PragDave

Knee Testing

I still occasionally bump into folks who claim that all testing can (and should) be automated. For those optimistic souls, I offer this tale, by way of Brian Marick's blog.

Automated tests are necessary, and automated unit tests in particular are a wonderful design aid. But ultimately they only test the things you know to test. It’s the other things that get your knees wobbling (you’ll have to read the story).

Rails Training

Mike Clark and I are planning on giving a two-day Rails Bootcamp at various locations around the country, starting in the fall. The idea will be to take people from zero to Rails coder, with lots of live coding and plenty of time for Q&A. For folks who don’t know Ruby, there’ll be a one day Ruby course before the main event. Cost is still to be decided, but is likely to be something in the $650—850 range (and maybe about $950—$1150 including the Ruby course)—to some extent the price is driven by the location.

We’re trying to gauge interest, and to work out the best cities. The democratic way to decide seems to be to put it to a vote, so if you’d like to wander on over the the wiki, you can both vote for a location and register to be notified.

Could I beg a favor—could you only vote for a location if you would seriously plan to attend there?

Thanks.

RDoc in an OS X Dashboard Widget

Now this is neat.

Beta2 of the Rails Book

It’s been a crazy 10 days. The Rails Beta Book has been way more successful than I imagined. Over 1,500 adventurous folks have taken the plunge so far, the the feedback has been brilliant. The errata system is full of great feedback, ranging fom simple typos to really cool technical suggestions. I’ve rolled 99% of them into the book and recooked a new PDF.

As a result, I’m really pleased to announce the release of the second beta version of the book. If you bought the book as of sometime this afternoon, you’ll receive the latest version automatically. And if you already have a beta book, you can upgrade (for free, of course). Please be patient while waiting for your book to cook—our poor little servers are likely to be running warm for a while.

For folks who do upgrade, there’s a little "thank-you" surprise at the end of the process.