Ever look at the HTML output from an old project and wonder which the hell partial rendered which the heck bit of the HTML? Wonder no more. ./script/plugin install git://github.com/mattwynne/partial_debugger.git Then add this to your config/environments/development.rb PartialDebugger.enable …because you probably don’t want this running in production.
Author Archives: Matt
Rails Tip: Use Polymorphism to Extend your Controllers at Runtime
Metaprogramming in Ruby comes in for quite a bit of stick at times, the accusation being that code which modifies itself at runtime can be hard to understand. As Martin Fowler recently described, there’s a sweet spot where you use just enough to get some of the incredible benefits that Ruby offers, without leaving behind …
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Striking the Balance
This afternoon I paired up with a colleague to fix a bug that had been introduced some time ago but, because the effects weren’t very noticeable, had only just come to our attention. Fixing the defect itself was actually quite easy – the real pain was writing a script to clean up the bad data …
Upcoming Conferences
Talking on the internet is fine and everything, but there’s nothing like a face-to-face chinwag. This year I’ll be hanging around at a couple of conferences so maybe we can meet up? At Agile 2009, I’ll be running a workshop called ‘Debugging Pair Programming’. This is a spin-off from an impromptu open-space session I organised …
BDD Joy in 10 Easy Steps
(1) Pick a new feature to add to the product you’re working on. (2) Sit down with the customer (or their representative on your team) and brainstorm all the scenarios that might happen when a user tries to use the new feature. Try to make the scenarios as small and granular as you can, so …
Kanban State of Mind
There are no iterations: only now. Work at a pace you can truly sustain. Done means it is in the user’s hands. Nothing less. Limit the Work in Progress. This forces you to get things done, or you’ll have nothing else to do. Get better all the time. Keep tuning your process and tools to …
Team Analysis
My team has been working with a Kanban pull / flow system which means we have the luxury of being able to do just-in-time analysis of individual features, rather than trying to do them in a batch for an iteration. We’re getting better at this analysis, and I thought it was worth sharing what I …
Don’t Confuse Estimates with Commitments
Estimate: an approximate calculation of quantity or degree or worth Commitment: the act of binding yourself (intellectually or emotionally) to a course of action Estimates are not commitments. Plans based only on estimates are bad plans. Commitments based only on estimates are at best foolish, at worst dishonest. Estimates are certainly a useful tool for …
Goodbye CruiseControl.rb, Hello Hudson
Imagine you have a friend who writes a blog. Maybe you actually do. Let’s call him ‘Chump’. One day you’re chatting, and the conversation turns to technology. It turns out that Chump is using Dreamweaver to write his blog entries, and manually uploading them to his site via FTP. You’re appalled. How do you update …
The Future of Automated Acceptance Testing
I participated in a workshop today run by Willem van den Ende and Rob Westgeest at SPA2009 on acceptance testing. As usual at such conferences, it was great to be able to mingle with other people who take the value of acceptance testing for granted, and be able to concentrate on the issues that are …
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