11/15/08 12:27 - ID#46697

Bug Fix

I love open source, we had a problem in a vendor library and we fixed it ourselves. If we had to wait for someone else to do it, who knows how long it would've been broken.

It was only a change to a couple lines of code, but it was very hard to track down. It took me and a co-worker a day of pair programming to narrow it down and figure out what to change, but damn it feels good to have done. And to have our specs and continuous integration running reliably again.

It was like 4 layers deep worth of metaprogramming. I feel like I know our spec library very, very well now. :)

Permalink: Bug_Fix.html
Words: 123

Category: programming

02/28/08 11:02 - ID#43494

MacRuby

Apple has created a version of Ruby that runs on top of Objective-C.

OK, holy crap. This will be like the only non-objective-c Mac programming platform that's officially supported and hooked into Cocoa from the ground up. The future of Mac apps might just be Ruby, dropping down to Objective-C where you need the hardcore number crunching performance.

james writes at 10:09:04 03/02/08 - Comment #32314: What's a Ruby?

tiburon1724 writes at 05:58:12 02/28/08 - Comment #32218: I have no idea what you're talking about, though I wish I did :(

jim writes at 12:18:29 02/28/08 - Comment #32193: I guess my point was that unlike the scripting bridge, or the java bridge, MacRuby has all the regular ruby objects descending directly from their NS counterparts. So all ruby strings are descended from NSString, etc... just seemed to me like it went a lot further then RubyCocoa or PyObjC, but I'm not as familiar with PyObjC as with RubyCocoa.

Anyways, I just looked at MacRuby for a few minutes at the start of the day and won't get a change to play around with it until the weekend, so my impressions aren't even half baked.

carolinian writes at 12:11:51 02/28/08 - Comment #32192: There's also PyObjC, the python tie-in. I haven't messed with Ruby, but PyObjC was a real PITA to work with, largely because it didn't have the real nice integration with XCode that Objective-C did and because PyObjC programs are structured codewise in a that's totally different from the proper order that Obj-C programmers expect them to be in.

It's also going in the other direction as well. With the enhancements that Apple's made to Obj-C, it's more like a scripting language, e.g. they added garbage collection to Obj-C 2.0 as well as a foreach-ish loop syntax.

In spite of Apple's moves to make Obj-C more like a scripting language, they still haven't included regular expressions in their API. something which astounds me to no end and makes all my scripting friends say "you gotta be kidding me!" When tasked with searching through lots of text for very specific things, it's at that point that non-Obj-C scripting languages provide a definite advantages as a workaround to Apple's stupidity.

Apple introduced the ruby scripting bridge to Leopard and you might have some fun playing with it.

:::link:::

Permalink: MacRuby.html
Words: 66

Category: programming

02/04/08 03:04 - ID#43176

woot!

I love refactoring when using specs, I know when I'm DONE.

Green means I can go to lunch now...

Permalink: _woot_.html
Words: 21

Category: programming

12/27/07 03:56 - ID#42663

4 Hours to Highlight a Box

Well this took a lot longer then I thought but it's reusable at least.

Click.

Click.

Click.

::Download Flash Video::

Permalink: 4_Hours_to_Highlight_a_Box.html
Words: 19

Category: programming

12/06/07 06:42 - ID#42416

Rails 2.0

Rails 2.0 just came out today. Long wait! Well I didn't really wait I've been using the dev versions all along, but still.

^_^

Permalink: Rails_2_0.html
Words: 22

Category: programming

11/06/07 10:07 - ID#42002

Microsoft Ruby .NET

Microsoft is creating a Ruby implementation for .NET -- I'm sure they will call it something ridiculous like Microsoft Ruby .NET Enterprise Extended Edition 2008. And charge a kajillion dollars for it. Awesome. Or that other thing, not awesome.

Permalink: Microsoft_Ruby_NET.html
Words: 38

Category: programming

10/29/07 09:51 - ID#41868

RubyConf

3 More days!!! I know I've posted about going before but I'm just really excited and am posting again.

I leave Thursday afternoon to go to RubyConf, and I think it's going to be a lot of fun. (e:James) is coming to lounge pool side while I soak in the knowledge.

Permalink: RubyConf.html
Words: 51

Category: programming

10/22/07 11:48 - ID#41757

RSpec with Autotest

(You can totally skip reading this journal, I am writing this for me and my happiness.)

This is the best thing ever. I am so glad that I took the time to look at this a few weeks ago after sort of putting it off for the last six months. I won't bore you all with the details (that's what (e:james) is around for), but I found a super awesome new tool for testing programs, I can't believe I didn't check it out six months ago when I first heard about it. (rspec)

Basically, instead of unit tests you write a live spec, that is continuously run as you code that notifies you of the status of all your tests open each save of a file. So now I don't even have to run my tests anymore, the freakin computer does it for me, and pops up a discrete message in the corner of the screen letting me know what's going on.

Happy tests:

Sad tests:

And writing tests with the new tool is also so much cleaner and nicer.

Old way (just random made up examples):

def test_something
  File.open("/tmp/file", 'W') do |f|
    f << test_data
  end 
  assert_equal "/tmp/file", Retrieve.file, "Should have found it!"
end

New way:

it "should find file path" do
  Retrieve.file.should equal("/tmp/file")
end

But, that is a bad example because it doesn't show all the mocking, like:

Retrieve.file("config") # => can not find
Retrieve.stub!(:file).expects("config").and_returns("/tmp/file")
Retrieve.file("config") # => "/tmp/file"

So that you can completely decouple all your tested classes from each other and external output, thus only testing very specific pieces of logic, and making testing ten times easier because you never have to set up infrastructure for it to work.

You can also just have empty tests, which act like a todo list - they show up when the tests run as pending, so it also acts like a roadmap.

Permalink: RSpec_with_Autotest.html
Words: 350

Category: programming

10/18/07 11:20 - ID#41706

Martin Fowler

LOLcoder

Permalink: Martin_Fowler.html
Words: 3

Category: programming

09/07/07 10:24 - ID#40985

RubyConf 2007

Registration just opened for Ruby Conference 2007. Hmm... a vacation about programming? In North Carolina in Buffalo's cold November?

I think I might just have to go...

Permalink: RubyConf_2007.html
Words: 26

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