Category Archives: Engineering

All about the engineering side of software development

Code Coverage — a simple Rails example

By Paul Barnes-Hoggett | Published: September 18, 2014

My tests are my safety net. With them I can refactor with confidence, knowing that I’m keeping the functionality I intended. With them, I can grow my codebase, knowing that I’m not introducing regression errors. How do I have confidence that my safety net is good enough? One metric I can use to help with this […]

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Getting Growl notifications from your Virtual Machine

By Paul Barnes-Hoggett | Published: September 7, 2014

As I develop I have Guard running in the background, executing my tests when things change. But I often don’t have the Terminal window front and centre, so I like to have Growl notifications for my test results. Setting up Growl to push notifications from the Virtual Machine to the host is a little tricky, so here’s a […]

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Using Spring with RSpec and Guard to speed up testing

By Paul Barnes-Hoggett | Published: September 4, 2014

In my last post I showed you how to setup Guard and RSpec so you can automatically run tests when things change. Now lets get things cooking on gas by using the Spring application preloader. This will mean that your app framework will only have to load once, and tests will be super zippy. Setting up […]

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Getting Started with Guard and RSpec

By Paul Barnes-Hoggett | Published: September 4, 2014
"Detroit Publishing Co. - A Yeoman of the Guard (N.B. actually a Yeoman Warder), full restoration" by Adam Cuerden, Detroit Publishing Company - http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2002696943/. Licensed under Public domain via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Detroit_Publishing_Co._-_A_Yeoman_of_the_Guard_(N.B._actually_a_Yeoman_Warder),_full_restoration.jpg#mediaviewer/File:Detroit_Publishing_Co._-_A_Yeoman_of_the_Guard_(N.B._actually_a_Yeoman_Warder),_full_restoration.jpg

As I build out an application I want to ensure it’s behaving as I intend it. RSpec is a great framework for testing Ruby code, and is the tool I use most for my testing. But tests are pretty useless if you don’t run them, and rather than manually run tests when I change things, […]

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Compiling Ruby from source for your development environment

By Paul Barnes-Hoggett | Published: August 31, 2014

For most of us, downloading the development package of Ruby for your platform will suffice. For the curious, or those needing a Ruby version that doesn’t have a pre-built package available you have to resort to compiling ruby from source code. Fortunately, as we have built ourselves a clean development environment using Vagrant, this is […]

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Building A Pristine Rails Virtual Machine

By Paul Barnes-Hoggett | Published: August 28, 2014

A (thankfully) long time ago in a galaxy far far away I developed web apps in Flash. And when I had to target different versions I had to go through a whole rigamarole of uninstalling and reinstalling plugins. Fast forward to now and I’m often working on projects in Ruby. I’ve found RVM and gemsets […]

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Using Puppet and Vagrant to make a one-click development environment

By Paul Barnes-Hoggett | Published: August 26, 2014
Rees's Polygraph

Keeping a development environment clean and tidy can be a bitch. When you are working on multiple projects across different platforms it can get messy really fast. And if you’re managing a team of people and need them all to run your app locally things can get tricky too. Recently I’ve setup a process so […]

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Performance – spend it wisely and never raise the debt ceiling

By Paul Barnes-Hoggett | Published: August 6, 2011

The US had it’s credit rating downgraded yesterday. For many people, it seems at first a little abstract and vaguely ominous—a chance for China to get it’s own back after being harangued by the US on its undervaluation of the Yuen. Maybe the outcome will be catastrophic, maybe not so much. Only time will tell. […]

Also posted in Quality Software, Software Estimation | Leave a comment

Have you been hurt by code reuse? Learn from De Niro

By Paul Barnes-Hoggett | Published: July 6, 2011

Ever used someone else’s code; a library or sample app online? Ever got to a point where it’s been so mind-bendingly painful that you rue the day you ever found the stupid ‘library’ in the first place? If not then chances are you’re not a developer, you’re this guy, or you’re delusional. Spurred by a […]

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Try this, my mini-application for software estimation

By Paul Barnes-Hoggett | Published: July 5, 2011

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about a simple yet powerful process for software estimation. When I was done I started to look at my excel worksheet for doing this process and figured that it could be something I could share with a broader audience. Rather than just post an excel file, I decided […]

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