Teach Me To Code Podcast

I got an email from someone dealing with Legacy Code and decided to discuss some of the principles of working on Legacy Code. I mentioned Working Effectively with Legacy Code(affiliate link) by Michael Feathers. Download this Episode

Joe is one of the talented developers at Thoughtbot in Boston, MA. Joe is a maintainer for the shoulda gem. Here's a video on how to use shoulda. Some of the gems we talked about are: Factory Girl Shoulda Suspenders Clearance Paperclip Rspec Trout Effigy Thoughtbot is responsible for HopToad. Joe also mentioned that Thoughtbot uses Pivotal Tracker and most developers use VIM. His VIM config files are here. Here's the article on Team Rotation. Download this Episode

Here's the link to the pledgie where you can help me get to RubyConf. This week's episode is an interview with Corey Haines. He's pretty well known as the Software Journeyman and his coding tours where he traded time pairing on code for room and board. You can keep up with him at http://coreyhaines.com. You can also check out the following links for other things he's doing: http://www.katacasts.com/ http://www.coderetreat.com/ Here's a link to the Software Craftsmanship Manifesto which is tied a lot to the discussion we had on Software Craftsmanship. Corey mentioned the Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs - 2nd Edition (MIT Electrical Engineering and Computer Science) book, which is a mind-blowing set of instruction and exercises for computer programmers. We also discussed pairing in relation to the code retreats. Corey mentioned the paper by Arlo Belshee called "Promiscuous Pairing and the Beginner's Mind" You can reach Corey on twitter as @coreyhaines and by email at coreyhaines@gmail.com Finally, checkout the latest news on the XP Universe conference. Download this Episode

Mike and I talked about Ruby Web Conf. It's coming up fast, so go sign up. Remember to use the code TEACHME to get $30 off. Here are some of the other topics we covered: Mountain West Ruby Conf RailsConf The Semantic Web (Wikipedia) The speakers and sessions from the conference we discussed can all be found under the sessions section of the Ruby Web Conf website. Download this episode

Time management essentially breaks down into two parts: Eliminating Distractions and Planning. Planning begins with estimating and ends with scheduling. Long term scheduling won't help you stay on task as well as short term planning. One method for this is The Pomodoro Technique. You can get some software to help you do the pomodoro technique. Eliminating distractions has more to do with what you're doing than with what others are doing. Checking email, answering the phone, instant messaging, social media, and internet browsing can typically be postponed. There are some great tips in The 4-Hour Workweek I also recommend that you try working from home or from a cafe near your office. It gets you away from the people who need your help, but can really wait, without completely isolating yourself. Finally, keep track of what you spend your time on with Rescue Time. Download this Episode

Estimating your workload can be tricky, but most management, marketing, and sales departments want to know when new features or bug fixes will be out so they can project where what they'll be able to sell in the future. You can estimate on the following scales: T-shirt sizes Fibonacci Numbers Algorithmic/Exponential scale Linear scale You can estimate in several units of measurement as well: Points (Complexity) Hours Days T-shirt sizes Overall, estimation can help you inform timelines, identify problems in features or your development cycle, and open discussion on tough features. Download this Episode

Ron Stephens has been programming python as a hobbyist for the last 10 years. He's a technologist, hobbyist, poet, and manager at a firm that makes hardware for satellites. He is the host of the python411 podcast and the awaretek podcast. He has tried many different languages including Perl, Ruby, Java, and Python. During his exploration of programming languages, he has read and recommends: The Pickaxe Book - Programming Ruby: The Pragmatic Programmers' Guide, Second Edition The Camel Book - Programming Perl (3rd Edition) A book called something like 'Hacker Revolutionaries.' I can't find it. Could someone give a link if you know where to get it? When asked about what philosophies, approaches, and principles python developers adhere to he mentioned the Zen of Python. We discussed podcasting and education. If you're looking for Grammar Girl, click here. If you want some python tutorials, check out Ron's Tutorial page. For new developers, Ron recommends: Show-me-do Python news group For advanced developers, Ron recommends: Reading Python Books IBM DeveloperWorks David Beasley Download this Episode

Agile Retrospectives are a great way to keep your agile methodology on track. There are a lot of ways to do retrospectives. I go over my recent experience with retrospectives and discuss some of the things we did right and what I have learned over the last few weeks while researching this topic. Download this Episode

This podcast is sponsored by New Relic. Geoffrey Grosenbach well known for his screencasts at Peepcode.com as well as the Ruby on Rails podcast and Nuby on Rails. He's also doing some interesting things at blog.peepcode.com. Primarily, he's writing articles that each have their own themes. Go check it out! Geoffrey mentions that he'll be speaking at SchnitzelConf in Vienna, Austria. It's a conference about and for entrepreneurs. It turns out the Geoffrey also created the Gruff library. Geoffrey now does his graphs with Raphael. I also brought up http://roughunderbelly.com which is a task manager. It's pretty simple and was an experiment with AJAX and RJS. Resources that Geoffrey mentioned for developers are: Peepcode Screencasts TeachMeToCode Screencasts John Nunemaker's Blog Peter Cooper's Coder.io the Rails Documentation Download this Episode

I've been thinking about the podcast and realized that I haven't told my story. So, I'm going to talk about how I got into programming and technology. It's a story that started early in my life and leads through my college years and into my career. I love programming and helping people and I would love to have more time to do that, but that means that I need to build a business that lets me do that. I'm not begging for money. But I would like your input. BTW- Sorry for the scraping noise. I didn't realize my mic was picking up my mouse scraping across the table. Download this Episode

Eric has his own company at elucidsoft.com. He's a freelancer and is developing a new product called Agile Dash. Eric is bootstrapping his company. Some of his inspiration comes from Peldi from Balsamiq Mockups and Joel Spolsky. Eric does his prospecting through LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter for his freelance business. Here are some books recommended in this episode (affiliate links): On Business: Rework Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything (P.S.) Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (Collins Business Essentials) Crossing the Chasm Anything by Guy Kawasaki Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, 2nd Edition On Programming: Code Complete: A Practical Handbook of Software Construction Working Effectively with Legacy Code Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software Download this Episode

This is a discussion of the practice of Continuous Integration or Continuous Builds. Continuous Integration is a very important part of insuring that your code is of the highest quality. It runs tasks against your code that provide you information like whether your tests pass or your code compiles. The services I've used to do this are: Hudson CruiseControl.rb You can use Continuous Integration to do the following: Catch failing tests Run and compare metrics Verify your development process Trigger deployments Things mentioned in this podcast with links: Hudson CruiseControl.rb Kevin Rutherford Interview Metric Fu and Screencast Tutorial Pragmatic Programmer book Download this Episode

This was a fun interview with Bryan Liles. Bryan is a very expressive guy. He's noted in the Ruby on Rails community for TATFT (Test all the f*ing time) and his blog at smartic.us. In this discussion, we talk about TDD (Test Driven Design), TATFT, Lifehacking, leaving the mouse behind, and opinions on software. Some things mentioned in the podcast: Unicorn Cucumber Shoulda RSpec Test Unit Wirble Hirb VimCasts You can check out his blog and follow him on twitter. Download this episode

This year's Agile Roots conference is focused on building great software. They have a terrific line up of speakers and it only costs $250, which makes it a great deal! The conference this year focuses on the development process and how it formulates requirements that lead to great software. Not just great software to maintain and build. But also great software that provides value to users. Andrew explained that we, as developers, need to realize that we're enabling a business experiment, not just building code. He also went into the value we receive from open source software. The problem some of these people have is collecting the value of their work. You don't get paid for being smart. Rather, we need to find ways to receive value from what we're providing, even if it's not designed specifically to make us money. Pat Maddox wrote a blog post called "Are you punching your users in the face?" It was designed to help people to understand was that the value of the code isn't in the tests or the code itself. Its value is in building software that users want to use. We got a great recommendation to read "A Big Ball of Mud". The author asked "What do you call someone who writes code like this?" after talking about every antipattern and code nastiness and he said "millionaires." Historically this is true. Someone solved someone else's problem with ugly hacky code, and walked away with millions of dollars. We tend to discount sales and marketing personnel, when they are the ones that make your money. They build the brand and they bring the money in, even if you don't have the best products. Tim O'Reilly said, "Create more value than you capture." If you do this your users will love you and your community will grow and support you. We go into the idea economy and how agile ties into the idea economy. People are trying to sell each other on their ideas in agile as much as anything else. Andrew was first introduced to Agile he found most of the practices as wasteful, painful, and wrong. So, he started discovering the roots of Agile. What he found was that Agile was bout solving our problems with our strengths. Once he started going to the Agile Round Table, he found that it was actually about delivering working software. Over the last year and a half, Andrew has been working on taking agile into other areas of work. The term 'agile' has become overloaded. Some people say agile, what most people mean is a watered down half implemented version of scrum. Agile, the word, has crossed the chasm. The practices haven't. Trying to agile isn't what you should do. You should be trying to be awesome. Listen to the interview for some great tips on being awesome. Here are some links to following Andrew: Twitter: littleidea Blog: http://stochasticresonance.wordpress.com/ Download this Episode

This part of the interview starts off with Miles and I talking about professional tracks that we're on. He downplays his understanding of Ruby on Rails a little. He did mention that he's been using Michael Hartl's Rails Tutorials. He also brought up the idea of micro brigades—groups of 2-4 people who can become super intensive support systems to help each other learn. I think the idea is really a good one. It brings in accountability and pushes everyone to move ahead with what they're learning and provide accountability. Everyone should bring their own project. Having everyone bring their own project, weeds out the non-programmers like recruiters and entrepreneurs that want you to build their code. It's also interesting how widely spread the community is and how different the approaches are, not just to programming, but to life, throughout the Ruby community. The Ruby community is also very beginner friendly. We also discuss what it takes to be a coder and how we can encourage ourselves and others to learn how to code. Download this Episode