Posted by Denis Ahearn on June 11, 2008
We recently adopted an approach for improving existing features in OnePlace called "Fix It Fridays". We dedicate one day a week for exclusively working on making existing features more useful and more usable for our users. We found that it was necessary to set aside scheduled time for doing this, because without doing this, our default mode is to crank out new features (there is no shortage of good ideas in our product backlog), often making it difficult to cycle back to hone and polish existing features.
Posted by Steve Kickert on May 12, 2008
Hello Everyone,
The Company blog has moved. Please update your rss subscription to point at this address: http://feeds.feedburner.com/RiverockTech-CompanyBlog
The Development blog has moved. Please update your rss subscription to point at this address: http://feeds.feedburner.com/RiverockTech-DevelopmentBlogThis will help us better understand who is reading the blogs and where they are coming from.
Thanks,
The OnePlace Team
Posted by Denis Ahearn on January 09, 2008
We recently upgraded OnePlace to Rails 2.0.2. We had been holding off upgrading for a couple of reasons. We've been busier than a one-armed paper hanger building product, and didn't want the upgrade to be a distraction while major features were still missing in the product. We also wanted to give Rails 2.0 a chance to settle down and undergo an update or two by the Rails team. All in all the conversion went fairly smoothly, however we did bump into a few gotchas.
Posted by Denis Ahearn on October 26, 2007
The Ruby on Rails framework is built upon several core tenants. One of these tenants is "Convention over Configuration", which helps make it very easy to get something up and running quickly with Rails - it just works right out of the box without you having to turn a bunch of knobs and dials. Another core principle that is a personal favorite of mine is "Don't Repeat Yourself", known in the Rails community as "DRY". DRY is nothing specific to Rails, it's a best practice that has been employed by developers in all programming languages and platforms for years as a way to reduce maintenance on their code base and make it easier to add new features.
Posted by Denis Ahearn on September 25, 2007
We've all probably heard the adage "work smarter not harder". It makes perfect sense - spend some time finding a better or easier way to do something, and more often than not it'll pay dividends in the long run. Well, I've discovered during my career as a software developer that this is often easier said than done.