The Highgroove blog. Sit pit-side with us to learn how we work. Sometimes technical, sometimes business-oriented, but always focused on simple solutions.
by andy
There is a new drama in the software development community, and it's about whether you should learn to code or not.
I think the best ideas are somewhere in the middle of all the extreme statements and blog post titles that get upvoted on Hacker News.
I think you should learn to "code," but not because it might make you a "coder".
More after the break.
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You've read our blog, had Highgroove do work for you, watched our Tech Talks, attended the Atlanta Ruby User Group which we host, and all around think we're great.
Now, you've decided that what you really want to do is hire one of our developers full time to work for you. Maybe you're a recruiter looking to fill an 'awesome position at a big company in the Atlanta area', or maybe your startup is ready to take the next step and hire an in-house developer.
We get a lot of e-mails and calls from recruiters, and to be honest, most of them are absolutely terrible. Read on for some tips on how to recruit Highgroovers to come work for you instead. Seriously. Please. We're not telling you to not try and recruit our developers, but please stop wasting your time and ours.
→ Read MoreHighgroove really likes Pry. It's a great tool for digging into your code and seeing what's going on with tons of great features. However, there are situations where using a standard binding.pry breakpoint will not block your program and allow you to inspect it. I recently ran into this situation when trying to debug an application that used Foreman to manage it's processes. Luckily, the pry-remote project turned out to be a great solution.
by gregg
I'm just a week into my first real job and I feel like the luckiest person in the world. Many people fresh out of graduate school still have to "pay their dues" at a company that values being in your cube by 8:00 am even if you were up until 1 last night getting another report finished. While graduate school is essentially a ROWE, there are still expectations to be in a chair from 9:00 - 5:30 (at least in my lab there were). While having the freedom to work when you want and how you want is amazing, it doesn't come without growing pains. After a couple of years of getting judged based on time in the lab, it's hard to remember that it's what I get done that matters and not when I do it. Read through to see how I managed to commit what would be a serious faux pas in any workplace other than a ROWE: I took a day off in my first week.
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It's true. We're hiring. Like a lot of technology companies. But, did you know that we are turning down many qualified applicants? Since we started tracking, only 11% of applicants who go through our hiring process become "Hired Full Time" employees of Highgroove. That means about 1 in 10 who apply receive an offer letter. Why is it we can -- or rather why we have to be so picky in who we hire?
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by jonathan
The latest version of Ruby comes standard now with Comma Separated Value support built right in via the CSV library written by one of our very own alumni, James Edward Gray II. You might know CSV as the extremely portable format file used for everything from Excel Documents, to Numbers Spreadsheets, to lists of emails, to even generic data files. The CSV library is quite generic and useful by itself, but sometimes, you really need the expanded capabilities that only an Excel or Numbers document can support. Read on to find out how to generate Excel and Numbers compatible .xlsx files with Ruby.
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by chris
Highgroove Studios is proud to be helping Collective Idea bring Finish Weekend to Atlanta this June:
We've all heard of startup weekends. Many of us have participated in one. Coming up with a new idea is easy, so is getting started. Finishing is hard. Finish Weekend helps you get it done. Come finish those projects you've put off to the side. Maybe you just need a bit of web help, a logo, or some code written. We'll help you finish.
Head on over to finishweekend.com to register, and then come join us the first weekend of June to get your project launched.
As the web continues to mature, JSON APIs (and XML if you're into that) have become increasingly important. But if you've tried to use Rails to write an API recently, you know there are a handful of competing methods and gems focused on making this better. I'm all for interchangable libraries, but, as Yehuda Katz pointed out in his recent talk at RailsConf, Rails needs a "convention over configuration" approach to solving the JSON serialization problem once and for all. So I was pretty excited when I heard about Jose Valim's ActiveModel::Serializer.
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by mike
Highgroove sent me, Jonathan, and Patrick to RailsConf 2012. I've been learning a lot by going to some great talks and enjoying talking to my fellow Rails developers. If you see any of us, feel free to say hello!
There's a big push to make this the most public RailsConf ever, so all talks are being recorded. On top of that, I have also been trying to take notes and make them public.
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Startup Weekend in Atlanta kicked off last night with over 116 participants, and 48 pitches, eventually forming into 18 teams. The concept behind Startup Weekend is to start something up -- a concept, business, or idea, over the weekend. It's centered around technology, with people dividing themselves into categories like: "business folk", "designers", "developers", and other niches. Yup, there was a technology lawyer, there too.
What kinds of ideas are being worked on right now?
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