dead prophet: Search Results

Product Placement or just Riding the Programming Wave

deadprophet

on June 1, 2008 8:15 PM

"I'll create a GUI interface using Visual Basic"

Thanks Yan

Tags:

code,
visual basic

One Final Note on Mesh08

deadprophet

on May 28, 2008 11:00 PM

I recently attended the mesh conference in toronto (and meshU). I tend to take non-linear notes, not so much as a way to revisit the words, but as a way to keep my mind focused on the lecture or panel discussion and to make myself feel a little more apart of the conversation.

Anyway, I posted my notes up to flickr and I just noticed Michael O'Connor Clarke used them in a recent blog post.

To add my feedback to the quote in controversy ("The Customer is not that Smart" by Dave Jones). I don't think it's something you want to tell your customers to their face (or behind their backs), but as it relates to what they hired you to do, it's probably true, or they wouldn't have hired you to do it. It also doesn't mean that they're dumb.

Thanks Michael.

Tags:

The Rails Way: link_to Helpers

deadprophet

on March 26, 2008 6:50 AM

I have a question regarding link_to helpers. When do you use them and when do you not use them.

Example.

Use basic HTML:

<a href="/foobar/10">FooBar</a>

or instead use a helper:

<%= link_to "FooBar", { :action => "foobar", id => 10 } %>

Both return the same result. Is it strictly a preference? I find the syntax of these helpers so forgettable and non-intuitive. I'm not the smartest kid in the class, but every time I need to add a class name to the link so that the CSS style takes affect, I find myself googling "How do I add class names to link_to calls". It's a pain. It's my pain, but it's a pain.

Also, what about link_to_remote? What if I have a loop in my view and I'm outputting 10 or 20 list items that each have the link_to_remote call? Do I really want the JS function created 20 times? 1 for each call?

Obviously DHH and his crew of merry men have a reason and a purpose for these helpers, otherwise they wouldn't be there, or at least they wouldn't be called helpers, they'd be called annoyers, but somewhere in our web apps we're going to have to write some HTML code. Or is there a create_linebreak_here helper that inserts a <br /> for you?

What is the best practice when it comes to these little do-dads?

Resource Links:

http://www.codecommit.com/blog/ruby/the-end-of-the-ruby-fad

http://www.google.com/search?rls=en-us&q=How+do+I+a...

http://api.rubyonrails.org/

http://pylonshq.com/WebHelpers/module-webhelpers.rails.html

http://www.igvita.com/2006/09/17/helpers-instead-of-components/