We’ve all seen this: a frustrated coworker hunched over a computer after hours, flailing alone against some impossible bug. Go home, coworker. Don’t stay stuck. ...

I’ve been using, teaching, and stanning Vim since almost the beginning of my programming career. Yet, when asked to explain this preference, I stumble. In this post, I’d like to explore why I love Vim. ...

Today I want to talk about a common technique: disabling failing tests to allow a feature to ship. Maybe sometimes you gotta do it. But long-term I think it causes more problems than it solves. ...

Here’s a trick that that has helped me as a programmer: before doing anything major, like killing a process, stop and count to ten. ...

A common, problematic convention I see in Ruby tests are variable names like this: user_a = create(:user, last_log_in: today) user_b = create(:user, last_log_in: last_year) ...

Any command you type out manually, or even tab-complete a few times, can be shortened. A common shortening technique is the terminal alias. Here are some tips that help me write better aliases and cut my terminal keystrokes. ...

Open a production Ruby file, and you’ll often see this magic comment at the top. # frozen_string_literal: true Today I’d like to argue that most Ruby files do not need this comment. You aren’t going to need it. ...

When I create Agile bug tickets, I leave the story points blank. Why? Two reasons: pointing bugs creates the wrong incentives, and bugs are hard to estimate. ...

“What did you do this week?” I’ve written a weekly summary for myself and my teams for years. It helps me think through my work and shows people what I’m working on. In this post, I’ll explain how I use this tool. ...

Here’s a technique I’ve used on launches: instead of a big scary waterfall, or, in tandem with a phased release, let customers opt into a new feature. ...