The end of one thing...

I resigned today from my old post today. That has to be one of the hardest things there is to do in business. Or, I suppose some people are dying to do it because they are unhappy, or whatever. I am not one of those people. In fact, I do not understand how someone can go, day after day, to a job that they do not like. Along with my family, my job fills out my life. Just like raising my boy, it gives me purpose.

That is why leaving is so difficult. I feel like I'm leaving a cause I have poured blood and sweat into. Everyone at my old job is hardworking and dedicated. I do not know if they will eventually be successful, but I do hope that is the case. Good people.

...Is the beginning of another.

So, every ending is followed by a new beginning, and that is what I am looking forward to with Mingle.com. I start officially on the 27th, but have been working on a project for several weeks as a contractor. We are using Rails for web development, and that has been new as well. After a bump in the learning curve, I've began to pick up what I need really quickly. The grammer of Ruby is intuitive, and elegant, making it easy to pick up new knowledge from code examples. The community on the mailing list, blogs, and forums is a real assett for the language as well. If you're trying to learn Rails, get on the list.

Speaking of learning Rails, I can only luke warmly recommend the new Agile book. While I have it, and reference it a lot, it leaves a lot for the 2nd edition. Most importantly, test driven development gets about 3 paragraphs in it. One of the things about Rails that is so attractive is how dead simple unit testing is. TDD was cumbersom at best for web design before Rails. With Rails, TDD is the only way to go, it is the strongest argument for using Rails in an Enterprise size project. The book has it as little more than a footnote.

Worse, when the book does get around to Unit Testing, they completly miss the boat on how to do it. Unit tests are NOT written after the code is in place. Even calling it "Testing" is a misnomer. Testing is for before and during development. Normal work flow goes like this - Test, code, test , refactor. Having the tests lying around is just a bonus ( a big one though! ) They allow you to refactor with confidence that your changes are isolated.

I see a maket for a book that dives into Rails with a TDD model.