June 13, 2011 -
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tools
One thing I’ve found that most engineers dislike is the overuse of tools. I’m not talking about build tools or other command line tools, which automate repetitive tasks and make our lives easier. I’m talking about the tools that management wants everyone to use, whether it be for bug tracking, feature reviews, project management, or any other work that is peripheral to the actual task of writing software.
These tools aren’t inherently bad. They can be of great assistance to the process of deploying quality, production-ready code. But I’ve encountered the situation more than a few times where these tools have done more to get in the way than they have to actually help. Usually it’s either due to not picking a tool and sticking with it, or to using tools where they aren’t necessary.
Exhibit A: Too many tools
Here’s one scenario from real life. One company I worked at used five different tools for tracking progress. Five. Two is one too many, and they had five. Trac, Pivotal Tracker, Basecamp, and a couple others whose names I don’t even remember, all played into some sort of chaotic dance to which nobody in the company knew the steps. Every project had its own…
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February 13, 2011 -
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elite command
analytics
ruby
rails
This is the first in a series of articles I intend to publish about the technology, philosophy, and process behind my latest Rails project, Elite Command. Elite Command is a turn-based, multiplayer strategy game, and a lot of interesting approaches were taken in developing for its unique requirements.
Before I get too into the grittier aspects of the game, I’m going to cover something which applies to any web application which strives for commercial success: analytics.
Having designed and maintained various analytics platforms over the last three years, I’ve learned a thing or two about best practices and capable architectures for supporting the requirements of a robust analytics infrastructure. I’ve also learned a lot about the types of metrics which are most useful in a business sense. With this knowledge, adding analytics to Elite Command was a matter of choosing the 20% effort which would yield 80% of the useful results. That’s why the first analytics tool I baked in was funnel tracking.
Note that my code is using MongoDB with Mongoid for the ORM, but that this is all just as applicable to whatever data store you may be using…
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January 27, 2011 -
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programming
In the last month, I’ve had ample time for the first time in a long time to really dive into a solo programming project. It was something I had actually been working on for longer than that, but not until this last month have I had the rare chance to work completely uninterrupted on my own. The result is a product launch—that’s right, this thing is shipping, next week! When that happens, I will write a more detailed post about some of the approaches, fairly unique to the Rails world, which I took to a few different problems.
But first, I wanted to write a post reflecting on the merits of working alone as a programmer. There are many articles which talk about the different challenges and advantages of working in teams, but rarely on programming solo. This makes sense, to an extent, as most of us have Actual Paying Jobs™ and work with teams more than we work alone, and there is also all the ongoing buzz about the benefits of pair programming over the last several years. At the same time, though, it’s surprising, since most of the best programmers I’ve met on various teams got their start doing it on their own, as a hobby, as an amateur, a lover of the craft, and only joined com…
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