The subject line basically says it all; what web design application are people using for Ruby on Rails projects on OS X? My first guess is TextMate. Are there any apps out there that support Rails layouts and ERB?
I am currently taking a look at Panic’s Coda and am really impressed with what I am seeing. Anyone have any other suggestions?
When you inherit code, how do you know when to spend time refactoring a particular class versus simply throwing that class out and rewriting it? How bad does a class, method, package, section of code have to be to warrant rewriting it?
On my current project, we have a few classes that are 1000s of lines of code in length with maybe one or two methods. These classes are very procedural and generally only have one unit test. (On the up side, they have about 80% code coverage) The powers that be have decided to scrap the current code and rewrite it. Under these circumstances, definitely agree with, and helped push, this decision. But this is a fairly extreme example.
Is this decision only faced in these extreme examples, or are there other legitimate reasons for rewriting code? In my experience, rewriting the code, if done properly (e.g., with refactoring and using TDD), would be faster and result in better results then refactoring.
There is one thing about business that I don’t understand, why is it that the only application that business people seem to use is Excel Spreadsheet. I have seen people open Excel to simply take notes. Is there an MBA course called Spreadsheets 101? I think this is the biggest example of the hammer/nail principle.
What always worries me the most, though, is when businessy/management types try to manage projects using spreadsheets; everything needs to be recorded, tallied, and accounted for. Somewhere along the line the people get lost in all the numbers and cells.
I can’t quite put my finger on why exactly I dislike Excel, but I do. Maybe it is the formula/math part of it or maybe it is the fact that people try to use it for everything. Maybe it is just that I have had to create far too many programs where the specs where put into giant, multi-page spreadsheets which require a committee and several days or weeks to change. I think I’m just tired of trying to understand mapping instructions from spreadsheets that require 3 monitors to display the whole thing.
I think a record exec has finally figure it out:
“We used to fool ourselves,” [Bronfman] said. “We used to think our content was perfect just exactly as it was. We expected our business would remain blissfully unaffected even as the world of interactivity, constant connection and file sharing was exploding. And of course we were wrong. How were we wrong? By standing still or moving at a glacial pace, we inadvertently went to war with consumers by denying them what they wanted and could otherwise find and as a result of course, consumers won.”
Bronfman is the Warner Music boss.