Welcome to CreatingCode

[Ratcheting] The First Few Heuristics

It looks like we finally nailed down the first five heuristics to implement in Tipster. I will follow up this post with a more in-depth introduction into each heuristic and how we think it will add value to our radiator....

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[Ratcheting] Introducing Tipster

Tipster is a ruby gem that will generate an HTML report of your most recent git commit and let you know if it is risky on one of the risk-heuristics we are implementing with Ratcheting. As we continue to refine...

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End Piracy, Not Liberty

I can't say it any better than google can. Get involved.

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[Ratcheting] Tweaking Heuristics for Better Results

Lately we've been noticing fewer and fewer commits getting flagged as risky with each passing week. After doing some analysis we realized, for the most part, we have increased quality awareness across the organization and as a result more people...

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[Ratcheting] Lessons Learned: How Do I Run This Locally?

Typically, when we tell developers at work about Ratcheting the reaction is generally positive. However, the one question that everyone seems to have is "How can I run this locally?" This is a really important question, one that we have...

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How much do you bill per hour as a freelancer?

I've always wondered what other software development freelancers set as their hourly rate as so I could use it a comparable for my own rates. Surprisingly, this information is not as straightforward to find as you might think. Thanks to...

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[Ratcheting] A Typical Development Workflow

Part of the problem we encounter when trying to implement a new policy, procedure, or even software architecture is that the people making the rules are seldom the ones that have to live with the consequences. That is not the...

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[Ratcheting] Intro to Ratcheting Presentation Slides

Here are a few Powerpoint slides we put together that attempts to introduce the concept of Ratcheting and incremental code improvement. We'd love some feedback if you have any to give. Enjoy. Code Quality and Tipster View more presentations from...

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[Ratcheting] Assessing Which Risk Heuristics to Implement in the Radiator

In short, a risk heuristic should not be added to the radiator unless it meets the following criteria: The heuristic should identify an aspect of risk - The heuristics applied in Ratcheting should give us the ability to tactically identify...

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Continuous Code Improvement Using Ratcheting

I read a great article over the weekend dealing with the concept of ratcheting (sorry, this website has been shut down) a legacy codebase in order to achieve the ultimate goal of quality code using incremental improvements over time. I...

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A new blog for the new year

I thought I'd start the new year off right (and early! For those of you on Google Reader however, this post will show up late, sorry about that) by moving from Wordpress to a Github hosted blog. I also moved...

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Unit Testing JavaScript using BDD and Jasmine

JavaScript has been treated like a second class citizen for too long. It needs the same level of care and attention as our production code. This presentation gives a very basic introduction to unit testing JavaScript and tries to convince...

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Creating Item Recommendations by Finding Users with Similar Taste

Let's say you have bought some books on programming (nerd), read them, and then rated them. Now, let's say a few other people have done the same thing. As an online bookstore owner it would be in my best interest...

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Notes From the Field: Breaking Down User Stories

We had a little talk today at work discussing stories and how to effectively break them down. Here's some of the basic points of the talk I captured with my Livescribe Echo. There were four key points I got from...

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Random Friday Thoughts: Leaving a Legacy Online is Free

I was thinking about the internet this morning. I want you to go ahead and try to imagine all of the famous authors, painters, inventors, composers, and theorists that lived before, say, the 1980's. There's a ton of great ones....

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Using LINQ to sum up a list of numbers

I don't really like foreach loops. They are difficult to read and easy to abuse. Let's say, for example that we want to sum up the following list of numbers: private int[] numberList = {1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32};...

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Happy Halloween at Southwest Airlines

Here's a little glimpse into the festivities going on today at Southwest. It's really nice working for a place that promotes such a laid back and fun loving atmosphere.

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New Ratcheting.org Post Up

My new post is up on ratcheting.org about three steps you can take when you aren't flagging enough commits as risky. Check it out if you are interested.

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How to get a temp directory in any OS with Ruby

I needed this over the weekend and the existing online help is less than helpful. As it turns out, just like with everything I try to do in Ruby, the solution is simple. require 'tmpdir' temp = Dir.tmpdir() puts temp...

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Quick and Dirty: How to Uninstall All Ruby Gems

Sometimes you just need a clean slate. gem list | cut -d" " -f1 | xargs gem uninstall -aIx

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