Jamie Flournoy's Software Development Blog
acts-as-tsearch is pretty cool, except for the fact that it uses Ruby (app layer) instead of PL/pgSQL (DB layer) to update the tsvectors that are indexed for full text search. That means that fixture data gets inserted without being full text indexed. D’oh!
Here’s some code that changes that.
Continue reading “Making the Rails acts_as_tsearch plugin work with fixtures”
Let’s say you’re using Rails with PostgreSQL and the TSearch2 built-in full text search engine.
Did you notice that every time you run rake test, that depends on db:test:prepare, which depends on db:test:clone, which depends on db:test:purge, which drops the database and creates it again?
Along with your dropped database goes the TSearch2 functions that wrap the C libraries that do the actual work. So, in effect, you no longer have TSearch2 installed. (“Uh… I kinda needed those…”) Presumably if you have tests that exercise search functionality, they will always fail because the TSearch2 functions are gone by the time the tests run.
Continue reading “Making Rails’ rake:test not drop your PGSQL database”
We developers and other nerdy folk are used to using strange and klunky applications that do something special, and we’re used to that trade-off.
Eclipse is an IDE so it’s hard to imagine it not being baroque and difficult to use, requiring weeks of effort to become productive. JBidWatcher has saved me a lot of money on eBay so I could probably put a dollar value on how much it’s worth to endure its bizarre UI. Azureus is fairly fugly also but it does a very good job and has a deep, sophisticated UI that’s fairly easy to understand, so despite the eyesore, it’s at least fairly clear. The common thread among all of these is that they are all written in Java, and that they are so valuable that it’s worthwhile to overlook the ugly UIs.
Now imagine those sorts of trade-offs, but on already difficult to use mobile devices, and aimed at consumers. Are you making a strategically wise choice by sacrificing usability and control over the user interface, and probably access to platform-specific features such as dialing the phone, in order to save money on development? Adam Breindel talks about this in When Building a Smartphone App, Resist the Siren Song of J2ME.
Continue reading “J2ME: Write Once, Be Disappointed Everywhere”
Ruby faster than Python and Perl! cries the headline. This is based on a benchmark that tests i = i + 1 in a loop, so it’s a particularly useless benchmark, even in a world of benchmarks designed to test unrealistic scenarios that make the benchmark author’s product look good.
Continue reading ““Ruby faster than Python and Perl!” ORLY?”
I’ve written before about tips for offshoring. One specific thing I said to watch for is the bait-and-switch of talent: during the sales process you’re shown rockstars, but the real code you get is written by clueless newbies. When you set up a project such that you’ve minimized the cost per hour of development, but you don’t have anyone checking the work product (i.e. code reviews) coming from the subcontractor, very bad things happen.
Continue reading “Bad, Bad Code”