Not Actually Grumpy
By Jared Norman
issues
XIII: Coherent Commits
I frequently use the idea of "coherence" to guide how I group changes into commits and break features down for implementation. I've never attempt to flesh that idea out or describe it, so here's my attempt.We take our version control practices seriously at Su…
XII: My Ruby Journey
Ruby's first public release was in 1995. With the release of Rails in the mid 2000s, it surged in popularity just as I was finishing high school and starting a computer science degree (which I never finished) at the University of Victoria.At the time, I was p…
XI: Reinventing Ruby
My last few issues have been about software patterns, which got me thinking about Ruby's relationship with the programming resources from the broader object-oriented community.While everyone's experience in learning Rails will be different, you'll usually sta…
X: The Service Object
My previous issue talked about how I prefer to avoid adding additional categorization to the classes and objects that I build in Rails apps. In it, I touched on some of my gripes with the service object pattern. Let's explore the subject a little more.I menti…
IX: Everything is a Model
In the previous issue I talked about how I like to use structs rather than "presenters" in a lot of cases. When I recommend people do things like this, I'm often faced with a question:Where do I put those classes? What folder do they go in?They go in app/mode…
VIII: The Presenter Anti-Pattern in Ruby
The "presenter" pattern is a relatively common pattern to see used in Rails apps. I'll be up front that it's not really an anti-pattern. I only said that so you'd click. It's a totally fine pattern.For many use cases however, there's a better pattern.The Pres…
VII: A Few Things I Believe About Building Software
A backlog is not a plan.Project management tools exist to create legibility for those who seek to control, rather than administer, development teams.The smaller the increments you deliver and the more feedback you can get, the less time you need to spend plan…
VI: Solidus Conf 7 Recap
With Solidus's seventh annual-ish conference wrapped up, I wanted to share my thoughts on where we're at as a project and a community, as well as fill in the gaps for those that weren't able to attend.
V: Solidus Conf 7
Solidus Conf 7 is this week! Solidus, the open-source, Rails-based eCommerce platform that I work with primarily, is a pretty unique beast. I've talked previously here about how I feel its biggest strength is its flexibility.Another strength it has is communi…
IV: A Philosophy of Testing Rails Applications
Rails wasn't designed with testing in mind, but people seem to be doing their best with what they've got. What you'll find below is my attempt at synthesizing all the helpful testing wisdom that people have shared with me over the years into a coherent approa…
III: Bullish on Solidus
If you're new around here, Solidus is an open-source eCommerce platform built with Ruby on Rails. It's a Rails Engine that provides a ready-to-deploy storefront, admin, API, and more out of the box. It's governed by a core team and stakeholders group, each ma…
II: Test Taxonomies
The Ruby community has largely embraced automated testing, but that means that people often find themselves expected to write tests without having learned the purpose (or purposes) of automated tests. It's pretty common for me to encounter someone writing a t…
I: 2021 Advent of Code Reflections
This year, like last, I completed the Advent of Code puzzles. I'm always surprised when I jump into these puzzles by how much my normal approach to writing code fails, but the ideas behind it still succeed.My approach to development is heavily based on the id…