Noel Rappin Writes Here

Modern Front-End Development for Rails

Webpacker, Stimulus, and React

Improve the user experience for your Rails app with rich, engaging client-side interactions. Learn to use the Rails 6 tools and simplify the complex JavaScript ecosystem. It’s easier than ever to build user interactions with the Webpacker gem and Stimulus. You can add great front-end flair without much extra complication. Add React to build an even more extensive set of client-side features. Structure your code for different levels of client-side needs with these powerful options. Add to your toolkit today!

Rails 5 Test Prescriptions

Build a Healthy Codebase

Does your Rails code suffer from bloat, brittleness, or inaccuracy? Cure these problems with the regular application of test-driven development. You’ll use Rails 5.1, Minitest 5, and RSpec 3.7, as well as popular testing libraries such as factory_bot and Cucumber. Updates include Rails 5.1 system tests and Webpack integration. Do what the doctor ordered to make your applications feel all better. Side effects may include better code, fewer bugs, and happier developers.

Trust-Driven Development

Trust Driven Development is about the profession of building successful software. about planning for change, about process, and above all, about trust. Process is what we do to make sure that everybody on a project has a shared sense of state and of goals. Trust is what happens when we match that shared state and meet those goals.

Technical Writing

November 29, 2020

I recently gave a workshop about technical writing at Virtual RubyConf 2020. I enjoyed doing that tremendously, because, in case it’s not clear, I could yammer on forever about technical writing in much the same way as I normally yammer on about code, just to a smaller audience. I didn’t get to some of my outline in the workshop, so I’m being a little indulgent and writing it up here. I hope it’s helpful.

Empirically, I Have No Idea

September 11, 2020

How We Don’t Know What We Know Previously on Locally Sourced. Who can even remember? Sorry, it’s been a while. I’ve been stuck writing two-thirds of posts and not quite wanting to finish them, but if you are reading this, I assume that means that I finally ended this one. In the meantime, I’ve sold a book-shaped object to Pragmatic that will be about Tailwind CSS. It’s part of the Pragmatic Answers line, which means it’ll be short, and it’s what I’m doing to keep me busy until the Stimulus book is releasable.

These <Prime Number> Tools Will Make You a <Superlative> Developer

August 21, 2020

Look, I said it was a weird trick, not necessarily an effective trick… Every day, it seems, I get a digest from Medium that has a bunch of articles that are all titled “9 VS Code Extensions That Will Change Your Life”. To be completely honest, I read a lot of them, and I actually do find some useful tips. But I want to back up a second and talk about developer tools in general.

Entropy Essays 7: Process and Trust

August 4, 2020

Trying to Define Undefinable Terms: The Locally Sourced Story Previously on Locally Sourced: I’ve been writing about XP and Agile. Most recently, pair programming. And how I think about technical decisions. I started to write a different essay here, but then I realized that I was sort of depending on having written something like this. So I wrote this. I’ve been writing all these posts about Agile and XP methods and I’ve been talking about process and about trust, but I haven’t defined them in the way I use them and I haven’t talked about how I think they are related.

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Teaching Testing and Design

With Avdi Grimm, Betsy Haibel and Penelope Phippen

Episode 72, October 2019

Teaching and Learning

With Sandi Metz

Episode 69, August 2019

Pragmatic Programmer at 20

With Andy Hunt and Dave Thomas

Episode 68, August 2019