For a while I was involved pretty heavily with the Ruby on Rails community. I did design consulting on a number of application interfaces and some frontend programming. Alas, those days have passed and I'm 100% WordPress and PHP focussed.

Now I like WordPress and PHP just fine but one thing I really miss from the Rails community is the focus of the developers. Take the time to listen to Ruby Rogues 47. I love the depth that the Rails community, and @dkubb in this episode, works hard to test all their code.

While all the WordPress developers I know want to do a good job, there is simply a different vibe of excellence in the Rails community. This overall vibe is something I miss.

I know Dan since he lives locally and he has imparted a bunch of other knowledge to me that applies to more than just an single language. These are items I remember him saying to me, my memory may be imperfect.

  1. If you can't fit your function on the screen then you need to ask yourself if it's too complex.
  2. If a line of code has to wrap to the next line, you probably need to make sure it's not too complex.

I think about those items with every site I build. The tips in the podcast are even better, certianly worth a listen for any programmer.