Things you take for granted after using Ruby for awhile:
#This works: topic.posts.length > 0 #The Ruby way: topic.posts.any? #This works: topic.posts[topic.posts.length-1] #The Ruby way: topic.posts.last #This works: if!((foo != nil)&&(foo != '')) #The Ruby way: unless foo.blank?
Other nice things that I don’t care to come up with the harder version by hand for:
5.days.from_now 5.days.ago
note: day.* and .blank? only works in rails, not ruby out the box
If you’re developing on a mac and need to send mail OSX comes pre-installed with Postfix. To start it up run:
sudo postfix start
So looks like the new version of IE is going to be called… IE8. Not very exciting but it’s funny to see someone at MS make fun of their confusing product names.
http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2007/12/05/internet-explorer-8.aspx
Linus Torvalds, creator of Linux, discusses his distributed source control system Git at Google. Features some pretty amusing quotes like “If you’re using CVS you should be in a mental institution” and “I would never, ever trust Google to maintain my source code for me, I’m sorry, you’re just not that trustworthy”.
Here is a great example of giving users a really simple solution without a lot of technical overhead. Dave Thomas of the Pragmatic Programmers describes how they had set out to build a robust wish list feature into their online bookstore with referrals, e-mails, messaging, automated suggestions, etc. Then they pulled back and released this instead: Pragmatic Bookshelf Wishlist. Doesn’t get much easier than that.