Author Archives: Sarah

the future of mobile software engineering

Last week I participated in a Workshop on Mobile Software Engineering as part of the MobiCASE conference.  I had agreed to be an organizer last summer upon the request Martin Griss.  I was intrigued by the topic, but didn’t have a clear vision of what might come of the workshop.  I applaud Martin’s facilitating an [...]

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on fixing bugs…

An observation on bug fixing by new programmer @silverspin7987

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kid track at rubyconf?

I used to go to SIGGRAPH back in the ’90s where some of the graphics geeks would put together interactive exhibits specifically targeted at kids and the older kids would play with and create magical things using the latest tech. I got to wondering whether we could do such a thing Ruby-style at RubyConfX [...]

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rails 3: can we get back to 6 steps?

I think Rails 3 is awesome and kudos to the core team and hoards to contributors that made it happen.  However, I am sad that it has gotten more verbose to create a Rails app from scratch.  I know not everyone likes scaffold and not everyone uses rspec, but this is a common use case, [...]

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CFP: mobile software engineering

Is there anything special about mobile software development or is it the equivalent to developing for a very small laptop?  Do the devices and capabilities imply different patterns and processes?  Are there any implications for research and education?
The Workshop on Mobile Software Engineering in conjunction with MobiCASE 2010 will be exploring these questions.  Martin Griss [...]

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rails 3 vs. rails 2 validation errors

Not sure if this is a bug or a feature. I’d guess it is here for a reason, and maybe I’m late for noticing, but Rails 3 errors now provides an array for each attribute, whereas in Rails 2.3 it was just a string.  Here’s the output from two almost identical applications…
Loading development environment [...]

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on bootstrapping a business

I’m excited to speak tomorrow at the Bootstrapper’s Breakfast, a monthly event held in SF and other bay area cities.  There’s a lot of talk about fund-raising and venture-backed business these days, but there are also a lot of people just making their businesses happen with a series of small steps. I’ll give a very [...]

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ruby meetup in tokyo: asakusa.rb

Last night, Sarah Mei (@sarahmei) and I attended a Tokyo Ruby Meetup, asakusa.rb.  It was the 63rd (ish) meeting of this group of Rubyists that meets every Tuesday.  There are about 10 ruby core committers who attend this group, along with other developers who gather weekly to hack Ruby code.  This special meeting had an [...]

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lucene/solr meetup, july 28

I attended the Lucene/Solr meetup this week — quite a swank event sponsored by Salesforce with tasty appetizers, beers and an incredible view of the bay. The three speakers were very knowledgeable and well spoken and I enjoyed hearing about the different applications of Lucene and Solr. Below are my rough notes.  For [...]

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learning TDD through test-first teaching

In April, I spoke at the East Bay Ruby Meetup about Test-First Teaching both as a teaching methodology and as a path to learning about test-driven development.
Marakana kindly sponsored the recording of the talk. Max Walker did the video recording, production and and just posted it:

Another Ruby on Rails training at Marakana is coming [...]

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