Matthew Macdona...02/20/12
6622 views
0 replies

Puppet vs. Chef – The Devops Deathmatch

I’ve been using Puppet to mange systems for the last four years (at least!) however a new contract has meant I’ve needed to learn Chef. A few months ago I was looking for a blog post on the differences between puppet and Chef written from an objective point of view and the fantastic @nathenharvey produced a blog post about exactly that topic. This post is more of a comment on my feelings about the two different systems and comparing the way in which they work.

Daniel Doubrovkine02/20/12
1685 views
0 replies

Mongoid Upgraded to 2.4.0; Adds MongoMapper and Kaminari

Mongoid upgrade 2.4 dropped pagination support and adds Kamimari gem. Next version will fix further bugs. Download links included.

Cody Powell02/20/12
7484 views
0 replies

Understanding-Driven Development

I have a weird idea. What if, with every change we made to our codebase, we tried to increase our understanding of it a little bit? This is challenging because codebases always go in the opposite direction. How do you increase understanding on a large scale, then? Let's go through a few approaches, none of which are earth shattering.

Geoffrey Papilion02/19/12
6320 views
7 replies

Sometimes It’s Okay to Incur Technical Debt

Your avoidance of Technical Debt shouldn't block all other tasks because of one issue. It's better to have a partially automated solution, than none at all.

James Carr02/17/12
11114 views
2 replies

Improving Your Programming Skills: All You Need Is Motivation

In the past many people could come up with easy excuses for not learning a skill. College, after all, is quite expensive! Time consuming! I’ve even heard the lamest excuse of all where people who did go to college make the excuse that their skills are poor because their school didn’t have a good program in their field of study. Hogwash! You need to check out the free courses on programming that are all over the web like MIT's Open Courseware, which I have tried myself.

Geoffrey Papilion02/17/12
5126 views
0 replies

3 Bash Expansion Tricks

Learn the answer to three questions regarding filename expansion in bash that you should have been considering long ago: What does the example script do if there is a file abc in the current directory? What if you run the same script in a directory without any files? And what if you run the example script and in a directory with no filename?

Brian O' Neill02/17/12
2811 views
0 replies

An Elegant Matching Algorithm In Ruby

"Given a set of people and a set of jobs, where each person may take a different amount of time to do each job, optimally match people to jobs (1:1) to minimize the amount of time it will take to complete all jobs . . . [I] decided that I needed to solve this with max-flow."

Carlos Sanchez02/16/12
5232 views
0 replies

What Developers do Today for Source-to-Deploy is Not Enough

Using tools like Maven in the Java world or Bundle in Rubyland you can explicitly list all the dependencies and versions you need. But there are some critical dependencies that are never set. It is just too simple. However, from the point of view of the operations team the number of requirements is complex.

Eric Genesky02/16/12
2241 views
0 replies

Revamped Architecture and Community-Requested Features Abound in RubyMine 4.0

RubyMine 4.0's Inspect Code is 4x faster, and new features include a streamlined UI for all supported platoforms, new search options, and formatting for SCSS/LESS languages. Check out this link for more features.

Ben Kepes02/15/12
2166 views
0 replies

Cloud is Simple. Well, It’s Real Complex but that Complexity Can, and Should, be Hidden from Users.

Yes, Cloud is part of a large and complex system with multiple moving parts that need to be bashed together. Yes we are still in the early days of the Cloud so the tools to ease that bashing together (standards, interoperability, clear APIs etc) are a little lacking. But on the flip side, we’re seeing more innovation and an incredibly high rate of change in Cloud than in other parts of the industry and Cloud is delivering real value right now.

John Esposito02/15/12
19462 views
48 replies

Ask DZ: What Features Would an Ideal IDE Have?

You may love your IDE, but even the best IDE can get better. Or you may be chugging along with a free, open-source, but less-than-perfect IDE, plugging the functionality gaps with plugins that may or may not integrate perfectly. So, DZonistas: what features would an ideal IDE have?

Stoimen Popov02/14/12
11021 views
0 replies

Algorithm of the Week: Insertion Sort

There are two main approaches in sorting – by comparing the elements and without comparing them. A typical algorithm from the first group is insertion sort, very simple and very intuitive to implement, it is useful for small sets of data with about no more than 20 items.

Daniel Doubrovkine02/13/12
1889 views
0 replies

NoRails: Application Design in Times of APIs

This is a discussion of domain driven design in Rails. Specifically, it considers Rails inability to express the API with the suggested MVC layout when an application is expressed as a gem.

Ayende Rahien02/13/12
6307 views
1 replies

The Economics of Continuous Deployment

Selling software is hard. Ayende Rahien knows because he has his own product that he sells. One of the big difficulties is how to keep improving the product so that there are continual 'major' new releases with new features that are enticing enough for people to buy the next version. Join in Ayende's discussion on the best ways to monetize our software with concepts like continuous deployment.

Cody Powell02/13/12
18437 views
10 replies

8 Questions To Identify A Lame Programming Job

For those of you looking for any programming job under the sun, consider Codypo's industry wisdom. If you answer YES to more than one or two of these questions, wait a little longer for a better offer.