I love TeamCity as a build/ci tool. I really do. However, I have noticed from time to time when I go searching their bug-tracking system that I’m in the midst of reporting a bug they had previously fixed. I’ve seen this more than once so this led me to wonder aloud on twitter if the TeamCity developers practiced TDD.
@ISuperGeek We don't use TDD, but we have bunch of Tests that cover the majority of TC functionality. Please see: https://t.co/yvrOzi65wR
— JetBrains TeamCity (@teamcity) February 4, 2016
I followed the link to their blog post. In their discussion of how they do Continuous Delivery within their organization I would draw your attention to step 2:
While the build is running, two developers from the team (Duty Devs) review all commits made by the team during the day and if they both agree commits won’t break critical parts of the application, such as areas responsible for running and scheduling builds and build agent auto-upgrade, they put a special tag on the build marking it as “safe for deployment”.
emphasis added
Now let me draw your attention to Jeff Atwood’s wonderfully snarky blog post, Works on My Machine. Step 3:
Cause one code path in the code you’re checking in to be executed. The preferred way to do this is with ad-hoc manual testing of the simplest possible case for the feature in question. Omit this step if the code change was less than five lines, or if, in the developer’s professional opinion, the code change could not possibly result in an error.
emphasis added
Again, I love TeamCity. I think it’s a great product. I think it’s build-chains feature makes it far and away a better CI tool than any of the alternatives–especially in an enterprise-y SOA context. It is not my intention to shame them. Still, the producers of a tool widely used to perform the Continuous Integration side of TDD does not itself practice TDD.
Wow.
In the .NET space there are a number of good libraries to handle run-of-the-mill command line argument parsing.
My current favorite is a nuget package called simply CommandLineParser.
So why write a new one?
In short, current .NET command-line libraries focus only on parsing the args.
You are left reponsible for interpreting the args to call the right methods with the correct arguments.
What if CLI’s could be as easy to structure and execute as ASP .NET MVC applications?
Try it out!
Install-Package Odin-Commands
Resources
Feedback Welcome
Inspired By Thor
I’ve done some work with Ruby over the last couple of years and I was really impressed with the feature set offered by a ruby project called thor
In addition to a declarative approach to binding options to actions and arguments, thor supports the concept of subcommands.
We’ve seen subcommands used to great effect in command-line programs such as git and nuget, but current command line parser packages
offer little help with this feature.
Inspired by Convention Over Configuration
In ASP .NET MVC, urls are routed to the appropriate controller and action by convention. http://mysite.domain/Home/Index is understood to route to a controller called “Home” and invoke a method called “Index.”
In addition, little manual wiring is required because ASP .NET MVC can discover and instantiate the controller easily at runtime.
I wondered if it would be possible to use a combination of reflection and convention to create a command-line application in C#.
Show Me The Code
Setup Code
Write a class that inherits Command. You can also register SubCommands.
Add methods with [Action] attributes to indicate that they are executable.
<br />public class RootCommand : Command
{
public RootCommand() : this(new KatasCommand())
{
}
public RootCommand(KatasCommand katas)
{
base.RegisterSubCommand(katas);
}
[Action]
[Description("The proverbial 'hello world' application.")]
public int Hello(
[Description("Override who to say hello to. Defaults to 'World'.")]
[Alias("w")]
string who = "World")
{
this.Logger.Info($"Hello {who}!\n");
return 0;
}
[Action]
[Description("Display the current time")]
public void Time(
[Description("The format of the time. (default) hh:mm:ss tt")]
[Alias("f")]
string format = "hh:mm:ss tt")
{
this.Logger.Info($"The time is {DateTime.Now.ToLocalTime():format}\n");
}
}
[Description("Provides some katas.")]
public class KatasCommand : Command
{
[Action(IsDefault = true)]
public int FizzBuzz(
[Alias("i")]
int input
)
{
FizzBuzzGame.Play(this.Logger, input);
return 0;
}
[Action]
public int PrimeFactors(
[Alias("i")]
int input
)
{
var result = PrimeFactorGenerator.Generate(input);
var output = string.Join(" ", result.Select(row => row.ToString()));
this.Logger.Info($"{output}\n");
return 0;
}
}
To execute the program, just take call Execute(args).
The Program
class Program
{
static void Main(string[] args)
{
var root = new RootCommand(new KatasCommand());
var result = root.Execute(args);
Environment.Exit(result);
}
}
What Do I Get For My Trouble?
You get a command line executable that can be invoked like so:
<br />exe hello --who "world" # explicit invocation
exe hello -w "world" # argument alias
exe hello "world" # implicit argument by order
exe katas fizz-buzz --input 11 # explicit subcommand invocation
exe katas --input 11 # subcommand + default action
exe katas -i 11 # subcommand + default action + argument alias
exe katas 11 # subcommand + default action + implicit argument by order
exe katas prime-factors --input 27 # subcommand + non-default action + explicit argument
A powershell module for managing your ruby environments on Windows.
I’ve been working with Ruby in a Windows environment for a little over a year now. I’m sad to say that community support for Windows developers is lackluster. We are second-class citizens.
The most frustrating example of this is the lack of decent ruby version switchers. rvm doesn’t install on Windows at all. Ditto for rbenv. uru is a valiant attempt, but it is cumbersome to install and it’s API is less than intuitive.
The Need
This wouldn’t much of an issue if ruby installations were backwards compatible, but that is not the case. Even minor version releases of Ruby can incur breaking changes ruining your execution environment.
For development purposes, it’s a good idea to install the new ruby version, switch your ruby environment, then run all your tests on all your projects to verify compatibility. If you need to roll back, just switch your ruby environment and everything is good.
The Strategy
As I started digging into how tools like rvm and rbenv work, I became surprised a the difficuly of reimplementing them on Windows. Aside from the installation features (e.g. rvm install ruby-version), ruby version management is basically just editing the PATH variable. In other words, the great barrier, the monumental technical challenge that prevents anyone from developing an easy-to-install , easy-to-use ruby version switcher is: string manipulation.
The Requirements
A ruby version switcher needs to know the location of installed rubies. It needs to be able to alter the PATH for the current session such that the desired ruby is the one being used.
Note
It is not the norm for Windows developers to think about altering their terminal session. It is the norm that alterations to the PATH are permanent. Reorienting our thinking around editing our Session as against our Environment has many benefits which I won’t go into here–except to say that it makes the issue of version switching much simpler.
My Solution
I wrote a powershell module called psundle-ruby (compatible with psundle) to discover and manage ruby versions. If you have not looked at psundle, I encourage you to do so as it makes installation of this module as simple as:
Install-PsundleModule 'crmckenzie' 'psundle-ruby'
If you have already installed rubies in your Windows environment, you can execute Register-RubiesInPath to make Psundle aware of them. Otherwise you can invoke Register-Ruby for each ruby location not found in your PATH.
Invoke Use-Ruby to switch to the desired version. The argument to Use-Ruby is an expression. The command switches to the first ruby it finds that matches the expression.
For example, if I have the following rubies installed on my machine:
* ruby-1.9.3
* ruby-2
* ruby-2.1
* ruby-2.2
I can invoke Use-Ruby "1" to switch to ruby-1.9.3. Invoking Use-Ruby "2" will switch me to ruby-2.
Invoke Set-DefaultRuby to permanently alter your PATH variable to automatically select the chosen ruby.
Committment to Maintain
I commit to maintaining this powershell module through the end of 2016. If you find issues, please report them or (even better) submit a pull-request. I will reevaluate my committment at the end of 2016 based on the level of interest and usage of this module.
Vim & Vundle
I finally bit the bullet and learned to use Vim competently. One of the things I was really impressed by in the Vim space is a plugin called Vundle. Vundle is a package manager for Vim plugins. At first, swimming in a sea of package managers, I was loathe to learn another one–but Vundle is extremely simple. It uses github as a package repository. “Installing” a package is basically as simple as running a git clone to the right location. Updating the package is a git pull. Security is managed by github. Genius.
Powershell
As a developer on Windows I find Powershell to be an extremely useful tool, especially when running in an excellent terminal emulator such as ConEmu. One of the problems that Powershell has is that there is no good way to install modules. The closest thing is PsGet.
What’s wrong with PsGet?
Nothing. PsGet is great. However, not every powershell module can be made public, and not every powershell module developer goes through the process of registering their modules at PsGet.
Introducing Psundle
I thought to myself, “Hell, if Vundle can install modules directly from github, I should be able to implement something similar in Powershell” and Psundle was born.
Psundle is a package manager for Powershell modules written in Powershell. It’s only dependency is that git is available in the PATH.
Disclaimer
Psundle is an alpha-quality product. It works, but API details may change. It will improve if you use it and submit your issues and/or Pull Requests through github.
Installation
You can install Psundle by running the following script in powershell:
iex ((new-object net.webclient).DownloadString('https://raw.githubusercontent.com/crmckenzie/psundle/master/tools/install.ps1'))
In your powershell profile, make sure you Import-Module Psundle. Your powershell profile is located at
"$home/Documents/WindowsPowershell/Profile.ps1"
I advise that you don’t just run some dude’s script you found on the internet. Review the script first (it’s easy to understand). Please, please, please report any installation errors with the self-installer.
Installing Powershell Modules With Psundle
Install-PsundleModule "owner" "repo"
For example, if you want to install the module I wrote for managing ruby versions on Windows, you would run:
Install-PsundleModule "crmckenzie" "psundle-ruby" http://github.com/crmckenzie/psundle-ruby
What does this accomplish?
As long as you have imported the Psundle module in your profile, Psundle will automatically load any modules it manages into your powershell session.
Other Features
Show-PsundleEnvironment
Executing Show-PsundleEnvironment gives output like this:
| Module | Path | Updates | HasUpdates |
|---|---|---|---|
| Psundle | C:\Users\Username\Documents\WindowsPowerShell\Modu… {dbed58a | Updating readme to resolve installation … | True |
| ChefDk | C:\Users\Username\Documents\WindowsPowerShell\Modu… | False | |
| Ruby | C:\Users\Username\Documents\WindowsPowerShell\Modu… | False | |
| VSCX | C:\Users\Username\Documents\WindowsPowerShell\Modu… | False |
Update-PsundleModule
I can update a module by running:
Update-PsundleModule "owner" "repo"
If I’m feeling brave, I can also Update-PsundleModules to update everything in one step.
Requirements For Installed Modules
Because Psundle ultimately just uses git clone to install powershell modules, Powershell modules in github need to be in the same structure that would be installed on disk.
Primarily, this means that the psm1 and psd1 files for the module should be in the repo root.
Committment to Develop
I’m making a blind committment to maintain this module through the end of 2016. “Maintenance” means I will answer issues and respond to pull requests for at least that length of time.
Whether I continue maintaining the module depends on whether or not people use it.
At Redacted Industries we use Chef to deploy our applications to various environments. An environment for us is a complete set of servers and applications configured to talk to one another. Environments are designed to mirror prod as much as possible.
The majority of our applications are written in C# and target the Windows operating system. Accordingly, developers are assigned a windows VDI and given access to a spate of tools for Windows-based development.
Our DevOps group on the other hand primarily works in Chef & Ruby. Their standard-issue hardware is a Macbook Pro.
Ruby on Windows
Ruby is less than awesome on Windows. There are a host of issues, but the main problem is that gem does not want to install binaries to the host OS. Rather, gems that require C-compilation are built from source when they are installed on the target OS. Gem developers do not always test their C-compilation on both Linux & Windows so Windows compilation is often neglected.
The community attitude toward this problem tends toward “Show me the PR!” This is a typical attitude in open-source, but few modern developers have the stamina to master the vagaries of C-compilers so the reality is these sorts of problems are seldom touched.
Despite these problems, I am able to develop Ruby applications on Windows with relative ease. It takes some time and effort to learn where the dragons are and slay them, but it can be done.
ChefDK & Embedded Rubies
Ruby devs often want to build gems against different versions of Ruby. Controlling which version of ruby you’re using at any one time is a challenge. There are tools such as rvm & rbenv to help but the tools are not awesome. To further complicate matters, OS/X comes with its own embedded Ruby as does ChefDK.
It is a challenge to keep straight which code is supposed to be installed in and run in the context of which version or Ruby, especially since Chef can be used to install versions of Ruby different than what it is running under. Further, the ChefDK is not designed to play-nice with other Rubies. In discussions with the developers at OpsCode, they say that the ChefDK is designed for people who are not going to be developing Ruby applications in any environment other than Chef. It becomes problematic when the Chef docs tell you to install certain gems and you end up installing them into the wrong Ruby. Gah!
Docker
If you haven’t read about Docker yet, stop reading this blog and go read about Docker. Docker lets you create lightweight VMs known as containers. A container isn’t really a VM–it’s a process. I think of it as a process that thinks it’s a VM.
What if we could create a docker container pre-configured with the ChefDK such that the Chef tools are deployed correctly in a way that is isolated from my other Rubies? Ideally, I’d be able to point the ChefDK container to my local source files on Windows. I can still be on the network, have access to email and company chat, use my favorite text editors–but when I need chef commands, I can duck into the container context long enough to do what I need to do there and get out.
Sounds awesome!
The DockerFile
A Dockerfile is a description of an image that you wish to build. Here is a sample:
FROM ubuntu
MAINTAINER Chris McKenzie <crmckenzie@redacted.com>
RUN apt-get update
RUN apt-get install -y curl git build-essential libxml2-dev libxslt-dev wget lsb-release
# RUN curl -L https://www.opscode.com/chef/install.sh | sudo bash
### INSTALL CHEFDK
RUN wget https://opscode-omnibus-packages.s3.amazonaws.com/ubuntu/12.04/x86_64/chefdk_0.6.2-1_amd64.deb
RUN dpkg -i chefdk_0.6.2-1_amd64.deb && rm chefdk_0.6.2-1_amd64.deb
RUN chef verify
### CLEANUP
RUN apt-get autoremove
RUN apt-get clean
First, you use the Dockerfile to build the image.
docker build -t chef-workstation .
The Powershell Script
To make the Docker image usable, I need to create containers from it. Containers are instances of an image that you can use. Containers are disposable. To that end let’s write some powershell to wrap up complex docker commands into something I can call easily.
$username = $env:UserName
function Invoke-Knife() {
$cmd = "docker run --entrypoint=knife --rm -w='/root/src' -v /c/Users/$username/.chef:/root/.chef -v /c/Users/$username/src:/root/src -it chef-workstation $args"
write-debug $cmd
Invoke-Expression $cmd
}
function Invoke-Chef(){
$cmd = "docker run --entrypoint=chef --rm -w='/root/src' -v /c/Users/$username/.chef:/root/.chef -v /c/Users/$username/src:/root/src -it chef-workstation $args"
write-debug $cmd
Invoke-Expression $cmd
}
set-alias knife Invoke-Knife
set-alias chef Invoke-Chef
This script defines 2 functions: Invoke-Knife and Invoke-Chef. Let’s break this command down step by step.
- docker run
This command runs a container
- –entrypoint=knife
Tells Docker to execute 'knife' automatically when the container is created.
- –rm
Tells Docker to remove the container after its process stops.
- -w=’/root/src’
Tells Docker to run 'knife' in the working directory '/root/src'
- -v /c/Users/$username/.chef:/root/.chef
Tells Docker to share the .chef directory from the Host OS to '/root/.chef'
- -v /c/Users/$username/src:/root/src
Tells Docker to share the src directory from the Host OS to '/root/src'
- -it chef-workstation
Tells Docker to allocate a tty for the container process and create the container from the 'chef-workstation' image
- $args
This is the powershell variable containing the arguments passed to `Invoke-Knife`. These arguments are simply forwarded to knife when the container is executed.
What Happens Next?
When I execute ‘knife search “:“‘, ‘knife’ is an alias that executes Invoke-Knife–which starts the container and passes ‘search “:“‘ to the knife executable in the container. As soon as the ‘knife’ process finishes its work and emits its results, the container is shut down and deleted. If I execute ‘chef generate cookbook fredbob’, a similar process happens except that the ‘chef’ executable creates a cookbook in ‘/root/src’ on the container–which is mapped to my source directory on Windows. Both executables use the chef credentials I’ve defined in my .chef directory on my Host OS.
Feedback
I’m putting this out there because I’ve found it helpful, however there may be simpler, better ways of doing things. I’m open to comments and suggestions for other ways to resolve any of these issues, or for more interesting ways to use Docker.
Recruiters
We all get them, those emails from recruiters in our inbox breathlessly telling us about some new opportunity somewhere. If you’re like me, you just delete most of them unread. In my case they’re usually for other cities, or from my old hometown 3000 miles away. This tells me that the recruiter in question hasn’t read my updated profile. This is what we all hate about recruiters… until we need them. This love-hate relationship with recruiters gets even more complicated when you are a hiring manager.
I married a recruiter. My wife places Accounting & Finance professionals for a recruiting firm in downtown Seattle. It’s interesting hearing about her work. Listening to her gave me a whole new appreciation for what she’s up against.
First, all you need to enter the profession is a phone and a computer. The barrier to entry for recruiters is very low. Many recruiters begin and end their careers in a matter of months. It’s important to understand this because many of the junk mails you receive are likely from amateur recruiters who have no other tools at their disposal than an email blast and buzzword bingo. If you paint all recruiters with the same brush, you risk missing out on some great partnerships both as a candidate and as a client.
A good recruiter is more than just a resume service. To work with recruiters well, you should understand the problems they face. Pro tip–many of the problems they face are you.
Attitude
For most of us in tech, hiring is an annoying chore that distracts us from our real work. If this describes you, change your attitude. Hiring is the single most important way you will impact your company’s culture. No other single decision you will make has broader reach. Make hiring the most important thing in your list of things to do.
Ask yourself, what makes hiring such a chore? For me it was the endless stream of annoyingly similar resumes and blah candidates on the phone. I decided to arm my recruiter with tools to slow down the rate at which they send me resumes. “Unless the candidate says something like x in response to question y, I don’t want to talk to them.”
Access
Hiring Managers tend to hate talking to recruiters. Recruiters always seem to have another resume in their back pocket. Resumes are boring and don’t really tell you much about a candidate anyway (except that one I got that was a photocopy of a coffee-stained piece of paper–I learned everything I needed to know about the candidate from that one!) Recruiters aren’t any more psychic than you when it comes to resumes and phone screens… or you. The best they can do is integrate your feedback into their process moving forward. In order to do that, they have to actually get your feedback.
There are some things you can do to make sure they get the information they need.
- Don’t hide behind HR. HR departments are great for running background checks and whatnot. But they necessarily don’t know you, your department, or your culture. Include HR on the search details, but if you have an HR department that likes to run the hiring process for you, insist on taking control yourself. At the very least you should be involved in every step of the hiring process.
- Commit to a 24hr response time on hiring-events. This includes (but is not limited to) emails, phone screens, in-person interviews, texts, etc. If you talk to a candidate and fail to deliver feedback to the recruiter, you are telling the recruiter that your hire is not a high priority. If it’s not a high priority to you why should it be a high priority to them?
- Arrange a weekly or even semi-weekly checkin call to see how things are going. If you’re doing Scrum you already have daily checkins. Treat hiring just like any other project. When you hire a recruiter, you are partnering with them to find a good fit for your open position. Treat them like a member of your team. Find out what’s going well and what’s not. If they need something from you to be more effective and it’s reasonable, give it to them.
Purple Squirrels
Third party recruiters often work solely on commission. They often receive searches that they call “purple squirrels.” A purple squirrel is a difficult-to-fill requirement. When you’re paid on commission, you want to work searches that are easy to accomplish. Purple Squirrels are the opposite of that. They take more work to understand the client and the culture. They take more work to identify matching candidates. Since the likelihood of finding a matching candidate is lower, purple squirrels get lower priority on your recruiter’s desk.
If you have a Purple Squirrel and you want them to treat you like a priority anyway you’ll need to sweeten the deal:
- Tell your recruiter that you have a purple squirrel (use the term–they know it and will appreciate that you know it).
- Commit to giving your recruiter access to the hiring manager
- Reduce or eliminate their competition. If you trust your recruiter, give them the exclusive search. It might seem to you like you’re better off having an army of search firms trying to find your perfect candidate, but the reality is you’re simply reducing their motivation to work for you.
- If you can’t commit to an exclusive, give your favorite recruiter a 2-4-6 week head start.
Exclusivity
It bears repeating–giving your recruiter an exclusive on your search is the best way to get them motivated to find your purple squirrel. If you’re not comfortable with an exclusive, at least give them a good head start. I’ve told my primary recruiter that as long as I have high quality candidate flow the search is his exclusively. I’ve also been very clear that I prefer quality to quantity.
Clear Acceptance Criteria
If there are criteria that rule a candidate out for you, be up front with your recruiter about that. If you can’t clearly define who you’re looking for, how do you expect your recruiter to? Give them open-ended questions they can ask candidates before sending them to you. Tell your recruiter the kinds of answers you would like to see. Tell your recruiter what kinds of answers would mean you don’t want to talk to the candidate. I asked my recruiters to tell me what candidates found interesting or exciting about our job description. I told them what was important to me about our job description. Paying attention to clear acceptance criteria will help the recruiter filter candidates for the ones you actually want to talk to.
As a hiring manager you should have some idea of the skills and interests you are hiring for. If you tell your recruiter you want a “rock star” but don’t offer any clarification you shouldn’t be surprised if your candidate shows up to the interview both late and high. It’s fine to refine your requirements as you interview more and gain better insight into who works and who doesn’t. However, if you’re making radical shifts in your hiring requirements between candidates, your recruiter has no idea how to work for you.
When you’re hiring, don’t just think about the work you want done–think about who wants to do that work. Often it’s not somebody who’s already been doing it for years, but someone who wants to learn it. Some things you can teach and some things you can’t. Be clear-headed about what you’re willing to teach and what skills and knowledge are an actual requirement.
Trust
If you don’t trust your recruiter you should find a new recruiter. If you don’t trust any recruiter, then perhaps the problem is you, no? Some people are afraid to tell the recruiter what they’re looking for for fear that the recruiter will coach the candidate to answer certain questions in certain ways. I’m sure that there are some unscrupulous recruiters out there who would do that, but it’s short-sighted. Most contracts with recruiters are written so that if there’s a “fall-off” (i.e., the candidate leaves or is fired) in a certain time-frame, then the recruiter is on-the-hook for a free replacement. Search firms will often even assess the recruiters commission for the original placement after a fall-off. Recruiters are not financially rewarded for placing bad people in your department.
My Experience
Prior to implementing these ideas into my hiring practices I hated hiring. It was a chore. My email was always full of new resumes to review, more phone screens to schedule, and more on-sites to waste my time on. Phone screens often yielded candidates that seemed surprised by questions like “What sorts of things do you do to keep your skills up-to-date?” On-sites showed that even “experienced” candidates couldn’t solve simple algorithmic problems at the keyboard. Eventually, after enough time wasted by myself as well as my team-mates we would eventually find someone we wanted to hire. I now think of this as the “brute force search” method of hiring. As developers we know that this is inefficient.
After implementing these ideas, my inbox dried up considerably. Instead of 10-25 resumes in my inbox every week I would get 1 or 2. When I talked to the candidates on the phone I almost always wanted to bring them in for an on-site. The on-site interviews have almost all been positive. We went from a department that made offers to candidates 5% of the time to a department that makes offers 80% of the time. In short, my recruiter now does most of the initial filtering for me. Sometimes our check-in calls consist of him telling me about the candidates he chose not to submit to me. When he wants to send someone over to me, I’ve learned to trust him that I should talk to them. Because I did a good job telling my recruiter who we’re looking for, we now get candidates who want to work in an environment like ours. We have candidates self-select out because we do a good job of describing our environment up front. All-in-all, our search is now targeted which means it takes less of my time on a day-to-day basis to find quality candidates. I win.
Release Notes
0.3.0
- Richmond was failing on binary files. Richmond can now be configured to ignore
or target specific files or directories via a .richmond file found in the root
of the directory being processed.
Configuration
Richmond will look for a file called .richmond in the root directory you are running against.
If it finds the .richmond file, it will load it.
You can use the select or reject methods to change which files Richmond will include or exlude
in it’s processing.
# Richmond doesn't like binary files
Richmond.reject do |file|
file.match /images/
end
# I only want to parse .rb files
Richmond.select do |file|
file.match /\.rb$/
end
The Context
I’m building a Ruby API in Sinatra and publishing it’s documentation using Swagger. I didn’t really like any of the tools to generate swagger docs from the Ruby code so at first I was handwriting the JSON files myself. Then I decided that it would be easier to manage in YAML.
YAML was definitely a better solution than handwriting the JSON, but I was still wishing that the documentation for the models and API’s were embedded in the code they described.
The Solution
I decided that the documentation would live with the code come hell or high water. I figured I could use Ruby’s block comments with a little bit of special formatting to identify documentation sections throughout the code base and lace them all together into one or more output files. The result is Richmond (named after the character in the IT Crowd who would have benefitted from some documentation telling him what all the blinking lights did).
Usage
After you install the gem, you can execute the gem from the command-line like so:
richmond /dir/to/scan
You can find the code for richmond on github, as well as additional documentation.
Vim
I’m assuming you’d rather not compile Vim for Windows yourself. I don’t blame you. I tried it and it’s a nightmare.
These are manual steps, unfortunately. 🙁
For the best vim experience you should get the version compiled with Ruby and Python support.
Ruby and Python support does not necessarily mean that you will be coding in Ruby or Python, but many of the plugins that you will want to use require vim integration with Ruby and Python.
These instructions assume you are working in a Powershell console and that Chocolatey is installed.
Install Ruby
choco install ruby -Version 2.0.0.59800
If you need other version of ruby, go ahead and install them now.
Uru
You only need to install uru if you are using multiple rubies. Rvm does not work on Windows and Pik is no longer supported. Uru works fine.
You’ll need to add your ruby installations to uru using
uru admin add /path/to/ruby/bin
Installing Python
choco install Python2
Install Vim
Now you are ready to install vim.
Unfortunately, the version available on Chocolately.org is hard to get to work with Ruby and Python on Windows.
However, Alexander Shukaev (Haroogan) has compiled a version that works nicely.
Extract the zip file where you want it and make sure the location of vim.exe is in the path before any other vims on your system (for example, if you have msysgit installed).
Verification
If this works, you should be able to execute the following commands in vim.
:echo has('ruby') => 1
:echo has('python') => 1
Install .vimrc
I keep my .vimrc file as a gist.
I clone it into my C:\git directory.
git clone https://gist.github.com/crmckenzie/4913add34cd30abd4b93 vimrc
Then I create a symlink from my $HOME directory to the vimrc file. This allows me to maintain the file across machines using git as a synchronization tool.
From powershell
cmd /C mklink .vimrc C:\git\vimrc\.vimrc
The “cmd /C” section is necessary in Powershell because not all cmd.exe commands have been ported yet.
Install Vundle
Vundle is a package manager for Vim. It uses github as a package source. This is about as easy as it gets 🙂
git clone https://github.com/gmarik/Vundle.vim.git ~/.vim/bundle/Vundle.vim
Install Bundles
Open vim and run
:BundleInstall
This should download the bundles specified in .vimrc
I’ll maintain this documentation in my configure-win-dev-workstation repo.
Destiny is a great game. It is getting a lot of complaints due to some obvious failures such as not having enough content, lacking LFG or match-making mechanics for the more difficult missions, and not having a lot of character customization options. These are all true and valid criticisms, but I still find myself playing the game a LOT.
Recently I’ve found myself focusing on another kind of failure in the game. These are user-experience failures. I thought that it might be fun and useful to clearly identify them because some of the principles involved may be useful in other kinds of software.
Orbit
Destiny is constructed as a series of play areas where you can do different things. There are areas with missions and enemies (Venus, Earth, the Moon, and Mars), a safe-zone on Earth called The Tower in which you can trade with merchants and receive bounties, and Orbit where you can see all these areas and decide where you want to go next.
Orbit is useless.
It should not be in the game.
Orbit basically lets me look at a map of places to go, select one, and go there. This would be fine if I didn’t have to pay the cost of load-time in order to transition from one area to another. If I’m on Earth and I want to turn in some bounties and then go to Mars, I have to:
1) go to orbit (load time)
2) go to the Tower (load time)
3) go back to orbit (load time)
4) go to Mars (load time)
Instead I should be able to:
1) go to the Tower (load time)
2) Travel to Mars (load time)
In fact, I should be able to travel directly from any one area to any other area without having to load a special context in order to see a map. If I want to skip the Tower, I should just be able to:
1) go to Mars (load time)
Why is orbit even a thing? Why can’t I access the map from any location? Why can’t I stay in the world I’m in after a mission?
The Sin: Wasting User’s Time
Destiny shoehorns the player into a workflow that doesn’t make sense for the player and wastes their time. If there is a technical reason for this workflow, Bungie should solve the underlying problem in such a way that the user’s play flow is streamlined.
Joining and Leaving a Fireteam.
Let’s say I’m in the Tower and I’m invited to join a fire team. Let’s stipulate further that the fireteam is also in the Tower. The game
1) immediately takes me to orbit
2) and takes me back to the Tower.
WTF?
Likewise, if I’m in a fire team and I leave it the game almost always takes me out of where I am and sends me to Orbit (which as I’ve already stated is useless).
The problem here is likely technical (but it’s solvable). I imagine that the issue is that I’m in the The Tower on a different server than the rest of the fireteam. Bungie has chosen to solve this problem by taking me out of the current server and completely reloading a new context on the new server with the same fireteam. Other MMO’s have faced this problem and solved it without forcing the player to reload the same environment they’re already in.
The Sin: Wasting User’s Time
Destiny is forcing the player to endure the consequences of their bad design decisions.
Cut Scenes
OMFG I can’t believe I’m even having to say this so late in the development of video games. Unskippable cut-scenes are the 2nd to worst sin in games. The first is unskippable cut scenes that start immediately before an epic battle which will likely kill the hero many times before the player succeeds. Having to watch the same cut-scene over and over between attempts frustrates the player and drains enjoyment out of the game-playing experience. Some games are so bad with this that I have stopped playing them altogether.
Attention Game Developers–I’m interested and willing to watch your cut-scenes once. I know you put a lot of work into them and want the players to see them and enjoy them. However, the game is supposed to be fun, and watching the same @$#*$_)(*!@&)(*&$ movie over and over again makes the game not fun. Please for the love of all that is bright and good in the world, stop!
If I was a professional game reviewer, I would immediately dock 20% off of the game score for doing this once. In Destiny, no cut scenes are skippable. Gah!
The Sin: Wasting User’s Time
Failing to understand what the player wants out of your game and instead pushing your own agenda on the player leaves a bad taste in the player’s mouth.
Summary
Hmm, it looks like all of these problems are a variant of the same thing. The user’s time is valuable and the workflows you design for your software should be designed to get user’s where they want to go as fast as possible.
Destiny is a great game. It’s a well-executed MMOFPS and I’m still enjoying playing it. However, it has some serious warts. All it will take is a more competent competitor to enter this space to get me to play (and recommend to my friends) something else.
