August 2011
1 post
3 tags
My take on Agile
I’m part of a study group and right now we are reading Uncle Bob’s Agile Principles, Patterns and Practices book. The first chapter was a refresher on Agile and so I thought I’d write down what Agile meant to me. Thought I would post it here for posterity …
The key themes of agile, IMHO are as follows:
Communication - lack of communication will kill any benefits gained...
April 2011
2 posts
Getting a Rail 2.3.5 app to play nicely with the...
The app that I spend much of my day working on is, for one reason or another, still on Rails 2.3.5. I’d been avoiding doing the updates to RubyGems specifically because of this. However, a recent refresh of my MacBook meant that I took the plunge and upgraded.
The first issue I hit was the “uninitialized constant ActiveSupport::Dependencies::Mutex (NameError)” one. This was...
Yaypril
Last weekend I was down in Edinburgh for the Scottish Ruby Conference. I’ll be gathering my thoughts and blogging about that at the weekend, but this particular post deserves to go out sooner …
The final keynote on Friday was given by Chad Fowler and IMHO was worth the price of admission alone. There were many points that Chad covered and I’ll go into them in more detail later,...
Braaaaiiiiinnnnnnssssss!!
I feel like a total zombie this morning. Why? Because I tried to fit too much into my head last night. In the space of time between finishing my tea and going to bed I managed to: -
Install and test a tool for making my new Magic Mouse easier to use.
Do some typing lessons.
Try my hand at a Ruby Quiz.
Try to code in Vim rather than TextMate.
Read a few more Apprenticeship Patterns.
Fire off...
1 tag
"You don't sell craftsmanship"
The title of this post was the reply Enrique Riepenhausen gave when I asked him and Joe O’Brien, amongst others, how you sold Software Craftsmanship to your clients. I had been wondering for a while how you explained the advantages of software craftsmanship to a non-technical client. How do you differentiate yourself from the the competition in a manner that a non-developer could appreciate...
GitHub Meetup Aberdeen - April 22 - Canceled -... →
Bugger. Oh well, it was looking likely that this would happen due to the volcano disruptions. No hard feelings towards PJ, Kyle or Blake though. It made little sense for them to endure the hassle and risk being stranded once FunConf was canceled.
Maybe another time …
LRUG:Software Craftsmanship talk by Corey Haines →
TechMeetup Aberdeen #6 21st April 2010 – GitHub... →
Dave Dribin: osx-trash →
I’m not sure how handy this will be in my day-to-day, but I like it!
4 tags
Book List
In the spirit of refactoring to keep things clean, I’ve decided to move the book list from the original post to here. This should hopefully make it easier to use. Please add any new recommendations to this list.
Agile Software Development: Principles, Practices and Patterns (aka PPP)
Apprenticeship Patterns (if you’re thinking of reading Apprenticeship Patterns, Hashrocket are covering...
2 tags
Book Club
Got my copy of Apprenticeship Patterns this morning. I’ve decided, after @chrismcg mentioned it, to follow along with the Hashrocket Book Club. I’ll be blogging my $0.02 here if you want to join me.
I’ve also updated the History Repeating post to include the titles I missed from the original post and to add those mentioned in the comments. Keep ‘em coming and I’ll continue to...
Change of scenery
The more observant amongst you may have noticed that the blog’s style changed half way through the day today. That was because (apparently) the original style that I used was hard to read on non-Macs. Never one to pour salt on wounds, I’ve changed it something a little easier on the eye ;)
3 tags
History repeating
On the Sunday after the Scottish Ruby Conference this year, I found myself hungover and starstruck in the company of some of the smartest developers I know (and some I was just meeting for the first time). I say this not to kiss ass, but to set the scene and lend weight to what follows.
The topic of conversation fell upon the tendency of younger developers in general, and the Rails community in...
3 tags
Starting out on a journey
Over the last year since I left university I’ve been plowing most of my time and effort into completing a fairly large project for the company that I currently work for. It’s been quite hard going at times and has really stretched me to the limits of my current knowledge and understanding, and in that has been very beneficial. However during this time I have let my own personal growth...
March 2010
1 post
1 tag
Moved again!
Blogger wasn’t really doing it for me to be honest. Nothing in particular. It just didn’t grab me in the same way that Tumblr has.
I have to admit that I did consider going back on my word and redeveloping my blog in Rails. After all I do need some sites to bulk up my portfolio. However, that would be mixing writing with coding again and I don’t want to go down that route.
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