Paz Aricha pazaricha

Originally published in June 2008

When hiring Ruby on Rails programmers, knowing the right questions to ask during an interview was a real challenge for me at first. In 30 minutes or less, it's difficult to get a solid read on a candidate's skill set without looking at code they've previously written. And in the corporate/enterprise world, I often don't have access to their previous work.

To ensure we hired competent ruby developers at my last job, I created a list of 15 ruby questions -- a ruby measuring stick if you will -- to select the cream of the crop that walked through our doors.

What to expect

Candidates will typically give you a range of responses based on their experience and personality. So it's up to you to decide the correctness of their answer.

Screencasting Framework

The following document is a written account of the Code School screencasting framework. It should be used as a reference of the accompanying screencast on the topic.

Why you should care about screencasting?

You're probably aren't going to take the time to read this document if you're not interested, but there are a lot of nice side effects caused by learning how to create quality screencasts.

Communicating more effectively - At Envy Labs we produce screencasts for our clients all the time. Whether it's demoing a new feature or for a presentation for an invester, they're often much more effective and pleasent than a phone call or screen sharing.

Screencasting Framework

The following document is a written account of the Code School screencasting framework. It should be used as a reference of the accompanying screencast on the topic.

Why you should care about screencasting?

You're probably aren't going to take the time to read this document if you're not interested, but there are a lot of nice side effects caused by learning how to create quality screencasts.

Communicating more effectively - At Envy Labs we produce screencasts for our clients all the time. Whether it's demoing a new feature or for a presentation for an invester, they're often much more effective and pleasent than a phone call or screen sharing.

	if ENV['DEBUG_REQUIRE']
	require 'benchmark'

	def require(file)
	@@first \|\|= Time.now
	rc = false
	ts = Benchmark.measure do
	rc = super
	end
	if ENV['DEBUG_REQUIRE'].to_f < ts.total

	-- show running queries (pre 9.2)
	SELECT procpid, age(clock_timestamp(), query_start), usename, current_query
	FROM pg_stat_activity
	WHERE current_query != '<IDLE>' AND current_query NOT ILIKE '%pg_stat_activity%'
	ORDER BY query_start desc;

	-- show running queries (9.2)
	SELECT pid, age(clock_timestamp(), query_start), usename, query
	FROM pg_stat_activity
	WHERE query != '<IDLE>' AND query NOT ILIKE '%pg_stat_activity%'

	<!DOCTYPE html>
	<html>
	<head>
	<title>Box Shadow</title>

	<style>
	.box {
	height: 150px;
	width: 300px;
	margin: 20px;

	#Deploy and rollback on Heroku in staging and production
	task :deploy_staging => ['deploy:set_staging_app', 'deploy:push', 'deploy:restart', 'deploy:tag']
	task :deploy_production => ['deploy:set_production_app', 'deploy:push', 'deploy:restart', 'deploy:tag']

	namespace :deploy do
	PRODUCTION_APP = 'YOUR_PRODUCTION_APP_NAME_ON_HEROKU'
	STAGING_APP = 'YOUR_STAGING_APP_NAME_ON_HEROKU'

	task :staging_migrations => [:set_staging_app, :push, :off, :migrate, :restart, :on, :tag]
	task :staging_rollback => [:set_staging_app, :off, :push_previous, :restart, :on]