Why Refactoring Matters

It’s hard to believe, but for some people it still doesn’t. I’ve heard something along the lines of “The refactoring is done, now we can code again” or “I can’t refactor that code right now, I’ll just add a little code here and be done with it” far too often over the last months and years. The irrational but persistent thought that refactoring is a once-in-a-product-lifecycle activity is an annoyingly sticky idiom. Refactoring is not a one time thing, it is (or at least should be) an important part of your development process, equally important as coding and testing.

Django turns 1.0

They took their time, but it’s finally out: Django 1.0. Time to give it a spin. If you feel like it too, the Django Book is available online for free.

Why Testing Matters

Sometimes it’s easy to forget, just how important testing has become in the development lifecycle. I recently had to remind myself and others that there are no reasonable excuses not to write tests. I would go as far as saying you’re jeopardizing the quality of your software, just because you had no time, were pushed by management, or were just plain lazy.

RailsConf Europe 2008 Recap

RailsConf Europe 2008 is over (and has been for a few days now, I know), so it’s time for a recap. In all it was much better than I expected, last year’s conference was a bit of a disappointment, so my expectations were low enough to be positively surprised.

Ruby and Rails Book Updates

There are some interesting books on Ruby and Rails related entering the fierce market, let’s have a quick look.