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Hi! I'm Avdi Grimm, and this is my software development blog. More...
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Category Archives: Rants
The Trouble with HTTP Digest Authentication
A guest from Larry Marburger about HTTP Digest Authentication, and why it’s not a viable candidate for authenticating modern RESTful APIs. Continue reading
Posted in Rants
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On BritRuby
I am, or rather was, a speaker at British Ruby Conference 2013. If you were planning to attend, or if you follow many Rubyists on Twitter, you probably know that the conference has been cancelled. As one of the invited … Continue reading
Posted in Rants
30 Comments
Let’s stop telling programming newbies to learn Vim (or Emacs)
As readers of this blog know, I am a proud user of the third most baffling editor in existence. (Why third? well, I feel confident placing Vim as the 2nd, because while inscrutable, hand-twisting keybindings are difficult, in my observation … Continue reading
Posted in Education, Rants
43 Comments
Don’t Buy Parallels Workstation for Linux
So I have this video project I’m working on. There are many things a Linux workstation is great for, but editing video is not one of them. I’ve tried a half-dozen different Linux video editing programs and they all suck. … Continue reading
Every day, in every way
It’s time to reclaim the lost art of refactoring. Continue reading
Underscores are stupid
I hate underscores. They are ugly. They are like the neon orange belt pack of syntax. Dated and unfashionable no matter what era they are found in. As the former owner of a neon orange belt pack, I feel I … Continue reading
Posted in Rants
64 Comments
Stop reading this blog and learn something
Software development is a wonderful field to be a noob in. Perhaps more than any other discipline, there is a wealth of information available for free online–everything from fundamental computer science courses, to the night-by-night learning notes of a master … Continue reading
5 things programmers preach but don’t practice
I’m having a frustrating day of merge hell. Just to blow off some steam while specs run, here are some things that, in my experience, are a lot more common in theory than in execution in proprietary software development projects. At … Continue reading
Posted in Rants
Tagged bdd, refatoring, Revision control, scrum, tdd, Test-driven development
55 Comments
There is no such thing as a good field programmer
There is probably some rule of blogging which says that once you start making war analogies you’ve jumped the shark. With that risk acknowledged, I’d like to present a quote: The influence one man can have on thousands is a … Continue reading
Your Code is My Hell
It occurred to me recently that my experience as a Rails developer may be somewhat unique. I often get brought in to help preexisting Ruby/Rails projects evolve and mature in a sustainable way. As a result, the vast majority of … Continue reading
Posted in Rails, Rants, Ruby
Tagged architecture, design, legacy, maintenance, patterns, ruby. rails
125 Comments
