Will Bridges

It’s great being a Ruby on Rails programmer. But, really you should learn more about Rails before you go professional if you don’t know about testing, migrations, or plugins. It would save other programmers a great deal of time and pain going down the rabbit hole when we inherit your poor code. I’ve run in to projects where testing would be a great idea but it’s hard to tell your non-technical client that we need to spend x amount of hours on the clock adding testing and putting in valid migrations because your former programmer didn’t follow these practices. Unfortunately, I’m guilty of sucking it up and telling the people that do work with me ‘if there are no tests only build tests where it helps you in the process’. But, it’s a hard sell with a new client to spend time on building infrastructure they may never notice. So, Rails programmers and aspiring Rails programmers, let’s learn:

• What a rails migration is and why it should be essential.
• What is testing and why it is important.
• What the differences are between unit, functional, and integration tests are.
• What plugins are available and why you shouldn’t re-invent the wheel by ‘rolling your own’.
• What engines should be used for and what they should not be used for.
• What a helper is and what they are used for.
• Separation of concerns and strict use of the Model/View/Controller methods.
• What a library is used for in rails, where it goes, and why it goes there.
• Most of all, DON’T REPEAT YOURSELF! (DRY). Do not copy and paste code. If you do, it can probably be turned in to a method.

If you learn these lessons or are researching these lessons you can become a great Ruby on Rails programmer. If you scoff at any of it, please go back to your native language and leave Agile programming for the professionals.