Oh no, yet another quick-and-dirty tutorial on Rails! Hold your horses, and bear with me (and toss in any other animal you feel like at this point). I have a purpose and a point with this post, so if you’d indulge me… I’d like to demonstrate here how to build a simple web site in seven [...]

Oh no, yet another quick-and-dirty tutorial on Rails! Hold your horses, and bear with me (and toss in any other animal you feel like at this point). I have a purpose and a point with this post, so if you’d indulge me… I’d like to demonstrate here how to build a simple web site in seven [...]

Namespaces (or, packages in Java parlance) have been introduced to programming languages in order to reduce (and hopefully eliminate) conflicts. What kind of conflicts, you ask? Well, as the name itself suggests (namespace), we’re talking about naming conflicts. A classic example could be culled form the core Java API. In the core Java...

Namespaces (or, packages in Java parlance) have been introduced to programming languages in order to reduce (and hopefully eliminate) conflicts. What kind of conflicts, you ask? Well, as the name itself suggests (namespace), we’re talking about naming conflicts. A classic example could be culled form the core Java API. In the core Java...

Not everyone knows how to achieve simplicity. Furthermore (and much to my astonishment), not everyone feels that simplicity is desirable. But we won’t dwell on that issue today. We’ll just assume that everyone agrees that simplicity is ultra desirable, and we’ll take it from there. Complexity is not Linear Complexity is a...

Not everyone knows how to achieve simplicity. Furthermore (and much to my astonishment), not everyone feels that simplicity is desirable. But we won’t dwell on that issue today. We’ll just assume that everyone agrees that simplicity is ultra desirable, and we’ll take it from there. Complexity is not Linear Complexity is a...

Ruby on Rails creator David Heinemeier Hansson is a brilliant software developer, but apparently a bit of a flaky thinker. In his most recent keynote speech at the RailsConf, David announced how he does not want to live in the real world. He prefers his imaginary world of whatever. Does that confession mean that it is [...]

Ruby on Rails creator David Heinemeier Hansson is a brilliant software developer, but apparently a bit of a flaky thinker. In his most recent keynote speech at the RailsConf, David announced how he does not want to live in the real world. He prefers his imaginary world of whatever. Does that confession mean that it is [...]

When it comes to software development, we’re in no shortage of flamboyant methodologies, best-practices, tools, prescribed architectures, and so on. All these different techniques are being put forward for one simple reason — most people developing software find it very hard to do it on time and correctly. So, how are all these...

When it comes to software development, we’re in no shortage of flamboyant methodologies, best-practices, tools, prescribed architectures, and so on. All these different techniques are being put forward for one simple reason — most people developing software find it very hard to do it on time and correctly. So, how are all these...

My Achille’s heel is cascading style sheets. This is the technology I would like to master, but somehow it always escapes me. This is very worrisome to me. Any time I have to develop web-based software, I can pretty much come up with a ballpark estimate on the required effort, save for the layout and styling. [...]

My Achille’s heel is cascading style sheets. This is the technology I would like to master, but somehow it always escapes me. This is very worrisome to me. Any time I have to develop web-based software, I can pretty much come up with a ballpark estimate on the required effort, save for the layout and styling. [...]

Chris Shiflett writes in his Ruby on Rails Fans post: Ruby on Rails is a niche technology, and although all signs indicate that its popularity is growing rapidly, it’s a bit premature to be thinking that it will dethrone existing technologies. The problem with the above statement is that it assumes that there are technologies which [...]

Chris Shiflett writes in his Ruby on Rails Fans post: Ruby on Rails is a niche technology, and although all signs indicate that its popularity is growing rapidly, it’s a bit premature to be thinking that it will dethrone existing technologies. The problem with the above statement is that it assumes that there are technologies which [...]

In my previous post I’ve mentioned the issue of lackluster education in the area of web development. I’m afraid I’ve made it sound more gloomy than it actually is. Let me try to remedy some of that here. Basically, while the education in that respect is still lacking, it’s not rocket science, and it shouldn’t [...]