Noel Rappin Writes Here

Or: Rails and JavaScript, Part 5 A quick program note: If you like this newsletter, you might like my recent books: “Modern Front-End Development for Rails” (Ebook) (Amazon) and “Modern CSS With Tailwind” (Ebook) (Amazon). If you’ve already read and enjoyed either book, I would greatly appreciate your help by giving a rating on Amazon. Thanks! If you are really interested in how we got here, I wrote about the history of Rails and JavaScript, read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4.

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.

You got your Rails in my JavaScript… Previously on Locally Sourced: Well, in 2005 I came across a cool web framework called Ruby on Rails. More recently, I wrote a book about integrating Rails and front-end tools. If you want, you could buy it. Today, I thought I’d go back to the beginning… Over the fifteen or so years that Rails has been around, the relationship between Rails and client-side JavaScript has gone in many different directions.

Yes, I really do need 700 LEGO bricks in order to flip that light switch… Program note: This essay is timed to the release of the draft-complete beta of Modern Front-End Programming with Rails. They won’t all be about the book, promise. (There will be one or two more about the book). There will be more Entropy Essays in the future about testing, object-oriented design, pairing, and so on… Something interesting happened as I was finishing up the book.

You have no idea how happy I am to announce that Book 4 of Master Space and Time with JavaScript: Ember is now on sale. You can buy it at /mstwjs It’s not done, of course. But it’s off to a good start, and I think it’s going to be great. Here’s the state of the world: Release 1 of the Ember book is $7, just like its recent siblings.

Here’s some JavaScript: var foo = function(a, b) { return a * b }; var bar = function(func) { return function() { return func.apply(this, arguments) }; }; baz = bar(foo); console.log(baz(2, 3)); What we have here is a function, bar, that both takes a function as an argument and returns a function as it’s result. It’s transforming the function passed to it into a different function. Okay, that’s cool in kind of an abstract way, but so what?

The reported errata for Master Time and Space With JavaScript (buy it here) has been pretty light so far. A bunch of typos, some setup weirdness. And one interesting issue worth exploring. What is a dependency, and maybe more to the point, where is a dependency? This issue was raised by a reviewer whose name I’m not going to mention — that’s not a reflection on the reviewer, but rather a reflection on the fact that I’m going to put words in his mouth to expand on his brief comment on the issue, so my interpretation of his position may not actually be his position.

And now, the return of the semi-occasional link post. I’m going to try to do this at least once a week, but who knows. If you are writing JavaScript, you should be looking at Justin Searls and his JavaScript testing tools. Justin posted the slides for what looks like a great talk on JavaScript testing. These slides made me happy. In random media sales, the audio book of World War Z is on sale for a mere six bucks.

Now that the new book is public, I’m going to start doing more frequent status updates. It’s going to be weird for me, after keeping the project under wraps for so long, but I’m sure we will all get by. When the book, shall we say, reverted back to me, I had two immediate questions: what to write, and how to deliver it to a (hopefully) desiring public. Let’s talk about the content first, though in practice, I needed to make sure I had a tool chain I liked before proceeding.

Here’s what I’ve got. 2 chapters introducing jQuery and Jasmine via a walkthrough of a simple piece of JavaScript functionality. 1 need to convert all my text from its current proprietary format to something more Markdown based. 1 genuinely silly conceit tying together the application that gets built in the book. And I mean that in the best way. It should be silly, there’s no reason not to be bold. There is even a twist ending.

So… The JavaScript book that I had contracted to do with Pragmatic will no longer be published by them. I need to be careful as I write about this. I don’t want to be defensive – I’m proud of the work I did, and I like the book I was working on. But I don’t want to be negative either. Everybody that I worked with at Pragmatic was generous with their time and sincere in their enthusiasm for the project.

Okay, the blog has been very quiet for the last month or so. Please be polite and pretend you noticed. I’ve alluded online to a new book one or two places and now I think it’s far enough along that I can mention it in public without being too scared. Let’s do this Q&A style, call it an infrequently asked question list… Q: What’s the new book? A: Great question. The working title is Getting Things Done In JavaScript.

Book Status RSpec chapter draft handed in to edit. It’s going to need a better conclusion. A lot changed in this one, relative to the Lulu version – this is probably the chapter most affected by my own personal experience since it’s original version. Links Haven’t done a link set in a while, this is going to be kind of random. Still seats available for both WindyCityRails in general, and for my tutorial in specific.

Book Status Beta 4 should be going out Real Soon Now. As far as I know everything is ready and we’re just waiting for it to actually be generated. Still working on legacy coding chapter. Links A couple of links about hiring today. One debate is between Ben Orenstein and Brian Liles about whether you can get a Rails job without experience. Somewhat weirdly, both of them seem to be arguing the same side, which is to go out and get some experience.

Book Status And now I turn my lonely eyes to the chapter on testing legacy code. I liked this chapter in the original book, and it’s something I get asked about pretty consistently, so I really want to make it great. Links I’m personally going to spend a lot of time with David Chelimsky’s post about RSpec 2 docs. It’s the best listing I’ve seen so far about changes between RSpec 1 and RSpec 2.

Hey, where were you? Sorry about that, I spent most of last week running the Obtiva Ruby/Rails/TDD 4-day boot camp training, and I didn’t have time to do this daily catchup. Hey, if you think you need me or somebody like me to come to your company and blather about Ruby and Rails for a few days, contact us at http://www.obtiva.com. It’s fun. Book Status Rails test prescriptions: still on sale.