Danielle Sucher DanielleSucher

How to Talk to Developers

Ben Orenstein (@r00k)

Obey Law of Demeter

Reduces coupling
Enables refactoring

Throw something weird at people to keep their attention. Bored people don't learn anything, so focus on entertainment over being informative.

Write like a newspaper

I want to write software that helps kill people.

Please, before you call the police and get my github account put on lockdown, allow me a moment to explain. What I really want to do is work on projects that advance the human condition and improve people's lives. I've been in a mad dash to learn how to program for the past four or five years exactly because I realized how much good I could do for the world with a computer.

Jim Weirich:

This is how I explain it… Ruby has Procs and Lambdas. Procs are created with Proc.new { }, lambdas are created with lambda {} and ->() {}.

In Ruby 1.8, proc {} creates lambda, and Ruby 1.9 it creates procs (don't ask).

Lambdas use method semantics when handling parameters, procs use assignment semantics when handling parameters.

This means lambdas, like methods, will raise an ArgumentError when called with fewer arguments than they were defined with. Procs will simply assign nil to variables for arguments that were not passed in.

This article has been given a more permanent home on my blog. Also, since it was first written, the development of the Promises/A+ specification has made the original emphasis on Promises/A seem somewhat outdated.

You're Missing the Point of Promises

Promises are a software abstraction that makes working with asynchronous operations much more pleasant. In the most basic definition, your code will move from continuation-passing style:

getTweetsFor("domenic", function (err, results) {
 // the rest of your code goes here.

Locate the section for your github remote in the .git/config file. It looks like this:

[remote "origin"]
	fetch = +refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/*
	url = [email protected]:joyent/node.git

Now add the line fetch = +refs/pull/*/head:refs/remotes/origin/pr/* to this section. Obviously, change the github url to match your project's URL. It ends up looking like this:

	// .h
	@interface NSNumber (Ranges)

	- (NSRange)to:(NSNumber *)rangeEnd;
	- (BOOL)isInRange:(NSRange)range;

	@end

	// .m
	@implementation NSNumber (Ranges)

	Latency Comparison Numbers (~2012)
	----------------------------------
	L1 cache reference 0.5 ns
	Branch mispredict 5 ns
	L2 cache reference 7 ns 14x L1 cache
	Mutex lock/unlock 25 ns
	Main memory reference 100 ns 20x L2 cache, 200x L1 cache
	Compress 1K bytes with Zippy 3,000 ns 3 us
	Send 1K bytes over 1 Gbps network 10,000 ns 10 us
	Read 4K randomly from SSD* 150,000 ns 150 us ~1GB/sec SSD

	The point of sore or milk in hot cream. Any
	Such matters. Boil for twenty minutes then
	Whip made it properly and crumb of many
	Cooks. Bake the public. Make the point. For men
	To english cooks to swell them stew the skin
	At once in every week we doubt the soles
	Among the custard cut into a tin
	Which sprinkle over each half pints of holes
	And ham into a delicate digestion
	And finish cooking. See page. Lemonade

	# Add these methods to your ApplicationController. Then, any controller
	# that inherits from it will have these methods and can programmatically
	# determine what filters it has set.
	class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base

	def self.filters(kind = nil)
	all_filters = _process_action_callbacks
	all_filters = all_filters.select{\|f\| f.kind == kind} if kind
	all_filters.map(&:filter)
	end

	source 'https://rubygems.org'

	gem "method_source", "~> 0.8.1"