Software-Development-2

With the current virus issues I forgot to publicize that my presentation about creating pleasant development environments was posted along with an example of Dockerizing an existing Rails application. You can find the slides for the talk here. Finally you can find a ready to use existing Rails template that uses Docker here.

Thanks to YEGRB for allowing me to present and to Will for his awesome editing skills. Also thank you to Corgibytes for feedback on draft presentation.

I appreciate people posting getting started examples and templates online. They are good for getting started and playing with a new technology. The problem is the templates are usually not production ready. They are also missing a bunch of the developer tools and best practices, such as linters and automated builds, that every project will eventually need.

So I created a Rails 6 template that includes many of the tools I want on a Rails project. I wanted the template to be easy to use but also contain all the tools I wanted. This includes a Docker container, a linter, a type checker, and a build scripts. Actually the template has two build scripts, one for GitHub Actions and one for GitLab CI. The Docker script will build both development and production images.

I recently started a new contract that involves tools and software languages I normally don’t use.   I have to remember that .NET best practices don’t necessarily translate to PHP/Java.  I have to remember that New Tools Require New Standards (originally published on September 3rd, 2010).

“An old belief is like an old shoe.  We so value its comfort that we fail to notice the hole in it.” - Robert Brault

As developers we all have standards, even if they aren’t that well defined.  Of course I’m talking about technology standards but feel free to insert your social awareness and/or hygiene standard joke here.  Standards can range from the usual coding standards to the names you give your servers (e.g Lord of the Rings Characters) and everything in-between.

The results of the Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2017 are live.  Some surprising highlights for me:

• Most developers surveyed are white male web developers.  Just kidding, this was not surprising at all.
• More than 50% of developers’ parents had a university degree of some type.  I wonder what the parent’s education level is like for other occupations?
•  SQL is the 2nd most popular programming language.  Surprising to me because I don’t think of SQL as a programming language. Not sure why.  Maybe because you don’t run a SQL application but an application that uses SQL.  Guess I have to change my thinking.
• Most dreaded language is VB6 which is what I started my professional career with.  Not sure why people dislike it so much.  Maybe it has more to do with the fact most VB6 projects are old and it’s hard to get a VB6 development environment setup.
• The most dreaded platform is Sharepoint, which is something I’ve never liked and actively avoid.  Glad it’s not just me.
• Visual Studio is a very popular IDE but the second most popular was Notepad++.  I assume that everyone has Notepad++ installed on their workstation.  Unless you are a sysadmin then you like Vim.  Don’t forget to quit Vim it’s Esc-q or Esc-wq if you want to save and quit.
• Most developers outside of the United States are underpaid when you translate their salary to USD.  I wonder if this is because of the currently strong US dollar and if the difference wouldn’t have been so high 5 years ago.
• Git won the version control war over Mercurial despite me personally liking Mercurial better.  Surprisingly Subversion is used more than Mercurial.

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I was just talked into and/or talked my friends into purchasing Magicka.  That reminded me I had posted Part 1 of “How the Gold Master was Delayed” and I should look for Part 2. It’s nice to see a humorous look at a very stressful time for both the developer and the client.