[LRUG] Your Code is My Hell

[Glenn Gillen]

> The funny thing about Rails is that it doesn't require any knowledge of OO design to keep things tidy on a small project. Few Rails developers (even amongst the more experienced ones) seem to recognise the smells (e.g. controllers with far too many responsibilities, and therefore private/protected methods) when a project grows. I've never heard a Rails developer say "I think we should extract this behaviour into a separate class…"
> 
> I've put this down to them never having worked on a project where they've been forced to learn those skills, but perhaps the lack of discussion of these topics in the wider community is a bigger contributing factor.

+1, I look forward to a talk on the topic ;)

>> A couple of years ago I postulated that Ruby's biggest challenge was going to be growing the community whilst retaining it's culture. I don't think we're doing a very good job of it.
> 
> The Ruby community seems very fashion lead to me (and we have our own unique sense of style). How else can you explain the widespread adoption of cucumber? I don't dispute that it could be a useful communication tool in some circumstances, but it seems very strange that it should be adopted by so many projects on which the only people who read the tests are developers.

The most enlightening part of my work lately has been interfacing with developers of a primarily different language. I can't possibly be the first to venture forth here. What have we got to learn here? What fundamental assumptions about how to start things do we disagree on? etc.?