A customer of mine referred me to an article on Cloud Deployment on Amazon Web Services’ EC2 platform that discussed common security holes users are leaving in their instances. The article, Amazon’s Cloud is Full of Holes, warned that poor practices by AWS users were leaving their applications ripe for attack. I completely understand the [...]

If you enjoy our post, feel free to subscribes to our rss feeds

Recently, I had a conversation with a colleague about using JQuery UI to layout form processing for a Ruby on Rails application. I cautioned them against it. In general, I’ve found more success using the simple_form library for generating form processing. I’m a huge fan of JQuery itself and use it a lot, but I [...]

If you enjoy our post, feel free to subscribes to our rss feeds

A friend of mine is beginning an effort to learn Ruby on Rails. He asked me where to start and I sent him a few links that I felt covered some of the key components of Rails that were critical to learn first. Not everyone will agree with my choices, but nevertheless this is what [...]

If you enjoy our post, feel free to subscribes to our rss feeds

[This article originally appeared as the cover story Linux Journal Issue #147, published in July of 2006 -- back when I was still just learning Ruby on Rails. -- Kevin Bedell] Kevin: For our readers who are unfamiliar with Ruby and Rails, can you give us a short description of what they are and what [...]

If you enjoy our post, feel free to subscribes to our rss feeds

Make sure you don’t miss one of the best tech events of the year in the Boston Area: Barcamp Boston 6, April 9-10 in Cambridge, MA. From the site: “BarCamp Boston is Boston’s geek unconference, organized on the fly by attendees, for attendees. Visit the website and wiki at BarCampBoston.org. There is no registration fee, [...]

If you enjoy our post, feel free to subscribes to our rss feeds

Here’s some example code I’ve used for storing configuration variables using Ruby on Rails. This code allows for defaults as well, so you only have to specify variables per environment if they override the default value. This first file should be put in /lib/app_config.rb. # This singleton class stores configuration options. # It makes use [...]

If you enjoy our post, feel free to subscribes to our rss feeds

Anyone who writes web applications has likely built forms for users to enter their e-mail address. It’s considered a part of our basic identity now – like our name and address. It’s expected we have them. But then, inevitably, once we’ve collected e-mails from all our customers and we go to use them – we [...]

If you enjoy our post, feel free to subscribes to our rss feeds

I’ve been a part of discussions on how to define ‘seed’ data versus ‘testing’ data on a Ruby on Rails project. Here’s a summary of what I’ve seen work well — please comment if you have anything to add. Data loading is done for 2 purposes: First, to load data that will seed the system [...]

If you enjoy our post, feel free to subscribes to our rss feeds

I have a lot of people ask me about resources to help them learn and come up to speed on rails. I found this list of resources on Quora recently and thought it was worth reposting here to give it a wider audience. I’ve also annotated the list a bit to say something about each [...]

If you enjoy our post, feel free to subscribes to our rss feeds

Here’s the question: “Developing social and mobile applications can be expensive and risky. Some programmers are willing to reduce or eliminate their fees in exchange for revenue share on the application. What is the best way to structure a deal? If the application doesn’t earn expected revenues, how can you then remunerate programmers for their [...]

If you enjoy our post, feel free to subscribes to our rss feeds