Samurai Coder blogs

Capistrano Growl notifications

Takaaki Kato — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 04:52:56 +0000

Growl notifications for the cap command. Nice.

The RSpec Book: Behaviour Driven Development with Ruby

Takaaki Kato — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 10:41:13 +0000

The Pragmatic Programmer announces the RSpec book.

From the website:

Behaviour Driven Development is about writing software that matters. It is an approach to agile software development that takes cues from Test Driven Development, Domain Driven Design, and Acceptance Test Driven Planning.

RSpec is the leading Behaviour Driven Development tool in Ruby. It supports Test Driven Development in Ruby through the BDD lens, keeping your focus on design and documentation while also supporting thorough testing and quick fault isolation. Cucumber, RSpec’s steadfast companion, supports Acceptance Test Driven Planning with business-facing, executable requirements documentation that helps to ensure that you are writing relevant software targeted at real business need.

The RSpec Book will introduce you to RSpec, Cucumber, and a number of other tools that make up the Ruby BDD family. Replete with tutorials and practical examples, the RSpec Book will help you get your BDD on, taking you from executable requirements to working software that is clean, well tested, well documented, flexible and highly maintainable.

Books In Interest

Takaaki Kato — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 10:34:28 +0000

Merb, Rails, XMPP, Drupal… Lots of books to read.

Suggest New Ruby Courses at RubyLearning

Takaaki Kato — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 06:08:02 +0000

RubyLearning is asking users for what they would like to see in future courses. Please take your time to cast your vote. Also leave your comments for any additional requests.

To 40% of You

Takaaki Kato — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 05:47:12 +0000

40% of all the accesses to Samurai Coder come from the United States. I honestly hate embedding any YouTube video on my holy website, but it’s special.

Vote.

Update: You picked the right one. (2008-11-05 21:10 JST)

iPhone App for O'reilly Library

Takaaki Kato — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 02:26:40 +0000

Safari Books Online:

With Safari Bookbag, the new Safari Books Online iPhone application, you can read your favorite Safari books on the go! All you need is a valid Safari Books Online account that includes the ability to download PDFs of book content, and an active wireless network connection. It’s simple:

Collect your favorite PDFs in My Downloads.

Install the Bookbag application from the Apple Application Store.

Sign in, and sync your PDFs to your iPhone.

Read Safari Books Online whenever and wherever you want.

Safari Bookbag works on all iPhone and iPod touch devices with OS v2.1 or higher.

Your Safari Library on your pocket. The app is free. Amazing.

EnvtCasts on Ruby on Rails 2.2

Takaaki Kato — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 02:00:58 +0000

The second episode from EnvyCasts. You could buy the screencast and the PDF. “The Ultimate Guide to Rails 2.2.”

Installing FXRuby on Mac OS X Leopard

Takaaki Kato — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 14:21:22 +0000

I spent a couple of hours to install FXRuby.

If you are using ruby that comes with Leopard, you can use:

sudo gem install fxruby

But if you installed ruby with MacPorts, use MacPorts to install FXRuby. The gem is made against OS X-built in Ruby.

sudo port install rb-fxruby

You can run:

require 'fox16'

in IRB.

Shoulda Generators

Takaaki Kato — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 02:13:59 +0000

technicalpickles:

Rails generators which produce tests using shoulda instead of straight up Test::Unit. Other goodies as well.

Very handy. You can pick ERB instead of HAML. It’s up to you.

Agile Testing: A Practical Guide for Testers and Agile Teams

Takaaki Kato — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 14:33:48 +0000

Safari Books Online:

Agile methods are revolutionizing software development, and one of the key principles of agile development is that developers write tests. But if that’s the case, what’s the role of a tester? Do agile teams need members with QA backgrounds? And what does it really mean to be an “agile tester?”

Two of the world’s most experienced agile testing practitioners and consultants, Lisa Crispin and Janet Gregory, have teamed up to bring you the definitive answers to these questions. In Agile Testing: A Practical Guide for Testers and Agile Teams, Crispin and Gregory not only define agile testing and the role of testers in an agile team, they approach the agile testing area from every possible angle, dealing with organizational challenges, teaching you how to use the agile testing quadrants, chronicling an agile software development iteration from the viewpoint of a tester, and explaining the seven key success factors of agile testing. (emphasis in original)

Available as a “Rough Cut”.

Refactoring to Agility

Takaaki Kato — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 00:39:27 +0000

Refactoring to Agility is a short but good read. Available as one of the “Short Cuts” series on O’reilly Safari.

Elements of Ruby Style

Takaaki Kato — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 05:21:46 +0000

Elements of Ruby Style. I always think about what the best way to make my code more readable by space, indent and other techniques. I of course follow other developers to know how they do.

I hope this sort of discussion will continue on the blogsphere.

I will put my way of doing if time permits.

Set up Ruby on Rails, TextMate and MySQL on Mac OS X 10.5 "Leopard"

Takaaki Kato — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 11:52:23 +0000

I started the writing project on GitHub. Please visit the project page. This will discuss what you need for development. I included the email as a topic because mostly likely you need to have a better control of emails. Other topics may include version controls and issue trackers.

I hope that the documentation will get you started with working with rails. I’m not covering everything in details.

Update: I renewed the project name. Please visit http://github.com/samuraicoder/samuraicoder-way/tree/master.

Enterprise Rails

Takaaki Kato — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 16:46:36 +0000

O’Reilly - Safari Books Online:

What does it take to develop an enterprise application with Rails? Enterprise Rails introduces several time-tested software engineering principles to prepare you for the challenge of building a high-performance, scalable website with global reach. You’ll learn how to design a solid architecture that ties the many parts of an enterprise website together, including the database, your servers and clients, and other services as well. Many Rails developers think that planning for scale is unnecessary. But there’s nothing worse than an application that fails because it can’t handle sudden success. Throughout this book, you’ll work on an example enterprise project to learn first-hand what’s involved in architecting serious web applications.

A new book by Dan Chak. Available on O’reilly Safari.

Free Ruby Learning

Takaaki Kato — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 13:15:47 +0000

It’s free. Led by an instructor and assistant mentors. It’s community-based. The forums are the place where students and teachers discuss. If you get tired of “one-way teaching”, Ruby Learning is for you. Many Japanese, myself included, are enrolled in the upcoming course (8th batch of the Ruby Core course).