Coding Dojo, Rails 3 part deux, Monday April 4th
posted: March 28th, 2011
Next Monday at 7:00 we’ll be having our monthly coding dojo. Again we’ll be at Foundry coworking and we’ll be continuing our Rails 3 exploration. The code from the last event is live at github as well as the code we’ll be using for our foundation for the next meeting. You should download the code and give it a shot. If you have any troubles please don’t hesitate to ask. Once you learn how to get it going, it’s pretty easy, but when you’re just getting started it can be a challenge.
I’ve thrown together a README to get you pointed in the right direction. Start by getting ruby and rails 3 installed on your computer, then grab the code from github and then follow the README.
If you’re going to make it, please RSVP by leaving a comment here on this blog or on our Facebook event page.
Feel free to come up to 30 min early if you need help setting up your computer to run the project.
Lunch meeting: March 17th “Getting it published”
posted: March 11th, 2011
I’m excited to announce that we’re adding a new type of monthly meeting. Mid-month during the week we’ll have a lunch meeting with a professional web geek topic. The location and topic will vary but the format will tend to be “round-table” oriented. We’ll aim to choose convenient locations for professionals where we can talk and eat for $10 and fit it into a 1 hour lunch break.
To kick off the new format we’ll be meeting at Green Grounds Cafe in the Valley Junction area of West Des Moines. There is plenty of seating and parking and you can get a lunch and a beverage for $10. Meeting time is 11:30 on Thursday March 17th and depending on the size of the group we’ll either be in the cafe area or the back room. Please RSVP by leaving a comment below or on the facebook event page.
Topic:
Getting it published: techniques and processes for delivering your projects
This is a round-table event, everyone is invited to join the discussion and are welcome to use the loosest definition of the topic. There is no planned speaker (though we’ll seed the audience with people ready to start discussions). We expect the conversation to range through any of these points:
- Ensuring the highest quality product gets published
- Steps for deploying
- Workflows that work (or don’t work)
- How to fail spectacularly or how to look like a hero to the boss or client
- Why Agile rocks or stinks – pushing the big red button just for the fun of it
- Warsaw’s 2nd law
Leave a comment below or on the Facebook event page if you plan to attend. See you at Green Grounds Cafe.
Vote for Your Favorite Web Geeks Rails App
posted: March 8th, 2011
We need your help
We had great success at our March 7 Coding Dojo with each team completing their own to-do list app in Rails 3. As a matter of fact, the results were so good that we couldn’t decide which app should be the basis for next month’s meeting. Therefore, we need your help to choose the project. Download the three teams’ code from last night and try out each one. All should work well; simply install Rails 3 then check the README file for details about how to test each one (should take about 2-3 min to give each a quick test once Rails 3 is installed).
Vote for the one you’d want to hack on by replying in the comments below. Voting ends Monday, March 14th.
Teams
#1 Eagle Team
Dave, Matt, Jeremy, Jason
– Team 1’s app was pure hand coding. The team showed us their development process which involved a lot of red/green/refactor and test driven development.
#2 Kid Ninjas
JR, Justin, Andy, Brandyn
– Not all teams had enough time to set up their development environment, run all tests, program the app, and design the front-end, but Team 2 was able to develop their to-do list with drag and drop and user log-in.
#3 Beetle Bailey
Brandon, Chuck, Kenny, Tad, Matt N
– Scaffolding greatly speeds up development time and this group proved that with a working to-do app in just 15 minutes. The remainder of their time was spent on feature development and testing.
* If we misspelled or left out your name, please let us know.
Helpful Resources From Our Last Dojo
* Cucumber – http://cukes.info/
* Ruby on Rails – http://rubyonrails.org/
* RSpec – http://relishapp.com/rspec
* RVM – http://rvm.beginrescueend.com/
* Hudson – http://hudson-ci.org/
* Ruby Mine – http://www.jetbrains.com/ruby/
Next month’s meeting will be more Rails 3; we’ll take what we did on March 7 and make it even better. Details will be coming soon.
Next meeting: March 7th at Foundry coworking
posted: March 2nd, 2011
It’s time for our first real meeting of 2011. We had a blast last month at our kick-off event. Cassie Schmitz was the luck winner of the iPad from Red 5 Interactive. We had a great turn out, over 60 entries for the prize.
For the next meeting we’ll be hosting a code dojo. This is an event that anyone can participate in, regardless of your skill level. You are welcome and encouraged to bring a laptop if you have one. We’ll divide the group into teams, each trying to accomplish the same goal. At the end, we’ll compare notes to see how each group did. Some will have beautiful results, some will have amazing code, some will be utter failures. But everyone will have fun and learn some new techniques.
Our meeting time is 7:00pm on Monday March 7th at Foundary coworking in downtown Des Moines. (Park in the rear and enter on the east side of the building, signs will direct you to the 2nd floor).
The topic for the next few meetings will be on Rails 3. Feel free to set that up on your computer before you arrive. If you’d like help, come a little early (@newz2000 will be there at 6:30). If you’re feeling really ambitious, we’re using Git to share code. Go ahead and check out our branch on github. (If none of this makes sense to you, don’t worry, just come and contribute what you can. You’ll leave knowing more than when you came!
Spread the word! RT our tweet or RSVP on our Facebook event page. Thanks, I hope to see you there!
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Des Moines Web Geeks is a group of web professionals and enthusiasts looking to meet, share ideas and have some fun. Everyone is welcome to join and participate. Have an idea for a session? Tell us.
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