Ben Allfree :: Painless Programming

Ruby on Rails is a great web framework because it establishes smart conventions and application structure. To those of us who already were making well-structured web applications (particularly true in the Java community), it took us a while to see what the big deal is about Rails. After all, we were already using many of the practices Rails brought to the masses.

I was having a look at [http://www.railsenvy.com/2007/2/28/rails-caching-tutorial#advanced] and came across this great little snippet of code:

Rails::Initializer.run do |config|
# …
config.load_paths += %W( #{RAILS_ROOT}/app/sweepers )
# …
end

It got me thinking that a folder for observers and notifiers would greatly improve my quality of life. I might even add a [...]

TDD says: Do the simplest thing next.
NDD says: Do the thing you need next the simplest way you can.

Find out if your project has the tell-tale signs of disaster.

I’m building PrestoScript in Ruby and the more I get into it, the less I am in anyone’s framework but my own. Why is that? Is there a certain class of problems that are frameworkless? I’ve been thinking lately that generalized frameworks could be a farce. I always explain to clients that Ruby on Rails [...]

ActiveRecord is one of the hidden treasures of the Rails framework from which Rails derives so much of its productivity. It features beautiful uses of the Ruby language, especially Ruby’s dynamic programming features.
ActiveRecord also makes it easy to be inefficient though. Efficient data access is not something that happens magically, and if ActiveRecord is left [...]

I’ve been talking with more clients lately about Joomla. The Content Management System (CMS) is not dead, oh no, not dead at all. I’m not sure how PHP’s Joomla compares with a CMS like DotNetNuke, but my suspicion is that Joomla is far more widely used and probably has more modules and plugins too simply [...]

Functional programming languages have a templating feature, called a macro, that allows you to write code that writes code.
Writing code that writes code is an interesting idea, and is one of the cornerstones of Ruby on Rails. Rails promises to write code that works as long as you promise to use database and file [...]

Well, it looks like Akelos (http://www.akelos.org/) is taking the lead in the “Rails for PHP” race. It seems to have a better MVC architecture than cakePHP, especially where ActiveRecord is concerned.
MVC frameworks are an important design concept for modern Web 2.0 applications. I frequently consult on this topic and have a lot to say, too [...]

GoPotato.tv is an online publisher of comedy programs. They chose Ben to revamp their site using Ruby on Rails.