have something in production.
The other one I cheated on. A client wanted a new feature added to an old site. I was loath to go back into that code because it was so messy. So, I re-wrote the whole site in RoR and added her new feature. Time “lost”? About 25 hours and 350 Lines of Code. That is exactly what Ruby on Rails is all about!
Now for my big news. Let’s talk about my ideal working conditions:
- Company that uses agile methodologies.
- Company that sanctions and uses Ruby on Rails.
- Mostly telecommute that doesn’t require me to relocate my family.
- I get to use a Mac with no questions asked.
- I get to work on a project that closely aligns with my hobbies and passions.
Check, check, check, check, and check. I’m not going to divulge all the details right now. The company hiring me hasn’t really made a public announcement about their use of Ruby on Rails. What I can say is I’ve always wanted a job like this but felt like it was beyond my reach. When you’re young and just out of college it’s much easier to make sacrifices to take the “dream job”. The further out of college you get, the more responsibility you have and the harder to just Do It.
This job allows me to follow the dream without sacrificing my family. I truly feel this is a gift from God. I realize many of my readers don’t believe in God and just got a sour taste by my saying that. However, I feel strongly that I need to give Him public credit for this job.
I have tried for years to find a job like this without success. Honestly, it’s been quite discouraging. Since early Fall I have been actively pursuing some way to work with Ruby on Rails full time without success. In fact, my best prospect was a job about 30 miles away doing Perl application development. Two years ago I would have loved full-time Perl. Now I was feeling “resigned” to taking it. Then out of the blue came this position. Two weeks later and I have an offer.
I’m not going to try and explain how or why God orchestrated this. I do want to give Him thanks though. All good things come from God. I’m very excited about this job. I know I can do a good job. One of my top goals for 2006 is to “go above and beyond” to demonstrate why I’m exactly the guy they wanted.
Posted in Internet, Christianity, Ruby on Rails | Tags jobs, Rails, Ruby | 10 comments
Posted by Doug
Sat, 17 Sep 2005 06:05:04 GMT
It’s been a pretty good couple of days for Rails coding. I’ve done a bunch of validation tweaks, mostly finished the calendar, and begun on group scheduling.
I was having problems using embedded hidden forms for all my edit and add links on events. I did a couple things to improve the performance of the page. First, I ditched the embedded forms and made them separate page loads. It was cool to have the embedded forms the magically appear and disappear; I miss it. Several people suggested I just embed a single edit form and a single add form and use Javascript to update the values before it’s submitted. If I were a Javascript stud that’s what I’d do. Maybe when I’m all grown up I’ll be smart enough to do that.
The other thing I did was change how I tested for events on calendar days. I had a find_by_day method that would basically find(:all).select { |expr| expr.occurs_on?(day) }. I’d then loop over the calendar days calling that function. What I decided to do instead was simply collect all the TimeExpressions into a single list in the controller and let the view do the select for each day. This exposes more of the model’s logic a little. I like the way the code looks to simply calll find_by_day for each day. However, only doing one find and then doing the selects in the view shaved a fair amount of time off the page load.
So I’m doing some “group scheduling” too. It’s quite limited. The TimeExpressions I’ve been working with is really to build a “free-busy” schedule of available times to book appointments. What I need to do is allow a user to invite another user to an appointment. These two users may have to negotiate an appointment time. So, it makes sense for my Invitations to acts_as_versioned. I had seen acts_as_versioned discussed a couple times on the maling list. Let me just say, I’m really happy with it. I was able to set it up without too much fuss. It works pretty much exactly as advertised. Thanks technoweenie!
Finally, to send out the initial invitations I finally got around to coding some AJAX stuff. It’s quite simple; just a link that makes a single request to send the invitation. I felt so sophisticated! Only about an hour or so to get it studied, written, tested and committed.
Posted in Programming, Ruby on Rails | Tags AJAX, Calendars, Rails, Ruby | no comments
