Noel Rappin Writes Here

Modern Front-End Development for Rails

Hotwire, Stimulus, Turbo, 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 Hotwire, Turbo, Stimulus, and Webpacker. You can add great front-end flair without much extra complication. Use React to build a more complex set of client-side features. Structure your code for different levels of client-side needs with these powerful options. Add to your toolkit today!

Modern CSS with Tailwind

Flexible Styling without the Fuss

Tailwind CSS is an exciting new CSS framework that allows you to design your site by composing simple utility classes to create complex effects. With Tailwind, you can style your text, move your items on the page, design complex page layouts, and adapt your design for devices from a phone to a wide-screen monitor. With this book, you’ll learn how to use the Tailwind for its flexibility and its consistency, from the smallest detail of your typography to the entire design of your site.

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.

Bell Curves and Developer Teams

November 22, 2021

Jessica Kerr wrote a very interesting post on bell curves and engineering teams. Jessica’s point is that bell curves are for random distributions, and that when teams share information and learn from each other, they no longer can be modeled by a random distribution. I think this as true, and a valuable insight. It reminded me of a different, related observation about teams and bell curves. Back in the 1980s, when he was applying analytics to baseball teams, Bill James argued that a common feature of the decisions made by poorly performing organizations was the assumption that baseball talent was normally distributed and could be modeled with a bell curve.

Another Refactoring Story: ActiveRecord Lists

November 8, 2021

I’ve now tried to write this post like three times, and one thing that’s clear to me again is why you don’t see more write-ups of even moderately complicated real-ish problems. It’s hard to get enough of the context across to make the code sensible without being overwhelming. But there’s a Rails and ActiveRecord structure that this example gets to that I think is useful, so I’m going to try again.

More Ruby Magic

September 22, 2021

Hey, if you like this post, you might like my recent books: “Modern Front-End Development for Rails” (Ebook) (Amazon) and “Modern CSS With Tailwind” (Ebook) (Amazon). If you’ve read and enjoyed either book, I would greatly appreciate your help by giving a rating on Amazon. Thanks! When last I talked about the Elmer project tracker, I was talking about Ruby magic and singing the praises of StringInquirer. I was expecting some pushback on the Ruby Magic™, but didn’t get any, so I threatened to do something really weird, like implementing an API for getting project history with something metaprogrammy and dynamic, like project.

Rails 7 and JavaScript

September 8, 2021

Or: Rails and JavaScript, Part 5 A quick program note: If you like this newsletter, you might like my recent books: “Modern Front-End Development for Rails” (Ebook) (Amazon) and “Modern CSS With Tailwind” (Ebook) (Amazon). If you’ve already read and enjoyed either book, I would greatly appreciate your help by giving a rating on Amazon. Thanks! If you are really interested in how we got here, I wrote about the history of Rails and JavaScript, read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4.

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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