July 2010
12 posts
6 tags
How grep got its name
thoughtbot is pairing up with Ben Orenstein to present a Vim course, this time at WorkBar. As part of this collaboration WorkBar is offering $50 off your first month’s membership if you register for the Vim course.
One thing you will discover at this course is the history of the command `grep’. This all starts back with `ed’, the original unix editor. ed was a command-line...
Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots
Node.js Knockout is a programming competition, similar to the Rails Rumble, focused on the increasingly popular node.js. As a company and individuals we’ve been participating in and sponsoring the Rumble from the beginning. And we’re happy to announce we’re also sponsoring and participating in the Knockout.
Introducing below, from Lenexa, KS, the not-made-for-actual-boxing,...
Flutie
Background
When we start on new client projects or internal apps, we don’t always start the HTML/CSS buildout the same way. Sometimes a client has sketches; sometimes wireframes; sometimes they have a brand/identity in place already - there’s a big variety in what materials they come to us with. Likewise, when we start our design process, we don’t always use the same exact...
What To Do When You Don't Know What To Do
Sometimes, test driven development is really annoying, and the abundance of untested applications out there suggests that I am not the first person to have had this thought.
The thing is, there are limitations to test driven development. The workflow of test development essentially goes like this:
Create a user story that encapsulates a chunk of functionality of the application
Write...
2 tags
Missed connections: I saw you testing my website
Usability testing is like flossing: everyone knows it’s important, but they don’t do it nearly as much as they should. Because let’s face it, making sites is a lot more exciting than testing them. Well, this past week we ran our first round of in-house usability tests and wanted to share how we did it, what we learned, and what we need to improve.
This presentation by Meetup...
2 tags
How To: Take Notes Like a Champ
Information Overload
One of our newest projects here at thoughtbot is a taxonomic naming app called GNITE which we’re building for the Marine Biological Lab. As designer on this project my first challenge was to get a basic understanding of the subject matter and the goals of the project, but I found the information to be complicated especially for someone new to taxonomy. We had the...
CAPE CODE
Still without plans for August? Did you know that August is our nation’s warmest and most-traveled month? Looking for a nice trip? Well…have I got a deal for you!
Come relax on the sandy shores of Massachusetts’ own wicked beautiful Cape Cod at our previously announced event: CAPE CODE! Join thoughtbot’s team of designers and developers and stiff management types...
1 tag
Logos Suck When Branding Yourself
I’ve recently begun a redesign of my portfolio and my biggest blocker is never knowing what to do for a logo or header. Then, last night, it hit me. You don’t need to create anything. Crazy, right? Maybe not for some of you, but for a designer like me, that’s unheard of.
So how do people recognize me?
The answer to this struck me while messing around on twitter, my face is my...
Suspenders now with RSpec, jQuery, and more
Suspenders is a Rails project template used as a base app for all of our client work. It has gone through a few changes that better reflect our development stack and also allow us to test changes to suspenders itself.
RSpec
As you may know, we are spec’ing our apps with RSpec along with shoulda matchers now. This along with cucumber for integration tests is the testing stack that...
2 tags
Capturing Errors on a Global Scale
Has your database gone down recently? What about timeouts from third-party services? Exceptions can be raised anywhere in your app, and Hoptoad’s here to track them for you. Problem is, these exceptions can manifest themselves in your controllers or models, and that’s not helpful when you have to sort through all of them because of Hoptoad’s grouping logic.
To help,...
2 tags
Quit your job and come work for thoughtbot
Things are humming along and we’re ready to add another designer to the team.
We’re looking for someone who can produce great designs, really cares about the quality of their HTML and CSS code, and wants to be a part of a kick ass team that builds great stuff.
If this is you, and you’re either in Boston or willing to relocate, get in touch, because we want to talk to...
Test Time Bombs
Testing with times and dates have come a long way, now that Timecop is around. Prior to Timecop, we would use a stubbing library like Mocha to stub out just what we needed, but why do that when Van Damme could beat the right values out of Time?
The Bomb
I wrote this Cucumber feature, models have been changed to protect the innocent.
Scenario: List latest posts under a tag
Given the...