RubyGeek

Sat 30 Jan 2010

What I’ve been up to!

Posted by nola under Ruby, android, gwt, life
1 Comment

Its been a crazy December through January and I haven’t written much!

I’m glad the GWT posts helped some of you from the comments. I spent some time on figuring them out from the limited docs on google’s GWT site, mostly I think it helps to have complete examples since they dont make it real clear what file each snippit of code goes in. I’m glad the pain I went through to figure them out help some of you A few of you had problems but i haven’t gotten around to seeing what is wrong. I was using the trunk version of GWT, so if you are using 2.0 then you might have some differences.

I’ve been diving my head back into rails after spending a spell in perl/mason and GWT in some projects for work. I think other languages are neat but I really love ruby. So I’ve been re-watching some of my episodes of PeepCode.com and RailsCasts.com those guys are awesome. I love this stuff. Why else would I be spending my Saturday night with Ruby vs watching a movie or playing a game!

I’ve also been playing with android a bit, its pretty fun to see my app on a phone! Working on a TODO List app, which seems almost like “hello world” but it has a twist… more later when i have something to show.

Been working learning jQuery. I had seen it before, but saw class names mixed with programming and having a ugghhhh feeling. But.. I decided to give it a shot and dang! I would have given my right arm to have this 5 years ago when i was experimenting with ajax (though it wasn’t called that…) with setting the src of a script tag with a php url to load and save data. Anyways, its cool and neat. I think the name is horrible since you aren’t really quering anything… IMHO Maybe if I can think of a better one I can suggest it, but seems like it is here to stay since there are stay since there are 4 books already about it!

To help with reviewing ruby I have been working through Ruby Koans. Hats off to EdgeCase. I have already written them and thanked them! This goes along with my post How To Get Better At Programming where I wrote about how i was working at getting better at programming. It all comes down to practice! … I think when I finish the rubykoans exercises, i will revert and start going through them again. Almost like doing pushups every day (I push up to get more coffee at least 3x a day!).

Git … I did my first pull request on github, very cool how that works.

Have some ideas for some more substantial posts… coming soon

Mon 4 Jan 2010

Book Review: “Refactoring in Ruby”

Posted by nola under Ruby, Testing, patterns
No Comments

I’ve have been pondering in the past 6 months - How do I get better at programing? What is the best way? do I need more books? At my current company, we whole heartedly engage in peer reviews, nothing gets checked in the repository without at least one person going over it. In that process, i’ve learned more about coding then I could from 10 books. I used to be a book fiend. I had about 10 books on every subject. Did I learn? yeah, some! But I think I’ve learned more from doing and practice. Practice, practice, practice! When the Chicago Ruby User Group offered this book in exchange for a review, I jumped at the chance.

“Refactoring in Ruby” written by William C. Wake and Kevin Rutherford.
Published by Addison-Wesley

“Refactoring in Ruby” is more like a “workbook” then a “how to write awesome code” book. If you download the code from github http://github.com/kevinrutherford/rrwb-code you have tests already written for the exercises.

The book is arranged in three parts, The Art of Refactoring, Code Smells, and Programs to Refactor.

There are explanations of “code smells” which are one characteristic of code that could be improved. Some of them are long parameter lists, unnecessarily complex, global variable, feature envy sections, etc. One thing I find interesting is the “How did it get this way?” section. It gives some insight into the thought process and reasoning behind the smell. I think this is good, as programmers our ego may be rather miffed to hear “This code stinks” but with some reasoning, it makes the pain less and I think firms up in our minds when this happens again, to do it this other way. I always want to know why when someone says I could do such and such thing better.

In addition to the code smell examples there are three programs to refactor in the end of the book. In a conversational tone, it walks through and gives some hints on what needs refactoring. Its almost as if you had a pair programming buddy working with you and identifying in small chunks what can be improved. This is definitely something I want to work through more carefully.

What I find odd, is that not all the code smells have code examples. The inspiration for the book I think is the Martin Fowler book “Refactoring Improving the design of Existing Code” which has examples for every code smell. Maybe Ruby smells less than Java? Or those fixes are really trivial? I don’t know. Overall, this is a great book and is certainly worth the price and investment and you will be a better programmer because of it!

Sun 29 Nov 2009

Haml in my Camel

Posted by nola under Ruby, Ruby On Rails
[2] Comments

Trying something new .. HAML... I saw it a couple years ago, I was like "ehh.. umm.. nah" ... But working on the DevChix site, it seems like it will be our choice instead of erb for templates so I thought I'd give it a try.

So here's some straight up html + erb

PLAIN TEXT

RUBY:

<h1>Listing users</h1>
<table>
<tr>
<th>Username</th>
<th>Email</th>
</tr>
<% @users.each do |user| %>
<tr>
<td><%=h user.username %></td>
<td><%=h user.email %></td>
<td><%= link_to 'Show', user %></td>
<td><%= link_to 'Edit', edit_user_path(user) %></td>
<td><%= link_to 'Destroy', user, :confirm => 'Are you sure?', :method => :delete %></td>
</tr>
<% end %>
</table>
<%= link_to 'New user', new_user_path %>

And same with haml:

PLAIN TEXT

RUBY:

%h1 Listing users
%table
%tr
%th Username
%th Email
- @users.each do |user|
%tr
%td
= user.username
%td
= user.email
%td
= link_to 'Show', user
%td
= link_to 'Edit', edit_user_path(user)
%td
= link_to 'Destroy', user, :confirm => 'Are you sure?', :method => :delete
= link_to 'New user', new_user_path

I am not totally sold, but.. it is an interesting kind of markup!

Let me know if you see a better way to write it or if you prefer another markup language!

Tue 24 Nov 2009

Builder Pattern in Ruby

Posted by nola under Ruby, java, patterns
No Comments

Call me crazy, but this is why I classify myself as a language geek. When I learn something fascinating, i wonder hmm how can I do that with X language? My last post I did an example of the Builder pattern as described in Effective Java by Joshua Bloch. The main motivation for me to use Builder is to have flexible parameter lists, without worrying about order of parameters (there are a few other reasons outlined in the book, but this is what I find cool).

Its too easy.

My class:

PLAIN TEXT

RUBY:

class Address
attr_accessor :street, :street2, :city, :state, :zip, :address_type
def initialize(&block)
#set default values
self.city = "Chicago"
self.state = "IL"
#set value from block
instance_eval &block if block_given?
end
end

And the usage of it:

PLAIN TEXT

RUBY:

def testDefaultValues
myaddress = Address.new
assert_equal("Chicago", myaddress.city)
assert_equal("IL", myaddress.state)
end
def testStreetStateZip
myaddress = Address.new do
self.street = "this is the street"
self.zip = "11111"
end
assert_equal("Chicago", myaddress.city)
assert_equal("IL", myaddress.state)
assert_equal("this is the street", myaddress.street)
assert_equal("11111", myaddress.zip)
end

Wow, huh? Compare to

PLAIN TEXT

JAVA:

public void testBuilderDefaults() {
Address expected = new Address.Builder("Chicago", "IL").build();
assertEquals("State is IL", "IL", expected.getState());
assertEquals("City is Chicago", "Chicago", expected.getCity());
}

then the optional params are chained to that:

PLAIN TEXT

JAVA:

public void testBuilderStreetStateZip() {
Address expected = new Address.Builder("Chicago", "IL").street("this is an address").zip("11111").build();
assertEquals("this is an address", expected.getStreet());
assertEquals("11111", expected.getZip());
assertEquals("IL", expected.getState());
assertEquals("Chicago", expected.getCity());
}

Full source for Ruby (though I was able to paste it all here!)
Address class in ruby | Address test in ruby

And for Java, if you want to compare ...
Address class in Java | Address test in java

Yes... sometimes its hard not to gloat.

yeah yeah yeah, its not really "fair" to compare strongly typed languages... but as I said, my motivation is to have easy parameter lists without having to remember specific ordering of params for constructor or use multiple set methods.

Sun 22 Nov 2009

Builder Pattern in Java

Posted by nola under java, patterns
No Comments

I have been reading Effective Java by Joshua Bloch and learned something new so I wanted to try it out.

Making long parameter lists in your constructor is not fun and prone to errors. Previously I thought that best way to handle this situation was to make a bunch of setter methods. This can get kind of tedious and hard to follow when there are alot of parameters:

PLAIN TEXT

JAVA:

Address myaddress = new Address("Chicago", "IL");
myaddress.setZip("44422");

Using a Builder object:

PLAIN TEXT

JAVA:

Address myaddress = new Address.Builder().city("Chicago").state("IL").zip("44422").build();

Using a builder class allows you to specify params in any order too!

Here is the source code for my Address class with Builder. The builder is implemented as a nested class since it will only be used by the Address class.

Address class with Builder

Test for Address class

The required parameters are set in the Builder constructor:

PLAIN TEXT

JAVA:

public void testBuilderDefaults() {
Address expected = new Address.Builder("Chicago", "IL").build();
assertEquals("State is IL", "IL", expected.getState());
assertEquals("City is Chicago", "Chicago", expected.getCity());
}

then the optional params are chained to that:

PLAIN TEXT

JAVA:

public void testBuilderStreetStateZip() {
Address expected = new Address.Builder("Chicago", "IL").street("this is an address").zip("11111").build();
assertEquals("Address is this is an address", "this is an address", expected.getStreet());
assertEquals("Zip is 11111", "11111", expected.getZip());
assertEquals("State is IL", "IL", expected.getState());
assertEquals("City is Chicago", "Chicago", expected.getCity());
}

The book goes into more discussion that I haven't quite wrapped my head around yet, but this is interesting stuff .. even though it is java

Sun 1 Nov 2009

GWT 2.0: UiHandler

Posted by nola under gwt, java
No Comments

I was pretty excited to find UiHandler, it makes the organization of code so much cleaner!

I am putting in the full code for both, so you can see the beauty for yourself! Pay attention to the comments where i put the gotchas that got me at first!
Before:

PLAIN TEXT

JAVA:

package com.rubygeek.sandbox.client;
import java.util.ArrayList;
import com.google.gwt.core.client.GWT;
import com.google.gwt.event.dom.client.ClickEvent;
import com.google.gwt.event.dom.client.ClickHandler;
import com.google.gwt.uibinder.client.UiBinder;
import com.google.gwt.uibinder.client.UiField;
import com.google.gwt.user.client.Window;
import com.google.gwt.user.client.ui.Button;
import com.google.gwt.user.client.ui.CheckBox;
import com.google.gwt.user.client.ui.Composite;
import com.google.gwt.user.client.ui.Widget;
public class LanguageList extends Composite {
interface MyUiBinder extends UiBinder<Widget, LanguageList> {}
private static MyUiBinder uiBinder = GWT.create(MyUiBinder.class);
@UiField CheckBox rubyCheck;
@UiField CheckBox pythonCheck;
@UiField CheckBox javaCheck;
@UiField CheckBox phpCheck;
@UiField Button button;
public LanguageList() {
// bind XML file of same name of this class to this class
initWidget(uiBinder.createAndBindUi(this));
final ArrayList<CheckBox> boxes = new ArrayList<CheckBox>();
boxes.add(rubyCheck);
boxes.add(pythonCheck);
boxes.add(javaCheck);
boxes.add(phpCheck);
// add button and handler to alert the values of checkboxes
button.addClickHandler(new ClickHandler() {
public void onClick(ClickEvent event) {
String output = "";
for(CheckBox box : boxes) {
if (box.getValue()) {
output += box.getFormValue() + ", ";
}
}
Window.alert("You checked: "+ output);
}
});
}
}

After:

PLAIN TEXT

JAVA:

package com.rubygeek.sandbox.client;
import java.util.ArrayList;
import com.google.gwt.core.client.GWT;
import com.google.gwt.event.dom.client.ClickEvent;
import com.google.gwt.uibinder.client.UiBinder;
import com.google.gwt.uibinder.client.UiField;
import com.google.gwt.uibinder.client.UiHandler;
import com.google.gwt.user.client.Window;
import com.google.gwt.user.client.ui.CheckBox;
import com.google.gwt.user.client.ui.Composite;
import com.google.gwt.user.client.ui.Widget;
public class LanguageList extends Composite {
interface MyUiBinder extends UiBinder<Widget, LanguageList> {}
private static MyUiBinder uiBinder = GWT.create(MyUiBinder.class);
final ArrayList<CheckBox> boxes = new ArrayList<CheckBox>();
@UiField CheckBox rubyCheck;
@UiField CheckBox pythonCheck;
@UiField CheckBox javaCheck;
@UiField CheckBox phpCheck;
// add ClickEvent handler to button with ui:field="languageButton" in the UiBinder code
// !!! note no ; at end of this annotation, and the name of function does not matter, its the annotation that ties it to the
// body of the method, also this does not go inside the class (i spend 40 mins figuring that out...)
@UiHandler("languageButton")
void doClick(ClickEvent event) {
String output = "";
for(CheckBox box : boxes) {
if (box.getValue()) {
output += box.getFormValue() + ", ";
}
}
Window.alert("You checked: "+ output);
}
public LanguageList() {
// bind XML file of same name of this class to this class
initWidget(uiBinder.createAndBindUi(this));
boxes.add(rubyCheck);
boxes.add(pythonCheck);
boxes.add(javaCheck);
boxes.add(phpCheck);
}
}

See the constructure is further slimmed down!

Sat 31 Oct 2009

GWT 2.0: UiBinder, first look at simple example

Posted by nola under Javascript/AJAX, gwt, java, open source
[5] Comments

Note: as of right now, you can only get this feature in Trunk. see here for how to download the source and use it More Info on release

One of the great new features coming out of GWT 2.0 is UiBinder, a way to make a declarative UI without making tons of objects. Reminding you of swing? Yeah, I didn't sign up to be a Swing developer. I was sort of disturbed when I started doing gwt and was writing tons of java to just do simple HTML things.

Full Source

PLAIN TEXT

JAVA:

CheckBox rubyCheck = new CheckBox("Ruby");

rubyCheck.setFormValue("ruby");

boxes.add(rubyCheck);

CheckBox pythonCheck = new CheckBox("Python");

pythonCheck.setFormValue("python");

boxes.add(pythonCheck);

CheckBox javaCheck = new CheckBox("Java");

javaCheck.setFormValue("java");

boxes.add(javaCheck);

CheckBox phpCheck = new CheckBox("PHP");

phpCheck.setFormValue("php");

boxes.add(phpCheck);

// set up panel

Panel panel = new VerticalPanel();

panel.add(new Label("Choose a language:"));

Compare to the UiBinder code:

PLAIN TEXT

XML:

<ui:UiBinder xmlns:ui='urn:ui:com.google.gwt.uibinder'

xmlns:g='urn:import:com.google.gwt.user.client.ui'>

<g:VerticalPanel>

<g:Label>Choose a language:</g:Label>

<g:CheckBox ui:field="rubyCheck" formValue="ruby">Ruby</g:CheckBox>

<g:CheckBox ui:field="pythonCheck" formValue="python">Python</g:CheckBox>

<g:CheckBox ui:field="javaCheck" formValue="java">Java</g:CheckBox>

<g:CheckBox ui:field="phpCheck" formValue="php">PHP</g:CheckBox>

<g:Button ui:field="button">Submit</g:Button>

</g:VerticalPanel>

</ui:UiBinder>

It is somewhat like HTML, each item with attribute "ui:field=" is the reference to the object that gets created in Java. Here's the Java code that uses this:

Full Source

PLAIN TEXT

JAVA:

public class LanguageList extends Composite {

interface MyUiBinder extends UiBinder<Widget, LanguageList> {}

private static MyUiBinder uiBinder = GWT.create(MyUiBinder.class);

@UiField CheckBox rubyCheck;

@UiField CheckBox pythonCheck;

@UiField CheckBox javaCheck;

@UiField CheckBox phpCheck;

@UiField Button button;

public LanguageList() {

   // bind XML file of same name of this class to this class

   initWidget(uiBinder.createAndBindUi(this));



   final ArrayList<CheckBox> boxes = new ArrayList<CheckBox>();

   boxes.add(rubyCheck);

   boxes.add(pythonCheck);

   boxes.add(javaCheck);

   boxes.add(phpCheck);

}

We still have to add them to the Array (which is use to display checked results) but doesn't that look so much better? And you are able to add the values of the checkboxes to the xml too.

When using UiBinder, make sure you add it as inherits to the xml for the module (i forgot at first and had errors with gwt trying to find UiBinder!)

I didn't do exactly one-to-one comparison between UiBinder and not, but i do have two complete gwt apps you can look at. I find it really helpful when learning something to look at complete apps rather than just snippits of code.

There is some documentation on Ui:Binder on Google Code, but at first I found it hard to follow since it doesn't say what files each piece goes in, it took me awhile to figure it out. Maybe its just me though.

Before UiBinder
After Ui Binder

Anyways, just a quick example that might help some people out there. I want to explore more about patterns in GWT and I'll write them up here.

Sat 31 Oct 2009

GWT: Using trunk

Posted by nola under Fun, Uncategorized, gwt
No Comments

Lately, I have been fascinated with Google Web Toolkit as of late. What you say, you love ruby but doing java?!!? My ruby friends will probably smack me but really i love all languages. The widgets and rpc stuff, that is pretty cool as well as learning how to do MVP. There are some new features in trunk that will be released "this fall" but I don't want to wait that long, so last night i set about to checkout and compile trunk and try it out!

1. I installed the latest version of eclipse Galileo, with the Google plugin
http://code.google.com/eclipse/

2. Checkout the source code
http://code.google.com/webtoolkit/makinggwtbetter.html#workingoncode
Make sure you have ant installed. It takes awhile, i think maybe 20 mins or so on my macbook.

3. Setup the API directory in the Preferences for GWT
It took a while (and many searches) of messing around to figure out how to switch to the trunk version of the API.

Go to Eclipse > Preferences. Find the Google Web Toolkit on the left. It has an interface to add/remove APIs. Click add, add the path like so:
~/gwt/trunk/build/lib
I named it "trunk"

4. Create project
Create a new Web Application Project, select "trunk" as the version of API. And now you are on your way!

Once i've done a little more with it, I'll write about some of the new features that are really awesome.

Sun 20 Sep 2009

I like Tomatos. I like time.

Posted by nola under life, time management
1 Comment

In my constant battle to get stuff done and feel good about what I did, I am finding the Pomodoro Method very handy.

Basically you set a timer for 25 mins, work unhindered for that time, then take a 5 minute break. Repeat 3 more times, then take a 15-20 min break. This has helped me for a few reasons

If my task is BORING.. I procrastinate, go read facebook, email a friend. If I can tell myself, ok 25 mins of this then usually I get into the swing of it and get it done!
TOO MANY EMAILS! ... I could sit and watch my inbox fill up before my eyes. Usually, any email can wait at most 25 mins to be read or responded to. Using my break time to glance over email has improved my inbox organization. Knowing i have just 5 mins to sort through the mails that have arrived makes me choose what is most important
I use http://www.tomatoist.comto keep track of my timer. It seems to work the best. I like looking at the list for today and seeing "oh wow, I did 7 pomodoros!"
I feel good, even when I don't complete the task, it makes me feel good to know I spend some uninterrupted time on that task. I am under alot of pressure from various fronts, and feeling good is something that keeps me going.

I have used other time keeping things, like Awake for mac. Timers on my android. Some people keep a list of tasks and how many pomodoros they believe that task will need. Reading the Pomodoro Method has alot of good tips!

Post in the comments if you have tried this sort of thing before!

Edit: Found a mac app that is cool and integrate with twitter! http://pomodoro.ugolandini.com/

Sun 13 Sep 2009

WindyCityRails2009 was a blast!!

Posted by nola under Fun, Ruby, Ruby On Rails, devchix
No Comments

Even though I don't do ruby at work, I do it for fun on weekends. I paid for my own self to go to the WindyCityRails conference and tutorial on Cucumber, RSpec Testing. It was well worth the money!! Not many things can get me to go up to Chicago early in the morning and on a weekend!

I went to a 3 hour tutorial class "Behaviour Driven Rails with RSpec and Cucumber" ... in my limited time I can spent with I've had a hard time getting my head around cucumber. I did rspec alot a few years ago, so thats a piece of cake. David Chelimsky and Corey Haines. 4 days before the conference, they sent an email to attendees of the tutorial with a list of resources to read and libraries to install. I worked all week on watching railscasts.com videos on cucumber, factories, testing. I always like to try things out myself first, then I am familiar with it when I go "to class" Dave and Corey did the class pair programming style..which was totally fascinating. There was one laptop, two wireless mice and one wireless keyboard. Dave typed on the laptop keyboard and Corey typed on the external keyboard. One would talk and explain things while the other typed. They took turns. It was really awesome. After watching them program, then they told us to split up in pairs and do the same thing for another scenario. I was sitting between two people so I kinda bounced between them. The one on my left didn't have the same version of rails, so he typed on my keyboard and we took turns. It was awesome, I had not really done pair programming quite like that before. They bounced between cucumber tests and rspec tests. I wish I could have recorded video and played it back in slow motion!

The regular talks:

Better Ruby through Functional Programming
Dean Wampler, Object Mentor, Inc.

I started to learn haskell once.. bought the O'Reilly book (which is excellent with little exercises)... but thats as far as I got with functional programming. This talk was interesting with code samples of ruby. We were challenged to learn a functional programming language. He mentioned others like scala, erlang ... hmm what to choose!

Super-easy PDF Generation with Prawn and Prawnto
John McCaffrey, Pathfinder Development

I have not had to make PDFs with ruby yet...but now I know there are some great libraries. Cool part of this is John was making a PDF of a ruby app, pulling in twitters happening at the conference and using Googles graphs APIs to make pretty graphs! I saw alot of people saying "I didn't know that Google had graph APIs!!!"

“Comics” Is Hard: On Domains and Databases
Ben Scofield, Viget Labs

When the talk started Ben asked for a show of hands of who reads comics? I meekly raised my hand. My husband is a comic book fan and I read them on occasion. I sat at his table for lunch and he asked me about it. I was surprised he saw my hand, iwas sitting near the back! This talk didn't have much code, but talked about the number of attributes that comic books have (title, issue, theme, publisher, etc) and how hard it was to model in a relational database. He talked about couch db, mongo ... i haven't tried any of those, but I might now that I know it can be the best choice for some data sets.

Rails 3 Update
Yehuda Katz, Engine Yard

Yehuda talked about whats coming up in Rails3. But by this time I was kinda brain dead and was trying to make plans for dinner!

Devchix!!!
A few of the local chix came to the after party and hung out. There was a few at the conference I had not met yet and a few I invited to join! It was awesome. It was so fun. I caught up some of my ruby buddies I hadn't seen in awhile and made some new friends. I was sad to see it end...

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