Lateral Development

CSS3Generator is a great tool that allows you to get CSS3 cross browser code for different common tasks: Rounded Corners, Box & Text Shadow and more. It’s really simple to use and really useful, check it out.

Last Monday April 15th I went to the first Rails meetup from the Northern Virginia Web Development User Group, which happened at Booz Allen Hamilton near Tysons Corner in VA. The presenter was John Athayde from LivingSocial and the talk was about Rails views.

It was a really interesting talk with many do’s, dont’s and best practices for keeping Rails view clean and elegant. It was not about: “Ohh.. let’s use HAML to clean up our erb’s” It was more about the 7 sins (e.g., Don’t user model logic inside .erb files) and 10 commandments to clean up your views (e.g., Use presenters when necessary) 

Really cool talk, check the slides here: https://speakerdeck.com/boboroshi/the-rails-view-the-junk-drawer-grows-up-triangle-dot-rb-version

If you need to get rid of MySQL (issues/nightmares while trying to install the mysql gem anyone?) you need to do the following:

1. Make a backup of your database data
2. Stop MySQL if it’s runinng
3. Run this commands in your terminal:

sudo rm /usr/local/mysql

sudo rm -rf /usr/local/mysql*

sudo rm -rf /Library/StartupItems/MySQLCOM

sudo rm -rf /Library/PreferencePanes/My*

rm -rf ~/Library/PreferencePanes/My*

sudo rm -rf /Library/Receipts/mysql*

sudo rm -rf /Library/Receipts/MySQL*

Finally edit the /etc/hostconfig file and remove the line MYSQLCOM=-YES-

Done.

P.S. I don’t know why there isn’t a clean way to uninstall it, didn’t find one.

If you try to install the mysql gem and you get stuck with an error saying something like: 

library not found for -lmysqlclient

You need to install the gem telling it to use your mysql_config file:

sudo env ARCHFLAGS=”-arch x86_64” gem install mysql — —with-mysql-config=/usr/local/mysql_folder/bin/mysql_config

(Update your mysql_folder as appropriate)

The ARCHFLAGS value it’s needed if you are running Mac OS X in 64 bits (which is more likely the case if you are running snow Leopard or newer)

That will save your bacon while installing mysql gem.

Note: If you are still having strange errors && you are on Mac OS X, make sure you update your XCode Version and then install the developer tools

A pretty good tutorial (both written and video available) on how to use multiple tools that interact with github to empower your software collaboration experience.

Really cool and clear presentation on the differences and similitudes of Python and Ruby.

Agile Product Ownership in a Nusthell: Any person involved in Software development cycly need to watch and embrace this video

The following is an opinionated process for setting up a Rails app for TDD/BDD testing using: RSpec, Capybara & Guard

1. Create new rails app with the -T flag (this will skip Test Unit)
2. Add the following gems to your gemfile
   
   group :development, :test do
     gem “rspec-rails”
     gem “capybara”
     gem “guard-rspec”
   end
   
   
3. Run: bundle install
   
4. Run: rails g rspec:install
5. Run: guard init rspec
   
   

Optional:

• Install the rb-fsevent gem (if you are on a Mac and want Growl style notifications) with: gem install rb-fsevent
• Install Spork gem to speed up your tests
• Install guard-livereload to view changes on the fly

1. You may not write production code until you have written a failing unit test.
2. You may not write more of a unit test than is sufficient to fail, and not compiling is failing
3. You may not write more production code than is sufficient to pass the current failing test

Source: http://www.slideshare.net/tyler4long/rails-automatic-test-driven-development

Here is a set of cool git tips that will help you tons on your current git workflow. I really like the alias section since I added a couple of aliases to my .gitconfig file, that I’m sure will save a lot of time in the long run.

http://net.tutsplus.com/tutorials/tools-and-tips/git-tips-from-the-pros