Profanity December 17th, 2007

We just noticed our profanity filter bans the world "uncircumcised," but not "circumcised."

Merry Christmas!

Announcing a product of my frustration December 3rd, 2007

I get tired of writing tests sometimes. Not because I find it boring, or that I find it unproductive. I usually enjoy the regular test-fix-testsomemore cycle. What gets me down is when I feel like I'm the only person writing tests on a project.

So I wrote a plugin to tell me.

You can check out the plugin, or just ./script/plugin install https://kablame.googlecode.com/svn/kablame

It allows you to check how many lines each contributor has added to tests or specs, according to git or svn blames.

Here is the most recent set of results from our company. Names have been changed to protect the guilty.

**WINNER** ben **WINNER**
ben               ==> 2784
jacob             ==> 1800
austin            ==> 1475
no_longer_here    ==> 786
no_longer_here    ==> 453
our_team          ==> 157
performance       ==> 148
architect         ==> 135
our_team          ==> 74
our_team          ==> 52
our_team          ==> 45
our_team          ==> 29
search_team       ==> 25
some_test_hater   ==> 3
**LOSER** some_test_hater **LOSER**

So a quick review of our test code? We have three people who have produced the vast majority of tests. After that, there are a couple of users who don't even work here any more, the project architect and a performance architect. Then we've got the bulk of the development team.

Then... Way down at the bottom. There's some guy who has written THREE LINES OF TEST CODE.

If that's not a punchline, I don't know what is.

You Get What You Pay For November 30th, 2007

Here's two anecdotes over two days where people say "deal" when they mean "cheap."

Cheapskate Anecdote One: Hosting

Someone asked who I use for Rails hosting. I mentioned Joyent, a pretty solid VPS (if there is such a thing). Yeah, Solaris takes some getting used to, and yeah, don't even bother with their web-admin interface. But they seem like cool people, and their wiki is pretty good.

"How much?" guy asks.

"It's $45 a month for their starter box." (A much lower barrier of entry than EngineYard's $350.)

He reels. "That's too much. My client spends $5 a month on hosting."

Hobbyists are always suckered in by ultra cheap shared hosts. "You get two terabytes of transfer a month!" Except, they oversell their hardware, and they'll shut you down for CPU usage long before transfer limits.

I once volunteered to write a CMS for a friend. I should have ran the moment he mentioned Dreamhost. They shut down my app because it was spiking at 80% CPU. I moved it to my first-gen mac-mini running debian in a colo, and it's never spiked above 2%.

I'm sure shared hosting is fine for some people. Some people can live at a YMCA. But for anyone but a hobbyist, shared hosting today is a joke.

Cheapskate Anecdote Two: India

Someone told me about their original-online-video-comedy site.

"We got a great deal! A local company told us it would cost $15k. We hired some people in India to do it for $500. It turned out great!"

I disagree.

Let's put aside the aesthetics, (which could politely be called "dull", honestly called "ugly", and articulately called "lacking talent, skill, or ambition." (Yes, let's forget the very first impression, that split second "blink" where people judge you. (I miss lisp.))) Let's look at the code.

Sorry, an American college kid would gladly half ass this for less.

The Point

Some people can't or won't spend the money to get something done right, and the reason they'll fail at this and the rest of life is their lack of commitment. I have never heard of a dot-com millionaire who cut corners on infrastructure. You aren't saving $40 when you waste hours troubleshooting your host. You aren't saving thousands on your site when it only hurts your image.

If it's too good to be true, it is.