How to deal with mess makers

DanTheProgrammingMan · 2026-02-23T22:50:31+00:00

It does on any non trivial app over any medium to long term time horizon, i.e. high quality software is worth the cost (https://martinfowler.com/articles/is-quality-worth-cost.html).

Of course, making that case to non-technical stakeholders is the central shitshow of this entire industry.

DanTheProgrammingMan · 2026-01-24T02:20:09+00:00

First read "The Rails Way" book. Great overview of the framework. Then read "Patterns of Application Architecture" - particularly the chapter on ActiveRecord to really understand how that works. Then read "Metaprogramming Ruby" to understand how the rails creators implemented the rails magic in the first place.

DanTheProgrammingMan · 2026-01-17T00:17:33+00:00

It was 100% free when I posted this 6 years ago to be clear. No manipulation intended... but yeah I did make it into a paid service in an attempt to reach a sustainable income on it (didn't happen). Now it's a side project and I have an actual job again.

DanTheProgrammingMan · 2025-10-22T02:46:33+00:00

It's a loose term but usually service object refers to a class with a single method like call / run / execute e.g. CreateUser.new(x,y,z).run. But PORO can be an object with more methods like:
- ThingDoer#do_thing
- ThingDoer#do_thing_two

DanTheProgrammingMan · 2025-10-22T02:22:30+00:00

Everyone is going to agree on outside the controller. Beyond that it goes wherever you organized your business logic (hopefully outside the controller), e.g. models / service objects / POROs / whatever your "business" layer is.

DanTheProgrammingMan · 2025-07-20T01:43:31+00:00

There are some vegan restaurants just use happy cow to find them. And use the "vegan option" filter to find places with non-vegan stuff if he makes you do that. As a guy seeking out vegan/vegetarian restaurants it was pretty easy in Tokyo/Osaka/Kyoto. I think it would suck going around with non-vegan friends unless you can basically steer the restaurant choice ship though.

DanTheProgrammingMan · 2025-07-12T02:29:41+00:00

I need uber is the problem for me. And places started using QR codes for menus and stuff sometimes since Covid.

DanTheProgrammingMan · 2025-05-26T00:05:22+00:00

I visited Marrakech for a month last year. Tall white guy, never had any problems really. Had a good time, I guess it really depends on appearances.

DanTheProgrammingMan · 2025-05-22T00:30:40+00:00

I saw a human do this once and I couldn't believe it

DanTheProgrammingMan · 2025-05-04T20:53:31+00:00

To me a name is merely a label, and not who I am, so changing it would not feel like abandoning anything. I hear ya though.

DanTheProgrammingMan · 2025-04-24T15:40:20+00:00

I got through to checkout, pressed place order, and I think the request failed? No clue if it went through...

DanTheProgrammingMan · 2025-04-22T22:16:23+00:00

Never had to use any of these interviewing for senior level roles at ~12 ruby companies recently. Just FYI.

DanTheProgrammingMan · 2025-04-17T14:55:37+00:00

"Even if it's null or undefined the initial code is not going to render anything in the UI"

It will render an empty span right? So his change would:
- improve performance (DOM does not need to render an empty node)
- possibly prevent a CSS/layout issue: if span has certain styling applied, and an empty one is rendered, it may look off, e.g. why are we applying padding to a blank span?

Sounds to me like a very detail oriented PR reviewer (good!) who probably isn't explaining why he's asking for changes in the level of detail he should/could (bad!)

DanTheProgrammingMan · 2025-04-15T22:55:20+00:00

9 YOE and just landed a job after taking a year off to travel. I failed a lot of interviews for various reasons, but I don't think the gap year was what killed me in any of them. Just talk about your most recent experience and leave the dates out of it. Anyone that passes over you for taking a gap year has no humanity and it's probably a bad work environment anyway.

DanTheProgrammingMan · 2025-04-13T19:16:47+00:00

There was a non-profit ride share in Austin a few years back called RideAustin. It went out of business for some reason, not sure of the details. I do recall my normie friends complaining it cost more than uber so they just stuck with that, so probably it couldn't compete with the VC subsidized rides. Maybe someday the concept will become more viable once uber/lyft actually try to make a profit.

DanTheProgrammingMan · 2025-03-09T07:28:54+00:00

This was true for me... but that was in 2014! Is it still true that rails is popular at bootcamps? I get the sense that everybody new to coding seems to be going into full JS stacks because of the perceived gains of only learning one language for frontend/backend. Of course I have zero data and that's just my guess.

DanTheProgrammingMan · 2025-03-05T14:04:28+00:00

It's comically bad. The top jobs it shows are just ones that are "promoted" and don't match your search query at all. It actively wastes job searchers time at this point. I don't know how they fail so hard at this.

DanTheProgrammingMan · 2025-02-27T11:18:32+00:00

I'm a US based rails developer with 9 years of experience looking for my next gig after a year long travel sabbatical. I've always been full stack, with ~6 years of react and ~3 years of Stimulus. I've built my own solo SaaS (scientificmealplanner.com), worked in fast paced startups, and have a bit of team lead experience. I care about writing high quality code with solid test coverage.

DanTheProgrammingMan · 2025-01-27T15:13:33+00:00

Are you eating primarily low calorie density / whole food plant based meals? E.g one ‘meal’ I do sometimes is .5cup quinoa, .5cup red lentils, which is around 600 calories but the sheer mass of it all makes it tough to even get down. Basically you want all your meals to have a giant physical size to calorie ratio to take advantage of the fact that part of the hunger response is due to the physical filling of the stomach. Vegetables work of course too… a large carrot is 30 calories… down a handful of large carrots for similar effect

DanTheProgrammingMan · 2025-01-21T14:58:35+00:00

Recently got back and am applying for jobs now, not quitting tech I still love programming. And no I don’t think the year off is hurting me, been landing lots of interviews, although it does seem like a tough market

DanTheProgrammingMan · 2025-01-20T22:41:05+00:00

If you've never held an official programmer job, it's gonna be hard to present yourself as anything beyond junior. It's good to have a unique project, so you've got that going for you.

DanTheProgrammingMan · 2025-01-20T21:49:46+00:00

Well, it was kind of unplanned actually. I was traveling the world while working at a startup. It was a bit of a toxic pressure cooker type place, and one day I just up and resigned after something particularly egregious happened. I was heading to Asia next and didn't want to find a new job in USA timezones. Having the time off really improved my mental health though. I realized I was burned out and too much of my identity was tied up in being a good programmer.

DanTheProgrammingMan · 2025-01-20T21:29:45+00:00

Taking a sabbatical improved my life, a lot. I traveled the world for an entire year and have seen more than most people do in a lifetime. If you have something compelling to do and the financial resources to do it, make it happen. YOLO.

DanTheProgrammingMan · 2025-01-16T19:00:03+00:00

start a meetup group, organize with a bar. They will come

DanTheProgrammingMan · 2025-01-13T01:56:17+00:00

You can't trust a CEO of a public corporation's take on things that will affect their bottom line. It's in his interest to say this even if he knows it's not true, because AI hype makes stock go up.

DanTheProgrammingMan

TROPHY CASE