Disqus - Latest Comments for rbates

Re: 'Riven: The Sequel to Myst' for iPad Hits the App Store

Ryan Bates — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 13:14:30 -0000

Riven: The Sequel to Myst for the iPhone has been out for quite some time. I think it's just Riven for iPad that is new. Maybe update the article to reflect this?

Re: 'Arranger' Review - A Musical Journey That Shouldn't Be Missed

Ryan Bates — Wed, 21 Nov 2012 02:42:05 -0000

It has worked great for me in 2x mode on ipad. Graphics are retro so I don't even notice. Highly recommended.

Re: RubyTapas Episode 21: Domain Model Events

Ryan Bates — Mon, 12 Nov 2012 14:59:40 -0000

Thank you for making this episode free Avdi, it has brought about some fun discussion on Twitter. Regarding my refactoring, it was more of an experiment to see how it could be done without using callbacks. I do think callbacks are a good use case for this.

Also, Jonas Nicklas pointed out there is a previous_changes method that dirty tracking provides. This could be used to clean up each of our refactorings.

Re: Carl Sagan Inspires And So We Inspire

Ryan Bates — Sat, 10 Nov 2012 13:16:51 -0000

I'm glad you've found RailsCasts useful, and I appreciate the kind words!

Re: RubyTapas

Ryan Bates — Fri, 09 Nov 2012 17:07:54 -0000

Great episode Avdi. The only thing I felt could use some clarification is the statement about the model layer not knowing about the current user and socket ID.

I believe this logic does belong in the model layer, however it is the controller's job to translate the current_user to an email_recipient. The difference is important even though it is the same object.

If you are interacting with the model outside of the request (such as in a rake task) the current_user does not make sense, but an email_recipient does. Therefore it is often okay to move the current_user into the model layer when giving it a new name.

Re: RubyTapas

Ryan Bates — Fri, 09 Nov 2012 16:50:32 -0000

I normally favor direct calls over observers, but this example seems like a good fit for observers since it involves triggering notifications when attributes change - keeping track of if the attribute changes can be rather messy other ways.

I also like that it adds the observers in the controller, that is what I believe should trigger the sending of email and other related events. I do not like permanent observers that invisibly send an email on every create/update.

Re: Using Guard and Jasmine to Make CoffeeScript Testing Fast

Ryan Bates — Sat, 29 Sep 2012 13:52:44 -0000

There's also Guard-Jasmine which uses PhantomJS to show results through the terminal. This way you won't need to have a browser window open.

https://github.com/netzpira...

Use this in combination with Jasminerice for easy coffeescript support if you're on a Rails app:

https://github.com/bradphel...

Re: TA Plays: 'Shufflepuck Cantina' - An Air Hockey Game With Atmosphere

Ryan Bates — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 12:17:53 -0000

And it hasn't crashed at all for me. Thanks for making such a solid game! I'm having a blast.

Re: Steal Eggs With Aircraft In Rovio's Upcoming 'Bad Piggies'

Ryan Bates — Mon, 17 Sep 2012 17:23:15 -0000

This video autoplays so it is blaring every time I visit toucharcade.com. :(

Re: TA Plays: 'Shufflepuck Cantina' - An Air Hockey Game With Atmosphere

Ryan Bates — Mon, 17 Sep 2012 17:20:34 -0000

I've been having a lot of fun with this game. Certainly there is a lot of IAP for the extras, but it isn't at all necessary to enjoy the game itself. I love how challenging it is at the first but gets much easier over time as you get better.

Here are some tips: Watch the paddle position before the opponent hits to predict where it will go, and there is a pattern to each of the special moves. You can earn the most credz in survival and bet modes.

Re: Mastering Rails: The Ultimate Rails Project & Revisiting Railscasts

Ryan Bates — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 11:35:45 -0000

Thank you for the kind words about RailsCasts. I'm glad you find it helpful!

Re: Rails Rumble :: Just When You Thought You Were Out...

Ryan Bates — Thu, 26 Jul 2012 14:03:11 -0000

Looking forward to it! Thank you for all the great work you guys do to make this happen.

Re: Tell, Don’t Ask

Ryan Bates — Thu, 19 Jul 2012 17:41:39 -0000

These examples nicely show the different types of refactorings, but their simplicity leaves me more-often preferring the "Not so good" code snippets. In general I prefer direct code over indirect code, but I believe these refactorings have value in more complex scenarios.

Re: Active Record `attribute?` method

Ryan Bates — Tue, 29 May 2012 13:18:23 -0000

I don't consider @post.url.present? a violation of the Law of Demeter. It is a method present on every Ruby object, so it does not require special knowledge of that object to call it.

Re: Active Record `attribute?` method

Ryan Bates — Mon, 28 May 2012 15:06:59 -0000

I tend to favor clear code over concise code, and here `@post.url.present?` feels more clear to me than `@post.url?`. If it's a boolean attribute on the other hand, I'm all for the query method.

Re: Rails isn't for beginners - Rake Routes

Ryan Bates — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 17:43:11 -0000

While I agree it would be great if Rails were easier to get started with on OS X. I don't think it has gotten worse. I remember going through the Hivelogic guide so many times in old versions of OS X. Remember this?

http://hivelogic.com/articl...

That would take me a good hour to get everything setup. Now with Homebrew and RVM/rbenv, I can get setup with the latest versions of Ruby and Rails in a matter of minutes.

Re: Let's Write a Gem: Part 2 - Rake Routes

Ryan Bates — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 12:26:31 -0000

I disagree with this. I have tried both approaches and moving each should statement into a separate "it" block can really bloat a test suite and potentially make it much slower. In RSpec it will print out the line causing the failure making it quite easy to find the exact "should" statement which is failing.

Re: Too LESS? Should You Be Using Sass?

Ryan Bates — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 13:14:02 -0000

What do you recommend to use with Twitter Bootstrap? Is that still a reason to use LESS or do you prefer one of the Sass translations?

Re: A Game Development Curriculum

Ryan Bates — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 13:50:25 -0000

I really enjoyed reading Core Techniques and Algorithms in Game Programming, more so for the concepts than the code. http://www.amazon.com/Core-...

Re: My five favorite “hidden” features in Rails 3.2

Ryan Bates — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 12:22:34 -0000

Thanks for this José, great writeup. The ActiveRecord::Base#pluck method is one of my favorite additions: http://api.rubyonrails.org/...

Re: How To Learn Rails: Railscasts

Ryan Bates — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 13:01:53 -0000

Thank you for writing this blog post! It is wonderful to hear you have found RailsCasts helpful. Very encouraging for me.

Re: http://3amrails.tumblr.com/post/14978066329

Ryan Bates — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 12:15:00 -0000

I recently released a RailsCasts episode on getting started with Rails. Perhaps you will find it useful.

http://railscasts.com/episo...

Re: Why you should care about encapsulation

Ryan Bates — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 18:47:05 -0000

Great article on encapsulation. I look forward to seeing how you tie this in to mocking. On a related note, I was just reading an article on using mocks to drive design (mentioned by Avdi Grimm on Ruby Rogues): http://www.jmock.org/oopsla...

I still am not convinced mocks are worth it from a testing perspective, but I need to experiment more with using them as purely a design tool. What do you think about throwing mocks away after using them for design? The higher level tests fill the need for continuous integration testing.

Re: Unobtrusive Ruby

Ryan Bates — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 16:51:46 -0000

I love to see code that applies these (and similar) practices rigorously. Is there a specific gem or project you feel does this? If so, please link so we can check out the code.

Re: What do you want to know about OOP and Rails?

Ryan Bates — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 13:46:55 -0000

Sounds great Avdi, I look forward to reading this.

While I usually know how to apply these design patterns, I more often struggle with *when* to apply them. Splitting a class into more classes can increase the complexity by adding indirection, abstraction, and just plain line count. What is the tipping point of a single model class that requires one to take this action? That question is hard to give a generic answer to, so maybe some specific examples would work well.