Noel Rappin Writes Here

I recently gave a workshop about technical writing at Virtual RubyConf 2020. I enjoyed doing that tremendously, because, in case it’s not clear, I could yammer on forever about technical writing in much the same way as I normally yammer on about code, just to a smaller audience. I didn’t get to some of my outline in the workshop, so I’m being a little indulgent and writing it up here. I hope it’s helpful.

How We Don’t Know What We Know Previously on Locally Sourced. Who can even remember? Sorry, it’s been a while. I’ve been stuck writing two-thirds of posts and not quite wanting to finish them, but if you are reading this, I assume that means that I finally ended this one. In the meantime, I’ve sold a book-shaped object to Pragmatic that will be about Tailwind CSS. It’s part of the Pragmatic Answers line, which means it’ll be short, and it’s what I’m doing to keep me busy until the Stimulus book is releasable.

Look, I said it was a weird trick, not necessarily an effective trick… Every day, it seems, I get a digest from Medium that has a bunch of articles that are all titled “9 VS Code Extensions That Will Change Your Life”. To be completely honest, I read a lot of them, and I actually do find some useful tips. But I want to back up a second and talk about developer tools in general.

Trying to Define Undefinable Terms: The Locally Sourced Story Previously on Locally Sourced: I’ve been writing about XP and Agile. Most recently, pair programming. And how I think about technical decisions. I started to write a different essay here, but then I realized that I was sort of depending on having written something like this. So I wrote this. I’ve been writing all these posts about Agile and XP methods and I’ve been talking about process and about trust, but I haven’t defined them in the way I use them and I haven’t talked about how I think they are related.

Maybe it’ll help you out? Previously on Locally Sourced: does anybody read this part? Hi, it’s Noel, how are you? Last time, I wrote about pair programming, and there were a couple of discussions on Twitter (where you can follow me @noelrap) that came down to what would make you choose to have your team do pair programming or how you would evaluate it. I thought it was worth a follow-up…

We hope that 1 + 1 = 3 Previously on Locally Sourced: I’ve been doing a lot of these oddly titled posts about XP and Agile practices. Like testing. Or OO. I wrote about inclusion on agile teams. And about team metrics. Next up: pair programming. And even though it sounds a little pretentious to my ears, I really do think this is going somewhere, and I think between the last one and this one, the shape of the argument is starting to make sense to me.

Or Why is a Software Team Like A Shortstop Previously on Locally Sourced: I’ve been writing these Entropy Essays about Agile and XP practices. Here’s the most recent one. You can see the rest here. Tell all your friends and colleagues to subscribe. One of the great things about writing this newsletter is that it’s forced me to think some ideas through in more structured ways than I might have if I was just talking to myself in my own head.

It’s hard to predict… Previously on Locally Sourced: Well, we’ve been talking about the history of Rails and JavaScript: part 1, part 2, and part 3, and we’ve finally caught up to the present time, so I guess it’s time to talk about the future. Also, my Rails and JavaScript book is still on sale. You might want to buy it. This is all a little speculative, based on the are changes that have been made to Turbolinks and Stimulus that are clearly in use in Hey.

The Webpackening Previously on Locally Sourced: Rails came out and let people do Ajax, when Ajax was a thing. Then Ajax was less of a thing and Rails let people write CoffeeScript, and use Sprockets. Also, I wrote a book on Modern Front-End Programming with Rails, which is relevant to this edition. The Rails 5 and 6 releases have had a few big JavaScript components, with one more presumably imminent. With Rails API and Webpacker, Rails made a big move toward allowing better interoperability with the JavaScript ecosystem.

UJS, CoffeeScript and Sprockets, oh my. Previously on Locally Sourced: I wrote about the early years of Rails and JavaScript. Which made it to Ruby Weekly. Also, my Rails and JavaScript book is still on sale. A quick program note: If you’ve liked the Entropy Essays, I’m doing a virtual Chicago Ruby Meetup on July 7th at 6:00 Central Daylight Time. It’s being streamed via zoom, and you can sign up here.