It’s an amazing building, and I’m excited to make it our new home for the foreseeable future!
]]>When I started writing custom assertions, I did them the easy way:
def assert_includes(collection, item, message = nil)
assert collection.include?(item), message || "#{collection.inspect} should include #{item.inspect}."
end
Unfortunately, this looks and acts just slightly different from a normal assertion:
1) Failure:
[1, 2] should include 3.
<false> is not true.
Lucky for us, Test::Unit is nice enough to provide the building block that it uses for all of its assertions. The snippet is a little longer, but more idiomatic:
def assert_includes(collection, item, msg = nil)
full_message = build_message(msg, "? should include ?.", collection, item)
assert_block(full_message) do
collection.include?(item)
end
end
This looks much better:
1) Failure:
[1, 2] should include 3.
]]>
After installing the gem, it’s as simple as setting up your bundles in an assets.yml that looks something like this:
From code, these bundles can be referred to with the include_stylesheets and include_javascripts methods. When using these functions in development mode, the unminified, unbundled assets are included. In production environments, I wrote a capistrano task to bundle these up using the jammit command provided by the gem:
This minifies, bundles, and gzips all the assets and dumps them in the public/ directory, making generating these bundles something we don’t ever need to think about again.
Way better than the manual bundling rake tasks we were using before.
]]>For pretty much anything else, I just use the built-in stuff.
]]>So you have your function main().
main() calls a function called int foo(int x).
say you have a file that looks like this:
when the file is compiled, main has no idea what foo() is, if you’re even calling it right, etc. because it doesn’t know about foo() until after main is compiled. There are two ways you can fix this:
This works when you have functions that only need to be used in one file. But it won’t work if that function is called from functions in many different files.
2. Describe how foo() expects to be called before it is ever called, so main() can tell if it’s calling it right:
This lets you be more flexible, because the declaration int foo(int x); can exist in a bunch of different files that all need to call foo(), but you only need to repeat the first line and not the entire function. This way, anyone calling foo() doesn’t even need to care about what foo() does, just what they expect to shove into it and what they expect to get out of it.
Hope that helps.
]]>The Pragmatic Programmer - Not sure if this one is discounted, since it’s usually excluded, but like I said, it’s my #1 and I recommend every working developer read it.
Programming Ruby - This and _why’s guide are the books that got me into the language I use to make my living, and the only programming language I’ve ever felt fit my mental model of how programming should be. These days the 1.9 version would be the one to pick up, but this is the one that got me started.
Agile Web Development with Rails - The first edition of this book taught me Rails, and I’ve bought every edition since then. It’s still my go-to reference when I need to know something that’s not completely covered by the rdoc and I’m not willing to go source-diving for the answer.
Prototype and script.aculo.us - This is the book that taught me to stop looking at javascript as an annoyance, and start looking at it as an opportunity.
Programming Erlang - I’m going through this for the second time right now, and like all of the PragProg language books, it’s a great starting point. The language books of theirs I’ve read have done an amazing job of not only teaching the language, but making me excited to use it.
Programming Clojure - Like the above book, this is another great PragProg language book. I’m still not 100% sure what I think about the language, but if I decide to use it for a project, I know this will be my reference.
I’m a sports fan (Bears, Illini, Cubs, Blackhawks — yeah, Chicago native) and my second favorite sport just kicked off: College Basketball. To commemorate this, ESPN’s been showing a 24-hour college basketball marathon on TV and ESPN360 all day. Luckily for me, Comcast apparently signed a deal to bring ESPN360 to everyone that pays them for internet access, no matter where they are — awesome!
Apart from some Snow Leopard issues, it’s like Christmas came a month early! (or maybe like a bunch of first round tournament games, four months early)
]]>to make it modal.
I used it like this:
All that’s left is slapping some css on it!
]]>
It’s an amazing building, and I’m excited to make it our new home for the foreseeable future!
]]>This was a great post about the author of Instapaper, one of my favorite web tools. It’s the first thing since RSS that has totally changed the way I read, not just on the web, but in general.
Marco says it better than I could:
]]>From a personal perspective, I appreciate great writing, but I’ve become frustrated with the quick-consumption nature of many devoted blog readers. Authors are encouraged to cater to drive-by visitors hurrying through their feed readers by producing lightweight content for quick skimming.
There’s no time to sit and read anything when you’re going through 500 feed items while responding to email, chatting, and watching bad YouTube videos.
As a result, popular blogs are now full of useless “list posts” with no substance or value.
Well-written content is out there, and we do have opportunities every day to read it — just not when we’re in information-skimming, speed-overload mode.