Virtuous Code - Latest Comments

Re: Configuring database_cleaner with Rails, RSpec, Capybara, and Selenium

Colin Bradley — Fri, 10 May 2013 06:58:02 -0000

Also worth adding that it's important, that in the config you put the before(:each, :js => true) block above the DatabaseCleaner.start block (as it is in the example) - I just spent a while figuring out why my capybara tests were hanging, and this was the problem (clearly setting the strategy after starting the cleaner doesn't work so well...!). Thanks a bundle for the post though, extremely helpful.

Re: Null Objects and Falsiness

Jan Dvořák — Wed, 08 May 2013 06:10:47 -0000

You _can_ use `nil` if you dare:

class Object
def method_missing (name, *args)
nil
end
end

Re: RubyMine, Spork, RSpec, Cucumber

Ricardo Keigo Andrade — Sun, 05 May 2013 00:08:10 -0000

Still valid on RubyMine 5.4 for Guard users. Thanks for keeping the information available.

Re: Your Code is My Hell

Erik Reppen — Fri, 03 May 2013 15:42:16 -0000

I think the history of Java (lol @ java/C# devs having any more OOP discipline than people from other backgrounds btw - haven't seen much C++) is proof positive that you cannot enforce good practices through language or tool design. Anybody who thinks public vanilla getters and setters are somehow preserving encapsulation better than public properties should have their IDEs slapped out of their hands until they've learned to value maintainability and how to actually think about what they're doing from the act of writing code without one. The problem is that there will always be people who don't want to learn more than they have to and there will always be people delighted to pay them less now so somebody else can pay ten-fold later.

Re: Your Code is My Hell

Erik Reppen — Fri, 03 May 2013 15:17:43 -0000

Rails promises rapid results. Rapid results are attractive to people with short term priorities. In my experience in Chicago it's the popular choice for startups writing prototypes and marketing/interactive agencies writing throwaway apps. I don't personally like rails but I don't blame the technology so much as management for failing to understand how much value is lost when no effort is put on hiring experienced devs who can write maintainable code. For greenfield work it really shouldn't add that much time.

Re: Your Code is My Hell

Erik Reppen — Fri, 03 May 2013 15:12:50 -0000

What good practices does jQuery break? It's just a function that spits out adapter/decorator objects for normalizing and reducing cruft in the DOM API. IMO, a very well-written one that you could a learn a lot about JavaScript from. But it mostly just covers the DOM. It doesn't architect apps for you.

Re: Use revision control annotation in your editor

Avdi Grimm — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 16:12:45 -0000

:-D

Re: Use revision control annotation in your editor

Alexander Petrov — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 16:09:39 -0000

Absolutely amazing! Avdi, you made my day! Thank you very much! Now I love emacs far more! Emacs rocks!

Re: Preventing Recursion in Ruby

FrankInBoise — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 13:58:26 -0000

I tried to use this code to prevent recursion with a validate method in a model. It didn't prevent. Is there anything unique to the validate method that would prevent the prevent from working?

Re: Why Linux

Alexei Pashkovsky — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 14:45:11 -0000

Would agree with every word, having similar experience and getting back to linux every time I need something "reliable and with understandable problems and ways to debug them".
And we are in 2013 now, running ubuntu on Zenbook U32, after using mcb air for almost a year.

Re: Rack-Test and Capybara are uneasy bedfellows

Ben Lakey — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 00:08:23 -0000

I ran into this as well. When requesting a page via capybara with 'visit', rack-test's 'last_response' wasn't set at all. I kept getting "Rack::Test::Error: No response yet. Request a page first."

Re: Taking a break from pair programming

Avdi Grimm — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 19:53:30 -0000

Offhand: http://tripledogdare.net/

I'm hoping to compile a list of people offering similar services, but I'm behind on that project and I need to figure out how I "vet" them before recommending them.

Re: Class.new and .inherited()

Avdi Grimm — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 19:49:55 -0000

Yay!

Re: Taking a break from pair programming

Tushar Saxena — Sun, 24 Mar 2013 17:50:24 -0000

As a former client of yours, any other people you'd like to recommend for pairing now that you are (temporarily) hanging up your boots?

Re: Class.new and .inherited()

Dan Kubb — Sun, 24 Mar 2013 02:34:23 -0000

Avdi, it looks like this behaviour was changed in 1.9. The output is no longer reversed when you do Class.new(A) { ... }.

Re: Use revision control annotation in your editor

Kristian Hellquist — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 16:02:43 -0000

Great, thanks. I'll start investigating vc-mode

Re: Use revision control annotation in your editor

Avdi Grimm — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 16:38:51 -0000

There is actually very little overlap between the two. Magit is for managing a whole project under revision control. It's what I use when I'm selecting files/hunks for a commit, for instance. Or pushing, pulling, rebasing---anything that takes effect project-wide.

vc-mode, OTOH, is totally buffer/file-focused. It won't show you the state of your whole project, but it will tell you quite a bit about the file you are currently looking at.

In short: they are complementary!

Re: Use revision control annotation in your editor

Kristian Hellquist — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 16:18:06 -0000

You use both vc-* and magit? What is vc-* doing better than magit? Love to hear your take on that :-)

Re: RubyTapas Freebie: Scanning a String

Avdi Grimm — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 15:24:07 -0000

I'm putting it on the list!

Re: Using “and” and “or” in Ruby

Avdi Grimm — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 15:18:40 -0000

For better or for worse, Ruby is a very "big" language. I think if we are going to write all of our code with the newbie reader in mind (and that's not an awful idea), we'd be better off using a smaller language like Python or a Lisp.

That said, I think you have to be sensitive to context. In some projects the expectation may be that everyone knows their way around Ruby. In others, where teams are larger and/or there's a lot of churn, it may be better to keep to a subset of the language.

Re: Using “and” and “or” in Ruby

Avdi Grimm — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 15:12:33 -0000

This is a good justification for never, ever using both 'and' and 'or' in the same line.

Re: Using “and” and “or” in Ruby

Robby Grossman — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 12:05:05 -0000

Thanks for writing this up, Avdi. Even years later I find myself sending this post around to people as the de facto reference on "and/or" vs "&&/||".

Do you feel that the benefits of "and" and "or" as control flow operators are significant enough to merit using them, given how commonly confused they are with the binary operators? I've always felt a concern that someone will read them in code and, like me some years ago, mistake them for being synonyms and then use them incorrectly. As such I feel it's safer to use && and || for control flow, adding parentheses where needed to alter their precedence.

Re: Use revision control annotation in your editor

Avdi Grimm — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 11:30:07 -0000

Magit is indispensable! Best ui for git anywhere.

Re: RubyTapas Freebie: Scanning a String

Bradley — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 09:52:56 -0000

Avdi, if you do an episode on that, could you include code smells or best practices for match? I often wind having something like this
obj.match.try(:[],1) to protect me from nil bombs.
Thanks again,
Brad

Re: Use revision control annotation in your editor

Kristian Hellquist — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 07:48:15 -0000

Thanks for the tip. You don't use magit? I found it a bit a slow sometimes.