magpiebrain

What is stopping you from using Rails/Django?

At the last meetup, the majority of the people there were ‘thinking’ about using either Rails or Django on a real world project. So by way of some blatant agenda setting for the meetup on the 10th (don’t forget to go and leave a comment if you’re coming) what is stopping you from using either?

Is it concerns about maturity? Scalability? Deployment options? Does the lack of (development) tools put you off? The lack of a workforce, or simply the fact it is in a new language? Is there some killer feature that either one needs to make you use it? Perhaps if enthusiasts of both communities start addressing these concerns and start engaging in some (balanced) advocacy and honest discourse, the adoption of both can be sped up.

The importance of the word ’service’ in ‘Webservice’

Nowadays, creating a webservice can be fairly simple. Axis has finally got to a point where creating a SOAP interface requires the minimum amount of chicken slaughtering and dark incantations, and .NET makes it ridiculously easy (no wonder Java 6 is aping .NET-style ease of use(magpiebrain – Sun on Mustang (J2SE 6.0) – squaring up to .NET?) for webservices). Both Djano and Rails make it easy to create REST-style apps (Django’s URL’s are RESTful out of the box). The problem is creating a webservice shouldn’t simply be a case of placing a language-agnostic HTTP-based interface (be it REST, XMP-RPC or SOAP) in front of your application.

Why unit tests are important

A recent post by Cedric in response to an article by Michael Feathers (danger, community navel gazing alert! Obviously this blog is above such things) casts doubt on the necessity of unit tests.

What is good design?

In an uncharacteristically expletive-light post, Hani talks about the difficulty of defining what good design is:

So what’s the acid test for a good design? I have no idea. The closest I could come up with is A good design allows your code to do things you never expected it to have to do.

I dislike this definition for a few reasons – at least one of which Hani himself touches on:

It’s not about ‘oh I’ll add an interface here so I can plop in different implementations’ when there’s no sane reason you’d ever need more than one implementation, for example.

That is to say using Hani’s definition as a maxim for what makes good design could lead to designs which violate the ever sensible YAGNI principle.

Blog tweaks a-plenty

Yes, it’s another “I upgraded my blog and aint I great” post only this time it’s in the form of thanks to a couple of different parties.

First off, I decided to upgrade the blog to Movable Type 3.2. On a Sunday evening. Right before bed. After a migrane. Without backing up the database. Note to everyone out there: do not hire me as your sys admin. Net Result? One mildly screwed install. The (apparently slicker) upgrade process hung tring to upgrade MT::Log without giving me any helpful information. Luckily some kind soul came to be rescue, and as a result you get to see a useful post like this.

Next Django & Rails meetup, 10th of October

Well last night’s inaugural Django and Rails meetup went very well indeed (photos to follow) – apart from the slow start due to most people not knowing each other, and being unsure if the raised eyebrow from someone else in the bar was as a result of them seeing if they were there for the meetup or as a result of wandering into the wrong sort of bar. Photos soon. It was good to meet Simon and Natalie (who came down from Gloster for the event and had to go back by bus), Matt, Tom (who had to get back to paddington for 10) and everyone else. The unfortunate side of the turnout being so good was that I didn’t have enough time to speak to anyone – and with that in mind felt we should make it a monthly thing.

Unless there are any complaints, the venue and time will be the same, Smiths of Smithfield at 7pm. To avoid clashing with other events (well, my monthly pub crawl which happens on the first Tuesday of every month to be exact) I’m suggesting the second Monday of the month – which this time around is the 10th of October. Simon Brunning is going to arrange the London Python meetup for the same time so there’ll be some fresh blood :-) As before, leave your comment if you fancy coming along…