Articles

Benchmarking Ruby exception handling

Which is better, handling an exception or explicitly checking to see whether or not your code is going to break? The answer is “it depends”. On the one hand exception handling allows us to write more legible code (often summed up by the saying “it’s easier to ask forgiveness than permission”). On the other, handling an exception is often a costly operation; it can be faster to “look before you leap”.

Fixing the Xcode Project Templates

I recently upgraded my copy of Xcode and installed the iPhone SDK. A short while later, while following an example in the Pragmatic Programmer’s Cocoa Programming book, I found that my copy of Xcode wasn’t creating some key files.

Ruby Manor

Ruby Manor is one of those alternative conferences. It’s not run for a profit, and costs just £8 for a ticket (you pay just enough to cover the cost of the room and equipment). You even get a free beer afterwards in the local boozer (and it’s at least £3 a pint in London these days). Due to the unique way that Ruby Manor is funded (actually, that’s nothing to do with it) you can even check the bar bill.

3 Unix commands for finding performance problems

A user recently reported a performance problem on one of our Rails apps. I pulled up New Relic’s performance graphs and checked what was happening around the time that we received the email. Sure enough there was a massive spike in the time taken to serve a request.

Creating the Proper Environment for an Agile Team

Building an Environment

Live From Harmony

After more than a year and a half of self-funded work on and off, Harmony is almost ready. It is so close in fact, that we (Steve and I) are beginning to eat our own dog food by moving our own sites into it. Rails Tips is the first to go live (if you can see this post, you are a witness) and I’m not going to lie, it feels good!

Cramp: Asychronous Event-Driven Ruby Web App Framework

got-the-cramp.pngCramp (GitHub repo)is a new, asychronous evented Web app framework by Pratik Naik of 37signals (and the Rails core team).

See You In Boston For WordCamp

WordCamp Boston 2010

Ruby Tips: Numeric Classes

This article was originally included in the September issue of the Engine Yard Newsletter. To read more posts like this one, subscribe to the Engine Yard Newsletter.

In this series, Evan Phoenix, Rubinius creator and Ruby expert, presents tips and tricks to help you improve your knowledge of Ruby.

Brightbox sponsors NWRUG, 21st January, Manchester

I’m speaking at this month’s North West Ruby Group meeting about some of the tools available that can be used to solve common Ruby and Rails deployment and development problems. “UNIX: Rediscovering the wheel”.

Brightbox is also sponsoring the meeting so there will be free pizza afterwards (free as in pizza, not as in speech).

More details on the NWRUG blog page.

Hope to see you there!

Contest: Free iPhone Oxford Dictionary | Rails Fire

Contest: Free iPhone Oxford Dictionary

I’m not big on publicizing commercial works due to the obvious bias involved, but we’ve recently finished up the Oxford American College Dictionary and Thesaurus for the iPhone and our client was nice enough to give us a few free download codes. Never one to waste free stuff I thought I’d offer them up to my readers.

So here’s the deal – to distribute these free downloads of our Oxford Dictionary for the iPhone (appstore) I’m going to run a little contest: Post your favorite word in the comments along with your preferred usage of the word (like an example sentence). I’ll pick my favorite five entries after a week or so and will email you your promo codes (so be sure to leave your email address in the comment form). Note: I am a sucker for humor and wit, so be liberal in your application of them.

Most real iPhone dictionaries (from respected publications) go for upwards of $20 – $30 so this is a pretty decent value.

Now wow me with your vocabulary.

The winning words are: sesquipedalian, recidivist, floccinaucinihilipilification, obsequious (indirectly) and esquivalience

You guys should be getting your promo codes in a few minutes. Thanks for the submissions everybody! (and, yes, all these words are in the dictionary app)

tags: iPhone,
dictionary