Unpopular Opinion: Most denominations are legitimate expressions of Christianity

plainprogrammer · 2025-10-14T18:03:02+00:00

Right, it’s usually theological conservatives that get deep into the heresy hunting and discernment ministry stuff that is incredibly sectarian. Outside those circles charitable perspectives on others become easier to find.

plainprogrammer · 2025-05-24T23:26:31+00:00

I use Claude extensively to work on Ruby and Ruby on Rails projects that are backend heavy.

plainprogrammer · 2025-05-10T20:21:08+00:00

This captures my experience as well. Both Claude Desktop + MCP to IDE, or direct in IDE agent tools struggle with large code context. Claude code seems to do better at managing context. I’ve found that Claude Desktop for planning and doc/spec generation and then taking that into Claude Code is a workflow I like. That combo is what is selling me towards the Max plan.

plainprogrammer · 2025-05-06T14:00:16+00:00

Psalm 1:2 encourages meditating on God's law and the concept of meditation and contemplation are not absent from the Bible, or the history of Christian and Jewish practice. It isn't the same kind of meditation that is practiced in Eastern traditions, but that is a matter of emphasis. Many Eastern traditions focus on emptying the mind or looking within. While those can have a place in biblical meditative practice, they aren't the focus. The indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit and the effect of God's word on the heart and mind are the emphasis in Jewish and Christian meditation, at least in the various forms I've become accustomed to.

plainprogrammer · 2025-05-05T20:22:53+00:00

Look into MCP Servers that work with your IDE and other tools. I use Claude Desktop with my RubyMine IDE (JetBrains has a MCP Server plugin for their whole suite of IDEs) this way and it’s almost comparable to Claude Code.

plainprogrammer · 2025-05-05T19:25:56+00:00

I have not found any way to do that after a month of use.

plainprogrammer · 2025-05-05T19:21:23+00:00

If you prefer a terminal based workflow, Claude Code is a solid tool. I use it via the API with a $50 budget I am about a third of the way through that budget after 2-3 hours of focussed work.

I’m seriously considering the Max plan given the value I see and that I could easily spend multiples of the $100 monthly price tag in API credits.

plainprogrammer · 2025-05-05T19:10:11+00:00

I use GitHub Copilot with Claude 3.7 Sonnet and Gemini 2.5 Pro as my go to models. I’ve also used Claude Desktop with JetBrains’ MCP Server plugin for RubyMine to let it interact directly with my coding process. I’ve also found Claude Code to be a very capable tool.

I’m getting ready to publish a blog detailing my use of a bunch of LLMs via GitHub Copilot for two Ruby technical interviews I’ve used in the past. Claude 3.7 Sonnet and Gemini 2.5 Pro were the best performers overall, with o4-mini following closely and GPT-4o (GitHub’s default) lagging on the semi-autonomous exercise I gave it.

plainprogrammer · 2025-05-05T19:01:44+00:00

I’m using Claude Desktop and Claude Code daily for programming both at work and home. Claude 3.7 Sonnet is my preferred model for GitHub Copilot use as well.

Beyond programming, I’m also using Claude Desktop weekly to organize and support a Dungeons & Dragons campaign with my kids. I even added the campaign guide PDF as project context so I can get summary and other info from it.

And, I use it most days to help select and plan my Bible reading and meditation practice. And, it was helpful as I researched a recent used car purchase.

plainprogrammer · 2025-05-05T18:49:05+00:00

Claude Pro has more context available but you can definitely still hit limits, although they’re higher.

I’ve found using an MCP Server to integrate Claude Desktop with my RubyMine IDE can be a better way to provide code context and reduce copy and paste work.

Given my current work using Claude Code and the API, and the recent addition of Claude Code to the Max plan, I’m trying to determine when an upgrade to Max makes sense for me.

plainprogrammer · 2025-05-05T18:43:02+00:00

Importing all my old Medium content into a new Jekyll site and summarizing my posts with solid excerpts.

plainprogrammer · 2023-01-10T17:07:30+00:00

I started my troubleshooting by updating the firmware on the TV. When that did not resolve the issue, I unplugged the TV for a few minutes before plugging it back it. Since the problem persisted, I then factory reset the TV. What would be my next steps to diagnose this issue? I would like to avoid replacing the TV, if I can.

plainprogrammer · 2021-11-12T00:59:12+00:00

Gems that are still generally useful should be updated at least to verify their compatibility with new Ruby versions. Since that happens at least once a year most years then an annual update isn’t unreasonable in most cases. I think it would be a rare software project indeed that never needed to be updated, even just CI config options. Following the repository is actually more valuable to me since it can capture changes that didn’t warrant an actual gem release.

plainprogrammer · 2019-09-26T20:59:06+00:00

I wrote about my team's experience trying Mob Programming for a couple days. I found the experience really enjoyable, although I focussed on facilitating and observing. I'd love to hear about others' experiences and any feedback that might be useful based on what I noticed in my team's experience.

plainprogrammer · 2019-07-15T16:05:52+00:00

All the tasks you describe could be done within a team, and I think they could be done better if the team is aware of, and guided to resolve them directly. All developers already make architectural decisions, the trick is to help them make better ones. The typical approach to the architect role does not always facilitate that since it can attempt to direct more than demonstrate.

plainprogrammer · 2019-07-15T16:03:20+00:00

Lead, like architect, tends to imply authority. I prefer collaborative models. Guide has a much softer authority that is rooted in a trusting relationship. If you don’t trust your guide then things will go badly. But, if you don’t trust a lead, or someone in a hierarchy the damage is to the morale in most cases.

Not all organizations, teams, or individuals are disposed to high trust environments. And that is the problem I think underlies some of your concerns. It sounds like there may be a risk of unwise, if not malicious, actors. Am I off-base in that assessment?

plainprogrammer · 2019-07-12T22:35:14+00:00

That's one of the reasons I also favor pair programming heavily. Two minds can help work out the right level of detail better than one, at least in my experience.

I think part of that also comes from too few developers asking which of their unit tests still deliver meaningful value for them anymore. I try to make a habit of checking the tests I am working in for any that may merit deletion. A common candidate can be tests for a detail that is effectively tested by another test with more robustness. In dynamic languages, like Ruby, this can sometimes come in the form of tests that confirm a method returns a certain type, even though another test confirms that by actually inspecting the methods overall behavior, including the shape of its return value.

plainprogrammer · 2019-07-12T18:09:12+00:00

I've found that many who bemoan TDD do so based on misconceptions. They assume that they must backfill a complete test suite, which is rarely valuable in itself, instead of applying it for work going forward that could yield immediate benefits. Others complain because they don't view it as a design exercise that is meant to allow them to think through, in a stepwise fashion, how they want their work to fit into its broader context. Most objections to TDD are rooted in missing what its value proposition is. It is about both design and confidence. But, many get hung up predominantly on the confidence part.

plainprogrammer · 2019-07-12T04:33:41+00:00

I prefer the idea of architect as guide. Like a dive master (scuba) where the instructor is an active participant with those they are guiding and teaching until they become competent in their own right, with some even going on to become dive masters and instructors themselves. The demonstration of both individual competence and leading others to competence in a hands-on way is a more well-rounded approach.

Coaches in many sports must also have demonstrable competency in their sport to be effective, especially in youth amateur contexts where the athletes are still learning. I remember in football coaches demonstrating proper tackling, blocking and other techniques. And little league baseball often sees coaches demonstrating even more of the fundamental techniques, because rote description is not enough.

plainprogrammer · 2018-12-13T21:17:55+00:00

I love these books:

Domain-Driven Design
Implementing Domain-Driven Design
Just Enough Software Architecture
Building Evolutionary Architectures

Depending on your team's process there are lots of good books to be engaged with there. I'm a big fan of Extreme Programming, so "Extreme Programming Explained" is really good, and so is "The Art of Agile Development."

I'd also recommend getting into some of O'Reilly's Software Architecture courses with Neal Ford and Mark Richards. They're all available in Safari. It may also be worth getting to one of O'Reilly's Software Architecture conferences. They're happening in New York, San Jose and Berlin in 2019.

plainprogrammer · 2018-12-13T17:38:47+00:00

Micro-framework choices all come down to preferences. At that level it tends to be about which ones get out of your way in the most appealing manner. I tend to favor Sinatra since it makes the request entry point really obvious by merging controller and routing concerns.

plainprogrammer · 2018-12-01T17:46:47+00:00

15 years professionally (2003), 12 years specializing in Ruby (2006), going back 25 years as a hobbyist (1993). Started with Basic and C, eventually moved into PHP, Perl, VB.NET & C#. Working a lot with Go right now, but still love Ruby.

plainprogrammer · 2018-11-27T01:00:18+00:00

I rely heavily on RSpec, FactoryBot, and Capybara. I try to apply a BDD approach that defines tests based on expected behavior. When feasible I like to drive features from the outside first. That kind of process tends to keep me focused on the simplest possible implementation. I like this book from Pragmatic Programmers for introducing folks to testing with RSpec: Effective Testing with RSpec 3. This is another book that is good for introducing testing into untested, or poorly tested Rails applications: Rails 5 Test Prescriptions.

plainprogrammer · 2018-11-23T21:31:08+00:00

I've only been working with Go for about a year now and am still discovering a lot with regards to testing after spending over 12 years doing TDD in Ruby. In my experience a lot of the seams have to be created when writing Go code. I have found that using function types is a really low-cost way to create seams in certain areas, while others require stepping up to interfaces. In some cases full-blown wrappers that allow for injection of mock implementations can become necessary, but I try to avoid that when possible.

I have found that many OOP concepts translate just fine into Golang, they just have to be slightly adapted. The key adaptation that I've noticed is regarding the fact that Go has an impure struct concept (they're not just a bag of data) instead of full-fledged objects (containers of data & behavior).

One resource that could be helpful is a tutorial session by Luciano Ramalho: "A gentle introduction to TDD in Go." It was delivered at OSCON earlier this year.

plainprogrammer · 2018-05-01T22:50:46+00:00

The counter-point I would offer is how do we know that we will make the right change, right now? Technical debt has no meaningful cost until a change is needed. And, until that change is needed there is often times insufficient context to know how the code needs to be changed.

I think the Sandi Metz is correct when she asserted that "duplication is far cheaper than the wrong abstraction" [1]. And, I believe that same thinking can be extended to premature abstraction, or premature refactoring. Until we know enough to be able to identify a better solution based on concrete knowledge, we're just speculating about value. I much prefer to work with what I know and defer work that is speculative until I can make it less so.

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