The Highgroove blog. Sit pit-side with us to learn how we work. Sometimes technical, sometimes business-oriented, but always focused on simple solutions.
You are browsing posts by brandon. Check out all posts on our blog.
by brandon
How do you turn an unhappy client into a satisfied one? No matter how long you've been in business, you'll eventually have a client who isn't pleased. Highgroovers strive for constant client satisfaction, but we have tips for turning a frustrated client into a repeat one.
→ Read More
I've often felt like Ruby Regexp captures are a bit clumsy.
Let's say we need to break apart phone numbers:
After executing this match, we might do something like this with the parsed number:
What's up with the dollar signs and the sequential numbers?
I feel like I'm writing assembly code and referring to registers or memory offsets or something.
If I'm a new Ruby programmer reading this code, I might have no idea what is going on here.
We can do better → Read More
by brandon
Here at Highgroove we like a good challenge, and we love it when we can meet a challenge with a simple and elegant solution.
Recently we had a customer with a great problem to have - they had signed up lots of new customers and were experiencing some growing pains.
A typical Ruby on Rails app has one database. This app had one database per customer.
Routine tasks like launching servers, deploying code, or migrating databases were taking much longer than normal because they had to be performed per customer instead of just once.
→ Read More
by brandon
Here at Highgroove we often use the popular Factory Girl gem in our tests.
I also like to use a data generation library like Forgery in combination with Factory Girl.
Forgery allows me to improve my factories by using realistic instead of contrived data.
For example, → Read More
by brandon
As an index investor, I was fascinated when Y Combinator launched their innovative style of startup investing.
Y Combinator spreads their portfolio over a large number of startups, similar to the way an index fund spreads its portfolio over a large number of holdings.
Furthermore, with smaller funding amounts at risk, Y Combinator can provide guidance with a light touch from afar without micro-managing. Similarly, index investors do not concern themselves with the minute details of the companies held in an index fund.
At Highgroove, → Read More
by brandon
At Highgroove, we value customer service along with programming. Our customers arrive at our shop with concerns needing attention. Here are a few common ones:
It helps us to imagine questions our customer might have:
