GIANT ROBOTS SMASHING INTO OTHER GIANT ROBOTS

Umbrella Today?

Posted by Dan Croak

Aug 27

The Lone Star Ruby conference is about a week away. Chad, Jon, Matt, Tammer, Jared, and I will be running a training session on Thursday.

Our approach to teaching thoughtbot’s Rails Best Practices is to go through our development process for a real application called Umbrella Today?, which we began building two weeks ago. After each 45 minute lecture, we’ll give participants the chance to feel the process in 15 minute hands-on workshops.

The concept of the app is simple: enter your zip code, get a yes or no answer to the question “Do I need an umbrella today?”

Sign up to receive SMS alerts on days when you’ll need an umbrella.

Hidden complexity

Seems like a simple app, right? Famous last words. Simple enough to take from concept to launch in a few weeks there’s always hidden complexity until development begins.

For Lone Star purposes, we’re happy about the complexity. In addition to best practices like CI, TDD, MVC, and TLC, it gives us a chance to share many small but collectively powerful topics such as:

• attr_readonly
• Rails template to get things like Factory Girl “for free”
• modules vs. classes
• security bugs
• shoulda_macros directory
• timezones
• SMS
• rake tasks and cron
• confirmation codes that don’t suck
• the importance of database indexes

Lone Star to Boston

thoughtbot’s Ruby on Rails training formally kicks off October 14th in Boston. We’ll be building upon our Lone Star/Umbrella Today experience so if you can’t join us in Austin next week, come visit Boston, which is beautiful in the fall. I recommend making a week of it and staying for the Head of the Charles.

Note: register for Boston training by August 31st and get $100 off.