If you were touched or outraged by the Troy Davis case, don’t allow the same thing to happen to another man. This is Rodney Reed and like Troy Davis there is no physical evidence tying Rodney to the crime that he was accused of committing. In fact, there is very real evidence leading to another suspect all together. Rodney was tried by an all white jury in southern Texas and sentenced to death. Let’s show the murderers that took the life of Troy Davis that we are not going anywhere anytime soon. This is a movement, not a moment.
Here is a link to the free, streaming documentary regarding Rodney and his story: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4864052717720140330
auto reblog for SIGNAL BOOST!
Again, ugh
(via jsmooth995)
Source: lifeoncinnabarisland
This photo makes me blindingly mad. I did not leave my war-torn country and spend 12 years struggling to carve out a decent life just to go through this shit all over again.
Adding test coverage on an existing model, part 4 - preset fields
As the last post in which I will discuss covering a part of the model with tests, I will look at a method the original developer called preset_fields. To give you a bit of a background, in order to start and complete any job, there needs to be a way for the company to quote parts of that job to different subcontractors. To make this easier, when a job is created, the application creates an empty quote section or sections, based on the job category selected. This lowers the mental load on the user and lets them move just a bit quicker.
Hopefully this makes the following code easier to digest:
The usage as it is right now:
I’m unsure whether this could be stuck into an after_create filter or left as is or if it’s even a good idea to do this in this way. However, I can deal with that later. Right now, I need to make sure that all of the logic branches in this method are covered. I also do not like to hang logic on strings. For one, this logic only works if the site is in English. For another, in this app, category names are configurable by the user. ‘Repair’ might be named ‘Improvement’, for example. Another thing to look at during the refactoring stage.
Anyhow, here are the specs:
Ugh, each spec has an awkward setup phase. The code looks fairly simple, but it relies on whole lot of state being present. Replicating this state in order to make sure each logic branch does what it’s supposed to is not easy. I am unsure what to do here, but I don’t like how these specs look.
So, now that these methods are more or less covered with tests, I’m going to start refactoring. That’s left for another day.
Adding test coverage on an existing model, part 3 - Dynamic search thingamabob
Up tonight is an attempt to test a class method named search. This class method enables the user to search for existing active jobs using a few different properties like name, ID and PO # given to the user by the client. It’s a nice piece of user functionality as it lowers the mental load for the user.
Personally, I would implement this specific requirement with an existing gem, like searchlogic or ransack, or implement a proper full-text search engine like sphinx. These are still options available, but firstly, I need to understand what exactly this method does. The implementation is as follows:
Hrm, that’s a pretty confusing piece of code. I’m not exactly sure how this is used, so let me ack this method call quickly and see what comes up. This is what I find:
Hrm, I don’t like that at all. I see a weirdly named method and I see strings that look like SQL being passed in. Let me look at the weirdly named method.
Yep, that’s what I thought. OK, I think I know how to test this now. Here are the specs that exercise both branches of that method.
Good. I know what and how. Searching is messy and I understand now why it’s best to implement an already existing solution rather than attempting to tackle one yourself. I am putting the replacement of this code with a gem high on my TODO list, which is growing by leaps and bounds.
This was a thorny one. Providing a simple and intuitive UI for users, especially non-technical ones, is hard and it leads to the mess of code like the above. Lesson learned.
Adding test coverage on an existing model, part 2 - display methods
Now that there is some semblance of test coverage on this model, I’m moving on to other low-hanging fruit. I noticed that there are two methods named display_name and display_shortname.
My immediate thought is that these methods should probably be in a presenter, but since right now we’re concerned with getting the model covered with tests, I’ll just work out the logic and see if I can’t maybe simplify them a touch.
Here are the implementations of the methods:
Hrm, there’s a few logic branches there, so there’ll be a few specs, I guess:
OK, I’m reasonably happy with that. I’ve covered the possibility that the name might somehow be nil, although the validations should catch that. I don’t like concatenation of strings using + as it looks ugly in the source and I’ve heard that the performance of string concatenation in that way is worse than the way I normally do it. So let’s fix that:
OK, that looks better to me. I’m not sure how I can pretty up the i18n call. Any suggestions would be welcome here. I run the tests and find them passing. Moving on.
Next up, let me take a look at the display_work_window method. From the looks of it, it checks the job’s start and end time and displays a message based on the state of those two fields. I’m guessing it’s being used in the display on the dashboard as an activity notification. A quick ack command confirms my guess. Its only invocation is in a view that’s called from the user’s dashboard.
OK, since there are a few branches, let me make sure that I exercise them all. Here’s the method’s implementation:
As you can see there’s a default message and then a message for each state. I won’t try to refactor this now, but I’ll try to test it all to enable the refactoring in the future.
OK, that makes me feel good and I’m building up a momentum here. I’ve knocked off a few low-hanging things and I’ve gotten a feel for the system.
There are definitively things to improve here. The + string concatenation is everywhere, annoying me. The messages are hard coded into the model, begging to be broken into a view or a presenter. Anyway, enough for now.
Adding test coverage on an existing model, part 1 - Validations
So, true to my word, but almost 3 months later :/, I’m going to detail some of my techniques for adding test coverage to an app that’s already in production paying bills.
After thinking about it for a while, I came to the common sense conclusion that before trying to fix things, I should cover the existing code with as many tests as possible. So, here we go.
When I first started on this task, I noticed that the model central to the operation of the entire app didn’t even have field validations on it. The fact that this app operated fine without what everyone knows as the basic building block of a Rails app was an illuminating moment for me. I asked my boss, the original developer and business stakeholder, what fields the Job model needed. I took the list and implemented the simplest validation ever.
This caused the following change to the model, as expected:
I’m omitting the rest of the model here for clarity.
I looked over the Admin::JobsController to make sure that this requirement didn’t break anything. Since the app was scaffolded, the requisite error handling parts were already in place.
An important note: I was only focusing on testing the models initially. I fixed the generated controller specs where I needed to and added extra tests while I was there. However, most of my focus was to be in the models.
Exactly what I was thinking
From Issue #23 - SOLID design principles:
The mistake I made was thinking that splitting different aspects of functionality into modules was a valid way of respecting the single responsibility principle. But this is deeply flawed thinking, because the end result of pulling in roughly 50 methods into a single object by mixing in 8 modules results in a single object, Prawn::Document having 60+ public methods all sharing the same state and namespace. Any illusion of a physical separation of concerns is all smoke and mirrors here.
This is exactly my argument whenever anyone fields the argument that modules can be used to make a Ruby object conform to the Single Responsibility Principle. Well done, Greg.
Imitation is sincerest form of flattery
Inspired by Chris Strom’s chain of posts on the SPDY protocol, I’ve decided to quite literally rip off that format and apply it to my current topic of interest.
So, starting tomorrow, I will start a chain of posts chronicling my attempts to get an existing Rails 3 app under good test coverage. I hope to turn this into a presentation of some form later on. I’d also love feedback on the chain, as I’m looking to learn here, as well.
I’m excited to get going
The MongoDB NoSQL Database Blog: Getting started with VMware CloudFoundry, MongoDB and Rails
Last week, VMware launched Cloud Foundry: an open-source platform as a service. It’s pretty radical in that not only can you run your apps on infrastructure operated by VMware, you can also download Cloud Foundry itself and run it on your own machines!
But what’s most awesome about Cloud…
Source: mongodb
Stupid rules
The FAA’s website indicates the agency is not fully sure how electronic waves might interfere with airline avionics, but they want to make sure passengers remain safe. According to the site, “there are still unknowns about the radio signals that portable electronic devices and cell phones give off.”
From: http://news.travel.aol.com/2011/03/25/do-electronic-gadgets-really-affect-an-airplanes-instruments/
In other words, “We haven’t investigated if electronic devices affect airplane electronics, but after thinking for a minute, it sounds like that should be the case. Also, we don’t plan to investigate, but since we have so much power when it comes to air travel and we can kick off any passenger for any reason whatsoever, we don’t need to. So, fuck you and you can’t use your mobile device, haha.”
Stupid rules are stupid.
Twitter dev fuckup
From the twitter-api-announce mailing list:
“Still, our user research shows that consumers continue to be confused by the different ways that a fractured landscape of third-party Twitter clients display tweets and let users interact with core Twitter functions. For example, people get confused by websites or clients that display tweets in a way that doesn’t follow our design guidelines, or when services put their own verbs on tweets instead of the ones used on Twitter. Similarly, a number of third-party consumer clients use their own versions of suggested users, trends, and other data streams, confusing users in our network even more. Users should be able to view, retweet, and reply to @nytimes’ tweets the same way; see the same profile information about @whitehouse; and be able to join in the discussion around the same trending topics as everyone else across Twitter.”
I read this as “Why in the hell are you people writing and using unofficial Twitter clients?”
A question to my Cucumber-using peeps
How do you deal with ever-expanding step definition files?
From everything I’ve read, it seems that it’s acceptable to have multiple scenarios per feature file. However, this means that each scenario will have steps that are identical to other scenarios in that feature. This also means that there’ll be steps unique to a scenario and all these steps go into the same step definition file. Well, at least, I put them in the same file.
So, this brings up the question above. How does one manage a situation like this? Is it acceptable to have a huge step definition file? If not, how do I break it up?
MongoDB map/reduce
Note to self: Map/Reduce in MongoDB relies on having documents with the same key/value as one of the properties. It will not total up numeric values, if the documents holding these values have no K/V pairs in common.
Examples of what I’m on about
This will work:
This will not:
Repeat to remember
Documents must share a K/V pair in order to execute MapReduce in Mongo.
I’ve been told…by myself.
Authentication with Rails 3, Devise & MongoMapper
This is just a quick post about combining the above three libraries and one specific challenge I encountered. This mostly for my own documentation than anything else.
Overview
I am writing an app running on MongoDB. I chose to interface with the database through MongoMapper and decided to use Devise as my authentication library. The latter two interface well, but that interaction is poorly documented. Most documentation focuses on another popular ODM for Mongo called Mongoid.
The installation and setup procedures for all these libraries are well-documented elsewhere, I will only mention that MongoMapper should be installed from source, using the rails3 branch.
The gotcha
I followed all the instructions included in the Github wikis of each library above and ended up with a nice User model set up with all of the Devise macros for the model, which is cool.
The Devise generator also set up attr_accessible for me, which is one of the best practices of Rails development as anyone experienced will tell you.
This is where I ran into a gotcha.
Having created the first user through the console and having set up the password for that account, I proceeded to create the New User form. I included all the fields needed for the creation of a user, including the password and password confirmation fields.
I drove through the UI and noticed that Devise was throwing an error message saying ‘Password cannot be blank’. This was weird as I was passing the values for the two fields in from the form.
Experienced Rails devs will probably shout at their screens right about now saying, “attr_accessible, check attr_accessible!!”. They’re right, of course. Adding password and password_confirmation to attr_accessible fixes the problem.
Now that I think about it
It’s kinda weird that Devise did not add the two fields to attr_accessible, even though it clearly needed them to successfully save a document. Maybe this is an issue with the generator provided with the library and it’s something to look into.
Leap prepared
I had a brief discussion with Steven Bristol of LessAccounting fame on Twitter today about launching a business of one’s own. He’s not the first one to offer vague, non-specific advice over Twitter on this topic, but it’s this last discussion that inspired me to make a post about it.
Background
Don’t get me wrong, he isn’t the only one giving vague advice about how to get started, many people on the internet do. I understand that to an extent, as each person has their own specific set of circumstances that affect the decision. However, I do feel that there is a common set of things that are applicable to everyone considering starting a company and I want to list them here.
Obligatory tl; dr; section
- Two ways to start up, full time and part-time
- If full-time, have 3-6 months of salary in the bank
- A bank loan is considered bootstrapping
- Be incorporated
- Have a clear plan
- Have a prototype ready
- Have your market tested
- Have a sales guy you trust
Let’s go
Part-time vs Full-time
So, firstly, there are two ways to get going with your own company. These are interchangeable and you’ll probably do them both in the beginning. To strike out your own company, you can do it part-time ala 37Signals and many other companies style or you can do completely jump in and make a clean break.
I think there’s a fine balance here and the rest of this post may explain why. I like the thought of the clean break, being able to focus on the only thing that matters which is launching your business. However, this may be an idealist point of view and there are reasons why part-time works better.
Have 3 to 6 months of salary in the bank
I haven’t seen this verbalized anywhere else (I may have overlooked it), but the only time I’ve heard anyone talk about this was on a few Boagworld1 episodes. Basically, most of web design agencies have 3 to 6 months of salary in the bank. I think this is very good advice and something that I’ve made into a maxim for myself.
The reason why I like this is simple. I have a family and I own a house and a car. It would be foolish of me to leave a paying job in order to chase my dreams. I may strike gold early and have a self-sustaining business, but I’m not willing to bet my house nor my family’s livelyhood on it. Call me conservative, but I’d rather have a backup separate from the regular savings that ensures bills are paid while I’m off chasing my dream.
This to me is the advice missing from the majority of posts and talks dealing with starting a company. This is why VCs prefer just-out-of-school entrepreneurs. I, as a married man, no matter my ideas and my ability to execute those ideas, am a bigger risk as far investors are concerned than the “kids” who have no such obligations.
This is also why I took issue with Steven’s advice on Twitter. Apprehensions such as mine are characterized as fear where it’s really pragmatism.
Bank/family loans are better than VC money
To me, at least, getting a bank loan or a loan from family is still within bootstrapping side of things. I consider it a good idea, because neither a bank nor your family will typically want a piece of your company in exchange for money2. This lets you still be in full control of your company, while supplementing the above savings to extend the amount of time you’ll have to get your business up and running.
If there was one piece of advice always made clear by current business owners who prefer bootstrapping, it’s that VC money equals giving up full control of your company. I prefer not to have an excuse to fail and to me that’s what VC money symbolizes. After all, a VC may stop investing in you, but a bank will simply send your case off to a collection agency if you’re unable to pay. That is more than enough motivation to succeed.
Be incorporated
Incorporating the newly founded company will protect your personal assets. It’s as simple as that.
There might be issues here I haven’t considered or fully looked into and I’d appreciate advice from people on it. However, as far as I can see, incorporation will separate your business assets from your personal ones, thereby protecting your family. Again, that’s most important to me. I do like taking risks, but I like to consider all obvious failure modes before proceeding.
Have a clear plan
I think this is pretty obvious advice, but I’m surprised how many stories I hear of people not doing this. These stories are not only of my friends or Internet acquaintances, but also of people in my own family.
I can say personally that it’s invaluable having someone who knows WTF they’re talking about when it comes to forming a business plan. Also, talking it out and putting it on paper tends to crystallize ideas, at least for me.
Have a prototype ready
This applies to full-time business launch side of things. This is where the nuance between starting your business part-time VS full-time kicks in. I’ve started doing this part, actually. Developing a prototype in your spare time allows you to confidently jump in and have something ready when you switch over to full time business launch. Also, if you’ve followed the advice above, you won’t have to spend your set budget (equivalent to time you have until it runs out) developing one. This will make for a more comfortable, slightly less hectic approach to your own company than normal.
Have your market tested
Again, to me this is fairly obvious, but I am always surprised to hear stories of companies who have built out a prototype or even a full-blown version of their app before doing this step.
To be honest, it’s not always doable and sometimes there are new markets that open up because of your idea. That’s cool and it does happen, but more often than not, startups attack the existing market space, because they believe they can be better at executing the concept.
Have a sales person you trust
If you’re good at sales, then you ARE the sales person whom you can trust. Personally, I suck at it. I’m good at figuring out technical challenges and creating reasonable pitches, but I lack that extra something that closes out a sale. If you’re at all like me, you’d be well-advised to hire that sales person.
I’m not saying to not be involved in the actual sales process, since you might learn something and you’d be in the position to prevent the “I will sell it to the client and then we’ll build the feature” pitch. However, it is good to have someone focus solely on sales, while you focus on building out the application.
Feedback
I have not taken this leap as yet, but I have spent a lot of time thinking about it. As I said at the start of the post, specifics of launching one’s own business are hard to come by3. For one reason or another, there isn’t much on the how of it. There is a ton of material on why one might want to do it and there are a ton of attempts at inspiring those thinking about it to leap. These are my thoughts on the subject, combined with the little specific advice I’ve collected over time. I’m pretty sure there will be disagreement, but I consider that a positive. If I manage to start a discussion, I will be happy.
So, let’s discuss.
- Boagworld, a super podcast about designers, developers and people who run websites
- I say typically, because I haven’t heard of that being true, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t.
- My good friend, Wayne Douglas, reminded me of http://24waystostart.com as a site that has some more inspiring advice in a similar vein
