As I post this, I’m about to give a lightning talk at RubyConf 2015 entitled “Inconceivable!”

On a recent project, we needed a UI element that allows multiple selection of items from a long list of multi-word options. We wanted to optimize the workflow for data entry as that was the primary function of this part of the application, so the ability to find entries by typing a few characters was very important.

What is brilliance? What skill or quality does a person have that makes them brilliant in the eyes of others?

Consider a method that takes a number of optional parameters. Such a method is often a code smell, but there are times when it is the best of several ugly options.

When working in a team or on an open-source project in a git-centered process, the general advice is to keep commits and pull requests (PRs) clean, small and focused.

If you use test doubles in your Ruby unit tests as I do, there are several tools available. If you use RSpec, the obvious choice is rspec-mocks.

When you get into any kind of agile software development, you’ll inevitably run into a number of acronyms. Many of these acronyms have been around for a long time, and they represent important concepts and ideas that have been boiled down into a catchy acronym.

Rails is generally used for building web applications that sit on top of relational databases. Relational databases work for many kinds of data, but not all. What if we need to represent a hierarchical data structure such as a tree?

Open-plan offices have been taking a lot of heat from such reputable sources as The Washington Post, The New Yorker, and The Onion.

I’m excited to announce that I’ll be speaking at RubyConf 2015, November 15-17 in San Antonio, TX. I spoke at RubyConf last year and really enjoyed it.