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 david
It's easy to say "We're agile" and "We use Behavior/Test Driven Development" and thus "we use the right tools to empower our developers!" but what are those tools? For me that discussion is entirely about the tool stack you choose, how that stack empowers you as a developer to do things right the first time. Luckily thanks to the ruby community as a whole we have a large number of high-quality choice to choose between.
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by andy
At Highgroove, we love giving each other compliments. In fact, since everyone at Highgroove kicks ass in some way, compliments are constantly flying around (actually, I think that in and of itself was a compliment).
Well-deserved compliments foster teamwork, increase morale, and make us better as a team than we could be on our own.
One specific way we compliment one another is by giving the Highgroove Award. The award can be given by anyone to anyone; the recipient is recognized on the website and with a physical trophy (it's a bit over the top on purpose!).
Read on for how we added a technical twist to giving the award.
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by stafford
At Highgroove we are are always trying out new ways to improve our process and environment. One of my favorite experiments has been doing away with assigned seats. Our Results Only Work Environment allows each person to decide when and where they do their work. While it is true no one is required to come into the office, the reality is many people prefer to be in the office. It is not hard to see why. Every member of the team gets a massive monitor, a super comfy Aeron chair, and all the espresso and snacks anyone could ever need. Although most people come into the office regularly, each team member's hours can vary wildly. When we had assigned seats you could come in the office and be isolated just because your neighbors on a different schedule. Conversely, you could come in and be surrounded by a couple developers talking out a difficult problem when you really need to get something else done. In short, assigned seats just aren't very ROWE.
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by cbq
Dave's Tech Talk this week is on security on web applications, focusing on Ruby on Rails applications, and using the static analysis security scanner called Brakeman (brakeman on github).
In this talk, Dave looks at how static security analyzers work, and how we used it to find some very tiny (already fixed within a few minutes of finding) possible security weak-points in an application we built for a client.
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by cbq
Highgroove hosted our monthly Hack Night, and with 20 attendees, this was our largest yet.
To program a computer in a clever, virtuosic, and wizardly manner. Ordinary computer jockeys merely write programs; hacking is the domain of digital poets. Hacking is a subtle and arguably mystical art, equal parts wit and technical ability, that is rarely appreciated by non-hackers. See hacker. -- Urban Dictionary: hack
Hack Nights are a chance for Highgroovers to simply "hack" which means: to experiment, learn, and play with technologies we might not get to during our day-to-day. So, what did we hack on?
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by pamela
Far too often there exists a chasm between the client paying for and the developer working on a particular project. One party has a longterm vision; a vision that will ultimately impact his/her financial future. The other party has a much closer view of the project, which creates the risk of getting tunnel visioned. The client worries about when the project will be completed; the developer worries about how the project will be completed. When this happens, communication becomes difficult and frustration builds. How can this be avoided?
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by cbq
Will's Tech Talk this week is on Riak. "Riak is an open source, highly scalable, fault-tolerant distributed database." -- Riak Overview on Basho.com.
The main use-case is to use in web applications that have heavy requirements for data, where lots of data must be "written" or "read" in a distributed fashion, but needs to be high-availability.
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by will
As developers, we love having quality tools like git, available to us.
Using git, we can easily navigate through all the code ever "committed" or added to a project throughout its history. We do this via git treeishes. Treeishes are git's way of referencing commits and relations between commits. Treeishes can improve your workflow immensely if you're a frequent git user.
In this post, we'll cover some of the more basic treeishes and then work into the advanced ones, with some real-world examples.
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by drice
Highgroove Studios has taught me a lot about Software Development, Consulting, and building new web applications. Apart from the myriad of technical skills I've added since I came on board, Highgroove is a fantastic company to learn how to build your own web apps, how to design them, and how to remain focused on the most business critical aspects of the system. Highgroove taught me these things by adhering to a process which manages Agile development, responds to changing software requirements and business needs, and encourages constant communication. While these are all noticed by clients, there is one part of the Highgroove process that goes largely unseen; however, it is just as integral as the former three. That behind-the-scenes aspect of the Highgroove development process is keeping the software as simple as possible to meet current demands.
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by will
Going in to my third week here at Highgroove, I already feel like my first couple weeks have been some of my best in any work environment, both in terms of my personal productivity and my happiness at work.
I'm still completing my undergraduate degree at Georgia Tech. As any student at Tech will be quick to tell you, the school is often very demanding of its students. This can often make a good balance between work and school difficult, and juggling the two over the past couple years of school has been challening.
Enter Highgroove, a ROWE (Results-Only Work Environment).
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