New to Capistrano? Read my previous and more introductory blog post on Capistrano – Remote builds with Capistrano. Are you using Capistrano and are confused why the user environment, the PATH for example, is different from when you log on to your server via SSH? Perhaps you have failed to use RVM or other user [...]

Capistrano is a very nice open source tool for executing commands on one or multiple remote servers via SSH. Capistrano is written in Ruby and uses a rake-like DSL for its tasks. Its main use is to deploy web applications, Rails in particular, but it may be used for much more. Want to try? It’s [...]

I’m am looking forward to Øredev 2011 more than I have looked forward to any of the previous ones. The reason for this is that Øredev has finally become a leading conference for dynamic programming. Øredev has always been good in the enterprise sphere led by Java, .Net and mobile tracks, but it has been [...]

A quick tip in case you’re a Ruby person and haven’t used the Sprockets gem: Sprockets is a Rack application that serves assets (javascript, css, images etc) over HTTP. It’s built in to Rails 3.1 and DHH spent a significant portion of the RailsConf 2011 keynote promoting its benefits (although I’m not sure he ever mentioned its [...]

Another good Ruby book is out, Rails Anti-Patterns. The book is loaded with good tips on everything from following the Law of Demeter to cleaning up your views with the use of helper methods. Here are some things I picked up from the book. delegate can take a :prefix argument The delegate method from active_support [...]

Based on the book Exceptional Ruby by Avdi Grimm, I have developed a strategy for how I should deal with exceptions in Ruby. Being a very dynamic language, Ruby allows very flexible coding techniques. Exceptions are not an exception . When I am developing a library in Ruby I typically create one Error module and [...]

I am sure everybody has heard about Cucumber ( https://github.com/aslakhellesoy/cucumber) – a tool for Behaviour Driver Development where you describe software behavior in natural language that your customer can understand. Through step definitions these behavior descriptions are executed as automated tests. Cucumber serves as documentation, automated tests and development aid. My friend and colleague Christian [...]

José Valim is one of the newest members of the Rails core team. Apart from this he has also developed some good gems, Devise, Responders, and SimpleForm, that I use for almost every project. And now he has written a book, a really good book, about advanced Rails programming techniques, called Crafting Rails Applications. The [...]

Every second, the human brain is bombarded with information, the conscious part of the brain is only able to handle a tiny percentage of this. The rest is handled by our unconscious. A habit is an automatic reaction to a given situation. Habits allow us to do things automatically, without being consciously aware of what [...]

Emancipate yourself from mental slavery, none but ourselves can free our minds. –Bob Marley, Redemption Song There are a number of reasons to love Ruby and I will share some of them here. Ruby is influenced by some of the greatest languages ever invented: Perl, probably the most pragmatic language in the world, hell, even [...]

One of the great things about Ruby is the community. When something is not working out as well as it could, someone figures out a way to improve it. It used to be difficult to select what gems, Ruby libraries, to use when solving a task that I was not familiar with. This is not [...]

If you ask a Ruby programmer why he is using Ruby, you will probably get several answers like: It is dynamic. I allows me too keep my code DRY. I get results faster. Aside from all these statements, there is one statement that almost always comes up. I use Ruby because it makes me happy! [...]

Do you remember the time before 9/11 when you could arrive to the airport 10 minutes before the plane’s departure and just walk on to the plane. Now, you have to arrive at least an hour before the plane departs and you have to strip to get through a security. The security is just for [...]

I recently was contacted to implement an ASP.NET MVC application and I saw this as a great opportunity to compare it with Rails3. What immediately strikes you when you start with ASP.NET MVC is how similar it is to Rails. No one can steal ideas like Microsoft! Rails ASP.NET MVC Purpose (if not obvious) /app/models [...]

How to recursively delete all your files in all your buckets on an S3 account.