Noel Rappin Writes Here

It’s book day! Rails 4 Test Prescriptions is available for Beta purchase today. Tell your friends, tell your enemies, tell random strangers on the street. I realize this is way more exiting for me than for you, but still… Here are some things that you might want to know: How do I buy it? Right now, the only place to buy the book is at the pragmatic website, http://pragprog.com/book/nrtest2/rails-4-test-prescriptions. You can buy it in electronic format, for $25 you get the current book and all future updates in ePub, Mobi (Kindle), and PDF formats.

A lot of Test Prescription book news got finalized last week. The title of the book is Rails 4 Test Prescriptions: Keeping Your Codebase Healthy. The publisher wanted the Rails version number in the name, and I want the publisher to be happy. The tentative on-sale date for the beta is June 11. For those of you who were around last time, the beta period is expected to be much shorter.

While the TDD Hangout was going on between DHH, Kent Beck, and Martin Fowler, I imagined a more exciting version on Twitter with #fakeTDDHangout [View the story "Fake TDD Hangout" on Storify]

It’s been a while since I gave an update on the far-flung writing projects of Noel Rappin, inc. Here goes. Rails Test Prescriptions 2: The Refill is heading out for roughly 50% draft complete technical review this week. I believe the reviewers have already been contacted, thanks to all of you who volunteered. There probably will be another round. The review will probably take us through the end of March, at which time, I make any fixes suggested.

I need to say this off the bat: this is my own experience, and does not necessarily speak for or reflect the opinions of Ruby Central, or any of the other conductors who chose individual tracks. Also, I’m sure I’m leaving interesting things out, ask questions in the comments and I’ll answer. Are we good with that? Great. Here are some things I learned from scoring and choosing my little corner of the RailsConf program.

Quick and random: The book Ball Four) had a big impact on me as a kid. I stumbled across a copy when I was about 12. If you don’t know, Ball Four, written by Jim Bouton and published in 1970, was one of the first big athlete tell-alls (though it seems much tamer these days than it did when it came out…) Anyway, a lot of the book can be read as the story of an articulate outcast trying to understand and navigate the other teammates that he’s basically stuck with.

I’m going to be conducting a few of the tracks for this year’s RailsConf, specifically the Novice, Testing, and Crafting Code tracks. I’m very excited, this isn’t an opportunity I’ve had before. What I want from all of you is awesome proposals. I want to have to make hard decisions. I want to be inundated with all your amazingness. Because I want to hear from all of you, here are some opinions on how to best present yourself in a speaking proposal.