November 28, 2017
CSRF errors can be a pain to work with. Rather than skipping them, learn how to avoid the errors and ensure the security of your site.
October 30, 2017
Out of the box, Elixir's REPL IEx is incredibly powerful. With a little modification, you can make it event better.
June 6, 2017
Lots of developers wrongfully malign TDD, piling on countless arguments against it. What they don't realize is they're doing TDD; they're just not reaping any of the rewards.
May 4, 2017
'Technical Debt' is a metaphor we use in the tech industry to describe the deficiencies in our code base. Did you know there are different types of technical debt and that not all debt is a bad thing?
April 16, 2017
Many startups believe 'if they build it, they will come', but this only leads to disaster as they build the wrong product for an imaginary audience. Find out why this is such a horrible mistake, why so many fall into the trap, and what to do about it if you find yourself there.
April 3, 2017
Templates and .railsrc files have been around since Rails 3.x, but somehow I'm just finding this out now. Learn from my ignorance and simplify setting up all your future rails projects.
March 23, 2017
Technical debt is costing your projects and company more than you realize. Like fiscal debt, technical debt can be paid down, and it's imperative that you do. There's more at stake than a little bit of low quality code.
March 16, 2017
Many naysayers would have you believe Rails is dead. Don't believe the hype. With the coming of Rails 5.1 and its embrace of the JS ecosytem, Rails is solidifying its position as the king of web frameworks.
February 15, 2017
The easiest thing you can do to support your local user group is to present, so why don't you? More importantly, what are you missing out on by not speaking?
January 21, 2017
Different frameworks impose different styles on forms, but they all end up requiring more boilerplate. You can either accept the pain boilerpating brings with it, or work around it. Creating your own FormBuilder is a simple way to do just that.
December 17, 2016
There's a lot to hate about legacy code, but is it possible it's more good than bad? Find out what it is, why it's so hated, and how you can benefit from it.
December 4, 2016
Cancer in software has many of the same characteristics as those in the human body: it steals resources from the body, grows at an alarming rate, and spreads. Know what symptoms to look for in your software, what damage in can lead to in your project and busienss, and learn how to fight it.
November 16, 2016
In this tutorial we look at how to completely replace the Rails Asset Pipeline with tools from the the Javascript ecosystem, Webpack and Yarn.
October 31, 2016
Given a start date, an interval, and a frequency, how can you easily determine if a date is the next occurrence?
September 29, 2016
An introduction to ActionCable with a focus on how things work rather than how to make them work.
September 17, 2016
Reducing object bloat begins with doing less
September 10, 2016
When ActiveRecord just isn't enough
September 10, 2016
Replacing hand-coded SQL with object oriented programming
September 7, 2016
Some guidelines for how to name ActiveRecord's polymorphic associations well.
August 12, 2015
Hugo is the tool I use to build the SamuelMullen site.