A list of my pet hates - particularly re: management, so I can make sure not to do them should I ever be in that position.
People who prefix every task they delegate with words like ‘simple’, ‘quick’ and ‘easy’. They rarely are, and it makes...
In year 10, my art teacher stopped me.
Stop! You’re a perfectionist! And perfectionism is a disease!
Having been praised for my perfectionism all my life, I dismissed her advice. It took more than a decade for me to realise just how right she...
read moreI took my own advice at Ruby Conf and introduced myself to several of the better known speakers. One thing I asked each was: what is the common trait between yourself and others who are ‘famous within the community’?
Interestingly, none thought it...
read moreIn India, one of the top recommendations for young yogis aspiring to enlightenment is “keep the company of the wise”.
I gave up on enlightenment a while ago, but the same applies to any aspiration. Sometimes there’s a tendency — at conferences, meetups...
read moreI was once told three rules for good writing:
The same apply to writing software. Forget design patterns and best practices — they’re a means to an end, not an end in themselves. If you’re code...
read moreSandi Metz gave a great keynote at keeprubyweird.com. You should watch it.
Here’s a summary for my own future reference. She goes through 3 interesting psychological experiments, and then covers the take-home points with regards to software dev. Here...
read moreA note for my own future reference: if you’re using rails with spring, and you add a new class in a new file under a new folder in your /app directory (eg, adding your first service to an app at /app/services/my_service.rb), Rails will not find that...
I’m not the first person to recommend against default scopes.
Just wanted to throw one more warning in the pot. My previous convention was that I would ONLY use default_scope for ordering:
class Customer < ActiveRecord::Base
default_scope -> {...Slides and transcript of my recent talk given at both #rorosyd and Alt.net meetups this November:
Hi I’m Joss, and I am not an SEO. However, I know enough to be able to call out really bad SEO advice when I see it, and that’s something I feel every...
read moreRecently at work, I was describing what a client wanted to a designer, and I said “let me take a look at what you’ve got so far.”
His reply: “No, ‘cos then you’ll give me design input, and what I want is information.”
While it was a small blow to...
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