Can we just get along?
I don’t know much about corporate culture in the past, but from what I saw, inter-departmental wars were business as usual. Marketing coming up with their id...
Posts by Category
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Business
A good setup goes a long way
I’ve been limited to a 13” screen to do my work on for ages and ages, well since July 2013 at least. The only person who did the limiting was myself. One of ...
Your users are out to get you
How many times did you create a UI with a specific user flow in mind, and most of the time your users did something else? Did you ever experience users ignor...
It’s really easy to quit
I remember when I was in my late teens, although I rode on the bicycle around a lot, I never did anything longer than a few kilometres in one go. I had an ol...
Don’t (only) focus on the code
Every developer aspires to create great things, but often the most important issue is not just the quality of your code, but many other and obscure things th...
The LinkedIn experiment
If you are an engineer you probably don’t see much use from LinkedIn as a service. It is full of recruiters, who can be very annoying from time to time. You ...
On continuous improvement
It is really hard starting something new. Just consider the first time you sat down at the computer to write a “Hello World!” program. Following the tutorial...
Automated testing will add value to your software project
We have read enough about TDD and it’s demise in the last year. Since David published his post about how TDD is dead there have been a couple of flame wars c...
Automating personal and business workflows
In an average month, there is a lot of stuff you will have to do. Stuff like paying the bills, taking care of inventory for home/company, budgeting, and your...
Don’t obsess with analytics too much
If you are only an occasional writer, as I surely am, you don’t have to look at the analytics screen all the time. It’s a really nice thing to look at the re...
Entrepreneurs are made and not born
I was working with my dad in the orchard last Saturday, and after a while we sat down, had a beer and a great discussion. It’s the discussion that pushed me ...
So what if you fail
When you start doing something, especially if that something is brand new to you, there is always a dark cloud of failing hovering over you. The probability ...
Specialist or Generalist
While reading a lot of stuff about freelancing, consulting and business in general, I stumble upon a lot of suggestions and advices to niche down, become a s...
Caution! Reading will change your life (for the better)
I tend to read a lot, averaging at least one book per week. Remembering back, I think the reading started when I was a kid, during the war, being in a shelte...
Zero to One, or how to create a monopoly business
I have recently read the book Zero to One by Peter Thiel and it really changed my overview on the business world, and the projects/products I want to work on...
Dealing with procrastination
Have you ever been in a situation where you want to do anything but the thing you are supposed to do? Maybe there is a task of life importance, and you just ...
Unused tools (and skills) get rusty and fall apart
I was having an interesting twitter conversation a few days ago. The tweet that started it all claims that most male programmers don’t have beautiful, or eve...
Why I quit my full time job to seek fame and fortune in consulting
There are probably many reasons people will say caused them to quit their job, but if you try to differentiate between all of them, you will probably find on...
Quantifying the pain your (potential) client is having
Are you a consultant, or maybe you have a SAAS product. You are really good at what you do (programming/design), or your SAAS it the best and simplest in its...
Overcoming the pirate mentality, and starting to value things
I’ve been brought up in a country where piracy was (and probably still is) imposed to you right from the start. Software licences being really expensive, and...
How to sell a new technology to coworkers (and bosses, by proxy)
Have you been doing programming for a long time, in some old and boring, non-intuitive language or technology? Have you found that new technology everyone is...
Minimum viable feature
We have all heard about the Minimum viable product, and it is a great thing to strive for, if you are doing software development (or design). What in hell ar...
You are not just a (Insert language here) programmer
This is probably be one of those rant posts, so beware. I was listening to one of the podcasts I try to regularly listen, and heard a good description of a w...
Taking out the trash (So you can have new, shiny stuff)
Are you like me, and have a couple ideas (blog posts, products, applications) lingering in your head? Are you also like me, and do nothing whatsoever about t...
How tracking time can make YOU more money without any additional efforts?
Are you one of the many people who don’t track all of their working time? Or maybe you just forget to do it all the time? Are you aware how much money are yo...
Getting through the famine period
If you are a full time freelancer, you have, or surely will encounter a famine period, because only thing sure in freelancing is uncertainty. Of course, with...
Impostor Syndrome
Are you feeling like an impostor in your team? Are you achieving things other members of your team appraise you for, but you live in fear, day in and day out...
Gaining more Authority by becoming an author
I recently read the book Authority by Nathan Barry, and I wanted to share what I have learned from it. The book is basically a course on how to self-publish ...
What I have learned from a hackathon
I’ve attended a hackathon yesterday, that was the first “real” one in my life, and i’m still a bit under the influence. It was organised by the great people ...
Running a freelance business
So, you have decided to start freelancing? I am really happy for you! It is a great choice, one of the best work related decisions I’ve made in my life. You ...
Working Remote
You are surely tired of your commute, every day, waking up way before it’s convenient for you, cramming in public traffic, with people around you, wasting yo...
Why would you want to become a freelancer?
So what are your top reasons you want to become a freelancer? Feel free to leave them in the comments section below. I will briefly give you my reasons for d...
Build your career (You can do better)
Let’s get this clear, this is not a rant against anyone, this is just a statement. But you must realize this, it is not easy and this is not a one week fix. ...
Ruby on Rails
Canary deployment with Ruby on Rails on Kubernetes
If you are reading this, chances are that you are using Ruby on Rails as your framework of choice. There have always been two main options in the past for de...
Your users are out to get you
How many times did you create a UI with a specific user flow in mind, and most of the time your users did something else? Did you ever experience users ignor...
Issue with Rails’s restrict_with_exception and counter_cache
When building Rails applications, a lot of focus goes into optimisation. One of those optimizations is using Rails counter_cache columns. The reasoning behin...
Send PDF attachments from Rails with WickedPdf and ActionMailer
In almost any web application you create, the question of generating PDF files will pop up pretty soon. There are a couple of options while using Ruby on Rai...
Notify an Ember.js app that a deployment has happened
The approach with refreshing regular web applications after deployment is pretty straightforward, you click on a link, it goes to the server, server renders ...
Speed up Rails on Heroku by using Rack::Zippy
I really like Heroku for fast deployments and everything they offer for a small Ruby on Rails or node.js apps. It’s so easy to deploy a web app there, and it...
A not so funny orphaning issue or Rails’s has_one relationships
If you are using ActiveRecord and keeping your models pretty thin and properly normalized, you will surely reach for the very nice has_one relationship. It’s...
Use Rack::Deflater to get faster first time loads of your app
Is your Ruby on Rails application slow for end users? Maybe you are sending a lot of data through the network. As we rarely test performance on our basic ser...
Learning Ruby and Rails in 2014
In the last few weeks, I have been approached by a couple of people who are interested in learning Ruby and/or Ruby on Rails. And for their sake, and for my ...
Rails No-No’s: Not using background processing
Have you encountered a website with a very slow response? How do you feel when you have to wait for 5 or more seconds, for the page to even start responding?...
Rails No-No’s: Using inline CoffeeScript with Haml
I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with HAML, partly because if the css is clean, it can be a great thing, and if it isn’t then your markup will look r...
Refresh your elasticsearch index with zero downtime
I’m using a basic elasticsearch-rails setup on one of the applications I’m working on. The thing is, we sometimes need to make changes to the ES index, add n...
What I have learned from a hackathon
I’ve attended a hackathon yesterday, that was the first “real” one in my life, and i’m still a bit under the influence. It was organised by the great people ...
Override https errors for regular http calls
Let’s say you are building a web app that has some secure user data involved in the picture. You have to secure it with https, that is a necessity. So what h...
Rails Integration testing with MiniTest::Spec and Capybara
So you want to do integration testing for your application, good for you. If you have chosen MiniTest and it’s specing DSL MiniTest::Spec as your test frame...
Integrating turbolinks in your Rails application
We are all excited in a new addition to rails plugins family that is turbolinks. If you have tried to include it in your application, you may have noticed th...
Will Paginate in Rails using remote request
Have you ever wondered why is there no remote option for will_paginate gem? It’s too complex and data dependent to handle all possible situations. I have mad...
Installing Rails Server on Ubuntu 12.04 with RVM, Nginx, Passenger and Oracle support
We have a new product ready and it is a Ruby on Rails webshop bundled with an ERP software written on Oracle Forms 6i. I will not go into the details of this...
Deploying Rails applications on Windows
Due to some legacy issues, and HP workstations being shit that you can’t turn the hardware virtualization on, I had an issue with one client regarding speed ...
Speaking at a conference with no time to prepare
I was surprised to know that i am presenting a product this week at the oracle user conference HROUG.hr
Rails 3.1 JQuery-UI
If you are considering the upgrade to Rails 3.1.x and you wish to include the JQuery-UI in your web application follow these simple steps: Load jquery-ui in ...
Readonly checkboxes with JQuery
I have encountered a problem where I needed to disable some checkboxes on my forms. As you know, a disabled html item by design isn’t going to be posted back...
Learning
Doing new things is hard, choose your hard
In my last post I touched on the topic of quitting, and how easy it is to take the easy path instead of the hard one and quit. Most of us quit all the time, ...
It’s really easy to quit
I remember when I was in my late teens, although I rode on the bicycle around a lot, I never did anything longer than a few kilometres in one go. I had an ol...
On continuous improvement
It is really hard starting something new. Just consider the first time you sat down at the computer to write a “Hello World!” program. Following the tutorial...
Specialist or Generalist
While reading a lot of stuff about freelancing, consulting and business in general, I stumble upon a lot of suggestions and advices to niche down, become a s...
Review: The Design of Everyday Things
I’ve recently read a great book, recommended by Merlin Rebrovic in one of his blog posts. I’ve always seen design as something abstract, something you need t...
Caution! Reading will change your life (for the better)
I tend to read a lot, averaging at least one book per week. Remembering back, I think the reading started when I was a kid, during the war, being in a shelte...
Old habits die hard (The Power of Habit review)
I have a few quite obnoxious habits and a few really good ones. I have tried to get rid of some of them, and succeeded in most cases, but some or most of the...
Learning Ruby and Rails in 2014
In the last few weeks, I have been approached by a couple of people who are interested in learning Ruby and/or Ruby on Rails. And for their sake, and for my ...
I attended my first Coderetreat
As the title says, I attended my first (and definitely not last) Coderetreat. And we also made history, because it was the first one in Croatia. It was organ...
Learn a new programming language (basics) fast
While doing my best to understand Emacs, that I have been using as a primary development, writing, and play environment, I have felt the need to learn Emacs ...
Unused tools (and skills) get rusty and fall apart
I was having an interesting twitter conversation a few days ago. The tweet that started it all claims that most male programmers don’t have beautiful, or eve...
You are not just a (Insert language here) programmer
This is probably be one of those rant posts, so beware. I was listening to one of the podcasts I try to regularly listen, and heard a good description of a w...
Why learning new things is so hard, and why you want it to be that way
Do you know that feeling when you are starting to learn something new? The feeling of being lost in all that stuff that you can not grasp? Feeling like an id...
Learning Emacs
So, I’ve started using emacs in my daily development and writing process, after a couple of years using vim exclusively. Why did i do it? Mostly curiosity, a...
What I have learned from a hackathon
I’ve attended a hackathon yesterday, that was the first “real” one in my life, and i’m still a bit under the influence. It was organised by the great people ...
Build your career (You can do better)
Let’s get this clear, this is not a rant against anyone, this is just a statement. But you must realize this, it is not easy and this is not a one week fix. ...
Ruby
Send PDF attachments from Rails with WickedPdf and ActionMailer
In almost any web application you create, the question of generating PDF files will pop up pretty soon. There are a couple of options while using Ruby on Rai...
Speed up Rails on Heroku by using Rack::Zippy
I really like Heroku for fast deployments and everything they offer for a small Ruby on Rails or node.js apps. It’s so easy to deploy a web app there, and it...
Use Rack::Deflater to get faster first time loads of your app
Is your Ruby on Rails application slow for end users? Maybe you are sending a lot of data through the network. As we rarely test performance on our basic ser...
Learning Ruby and Rails in 2014
In the last few weeks, I have been approached by a couple of people who are interested in learning Ruby and/or Ruby on Rails. And for their sake, and for my ...
Rails No-No’s: Not using background processing
Have you encountered a website with a very slow response? How do you feel when you have to wait for 5 or more seconds, for the page to even start responding?...
Rails No-No’s: Using inline CoffeeScript with Haml
I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with HAML, partly because if the css is clean, it can be a great thing, and if it isn’t then your markup will look r...
Refresh your elasticsearch index with zero downtime
I’m using a basic elasticsearch-rails setup on one of the applications I’m working on. The thing is, we sometimes need to make changes to the ES index, add n...
Override https errors for regular http calls
Let’s say you are building a web app that has some secure user data involved in the picture. You have to secure it with https, that is a necessity. So what h...
Calculating distance using geo coordinates in ruby
As the social part of the sites is growing stronger, everyone of us has to include a user’s location of some sort into the application. There can be many rea...
Rails Integration testing with MiniTest::Spec and Capybara
So you want to do integration testing for your application, good for you. If you have chosen MiniTest and it’s specing DSL MiniTest::Spec as your test frame...
Installing Rails Server on Ubuntu 12.04 with RVM, Nginx, Passenger and Oracle support
We have a new product ready and it is a Ruby on Rails webshop bundled with an ERP software written on Oracle Forms 6i. I will not go into the details of this...
Deploying Rails applications on Windows
Due to some legacy issues, and HP workstations being shit that you can’t turn the hardware virtualization on, I had an issue with one client regarding speed ...
Speaking at a conference with no time to prepare
I was surprised to know that i am presenting a product this week at the oracle user conference HROUG.hr
Rails 3.1 JQuery-UI
If you are considering the upgrade to Rails 3.1.x and you wish to include the JQuery-UI in your web application follow these simple steps: Load jquery-ui in ...
Readonly checkboxes with JQuery
I have encountered a problem where I needed to disable some checkboxes on my forms. As you know, a disabled html item by design isn’t going to be posted back...
business
Mitigating infrastructure risk
When you are building a product on the internet, you should aim to get it out as soon as humanly possible. Things you don’t want to care that moment include ...
The bus factor
When building any product or business, you want to make it as resilient as possible. You should do that from the very beginning, but sometimes this is hard, ...
How to 10X your PR review quality
During my career in software development, proper communication (or lack of it) has been crucial in instigating some creative discussions and/or flame wars du...
Documenting versus fixing
When you would rather have something properly documented than fixed.
Accepting ignorance is the basis of the scientific method
“Ignoramus” (“We don’t know”, Latin)
A great support person is an angel and the devil in one package
Companies are discovering that hiring people to mollify critics and disappointed customers is cheaper (in the short run) than changing things, learning fr...
The stack you use to build your next app is irrelevant
How to choose the best stack for your app?
Processes and systems make your life easier
Everything is a process, whether we document it or not.
The joy of missing out
I was listening to a podcast with Jason Fried the other day and heard this term: “The Joy of Missing Out” or JOMO. It took me a couple of days to process wha...
Power of automation
Not while I have two healthy hands.
The value of a great post-mortem
I never lose, I either win or learn. Nelson Mandela
devops
Mitigating infrastructure risk
When you are building a product on the internet, you should aim to get it out as soon as humanly possible. Things you don’t want to care that moment include ...
Zero downtime redis migration (or upgrade)
I wrote about migrating the Redis database from AWS ElastiCache to another provider a few years ago . In my case it was Azure, but it doesn’t matter. I used ...
5 things where Server Rendered apps beat SPA
I’m a huge proponent of server rendered apps. As someone that started with cluttered desktop apps close to two decades ago, and did his best to push as much ...
How to avoid meetings and replace them with emails
Regardless whether you are starting out or a seasoned veteran in your field of work, one thing is constant: Customers will want to hop on calls with you to ...
(Relational) Databases are awesome
When I say databases, I think about relational database systems. It doesn’t matter which flavour of relational database you choose. They are all fine and str...
The stack you use to build your next app is irrelevant
How to choose the best stack for your app?
The value of a great post-mortem
I never lose, I either win or learn. Nelson Mandela
How to migrate your Redis database from one cloud provider to another
I’ve been doing a migration of our whole infrastructure from AWS to Azure recently. One of the services we use is Redis, which we use for caching purposes an...
Migrating Route53 DNS records to Azure
Recently I’ve been notified that we need to move our operations away from AWS to Azure. One of the steps I found interesting (and never did before) was migra...
Installing Rails 3 in Ubuntu 10.04
As I am exploring different languages and platforms for web development, I have encountered(a few months ago) ruby on rails. It has impressed me so much that...
Javascript
Understanding the Ember run loop
All of the Ember.js internal code, and most of the stuff you write while creating an Ember.js app runs with the help of the run loop. It is used to batch, or...
Dynamic components in Ember.js
When building Ember.js apps you will try to avoid code duplication as much as possible. One of the ways of doing that is using Ember components. Components a...
Simple inheritance with Ember.js
When doing Object-oriented programming, we are always seeking ways to reduce the duplication in the code we write. Reusing existing code is something that ev...
ember-cli 101 Book Review
Ever since I first heard of Ember.js (even before the 1.0 days), I’ve been wanting to learn it. But the learning curve of the framework always veered me off ...
Select and de-select all checkboxes using jQuery
On almost every application I’ve worked on, there was a similar user story:
Dynamically moving div with jQuery
Surely there has been a instance when you are creating an application that has a sidebar and a main content div. In the case of content being too long, the u...
Integrating turbolinks in your Rails application
We are all excited in a new addition to rails plugins family that is turbolinks. If you have tried to include it in your application, you may have noticed th...
Will Paginate in Rails using remote request
Have you ever wondered why is there no remote option for will_paginate gem? It’s too complex and data dependent to handle all possible situations. I have mad...
Preventing users from exiting a form on your website with JQuery
I have encountered a problem with users on a webapp that i co-created. The users would click back after entering data in a form, or close the current tab or ...
Reviews
Just Fucking Ship
Two months ago I found out that Nathan Barry has a 24 hour product contest, in which he aimed to produce a real product, in the form of an email course, in 2...
Review: The Design of Everyday Things
I’ve recently read a great book, recommended by Merlin Rebrovic in one of his blog posts. I’ve always seen design as something abstract, something you need t...
Zero to One, or how to create a monopoly business
I have recently read the book Zero to One by Peter Thiel and it really changed my overview on the business world, and the projects/products I want to work on...
Old habits die hard (The Power of Habit review)
I have a few quite obnoxious habits and a few really good ones. I have tried to get rid of some of them, and succeeded in most cases, but some or most of the...
ember-cli 101 Book Review
Ever since I first heard of Ember.js (even before the 1.0 days), I’ve been wanting to learn it. But the learning curve of the framework always veered me off ...
Yearly review 2014
It’s the beginning of a new year and the best time to look back on the one behind us. As writing reviews of the past times is generally a good thing, because...
Weekly review: Week ending November 09, 2014
It’s been a couple of weeks without a (public) weekly review. And the main reason for that is, I’ve had almost nothing to report for them. Family, school, co...
Weekly review: Week ending October 19, 2014
I didn’t do much beside regular work this week. I underestimated the size of Benjamin Franklin: An American Life, so I’m still reading it, and it’s great. I ...
Weekly review: Week ending October 12, 2014
I’m trying to do my best in organizing myself, hence these weekly reviews I’m planning to do more often, hopefully on a weekly basis. The posts probably won’...
Productivity
A good setup goes a long way
I’ve been limited to a 13” screen to do my work on for ages and ages, well since July 2013 at least. The only person who did the limiting was myself. One of ...
Are you backup/restore procedures good enough?
So, my MacBook crashed yesterday. It didn’t really crash, just that it went black after logging in. Although I have a suspect, I won’t name it here because I...
Doing new things is hard, choose your hard
In my last post I touched on the topic of quitting, and how easy it is to take the easy path instead of the hard one and quit. Most of us quit all the time, ...
Automating personal and business workflows
In an average month, there is a lot of stuff you will have to do. Stuff like paying the bills, taking care of inventory for home/company, budgeting, and your...
Don’t obsess with analytics too much
If you are only an occasional writer, as I surely am, you don’t have to look at the analytics screen all the time. It’s a really nice thing to look at the re...
Just Fucking Ship
Two months ago I found out that Nathan Barry has a 24 hour product contest, in which he aimed to produce a real product, in the form of an email course, in 2...
Minimum viable feature
We have all heard about the Minimum viable product, and it is a great thing to strive for, if you are doing software development (or design). What in hell ar...
Taking out the trash (So you can have new, shiny stuff)
Are you like me, and have a couple ideas (blog posts, products, applications) lingering in your head? Are you also like me, and do nothing whatsoever about t...
Freelance
Don’t (only) focus on the code
Every developer aspires to create great things, but often the most important issue is not just the quality of your code, but many other and obscure things th...
You are not just a (Insert language here) programmer
This is probably be one of those rant posts, so beware. I was listening to one of the podcasts I try to regularly listen, and heard a good description of a w...
How tracking time can make YOU more money without any additional efforts?
Are you one of the many people who don’t track all of their working time? Or maybe you just forget to do it all the time? Are you aware how much money are yo...
Getting through the famine period
If you are a full time freelancer, you have, or surely will encounter a famine period, because only thing sure in freelancing is uncertainty. Of course, with...
Running a freelance business
So, you have decided to start freelancing? I am really happy for you! It is a great choice, one of the best work related decisions I’ve made in my life. You ...
Working Remote
You are surely tired of your commute, every day, waking up way before it’s convenient for you, cramming in public traffic, with people around you, wasting yo...
Why would you want to become a freelancer?
So what are your top reasons you want to become a freelancer? Feel free to leave them in the comments section below. I will briefly give you my reasons for d...
rails
5 things where Server Rendered apps beat SPA
I’m a huge proponent of server rendered apps. As someone that started with cluttered desktop apps close to two decades ago, and did his best to push as much ...
The stack you use to build your next app is irrelevant
How to choose the best stack for your app?
Autocomplete fields in Rails 3.1 with JQuery-UI pt. 2
As I have written in my previous post, I’m playing with autocompletion in my web app. I have found some new tricks, that will speed up the process. Never lik...
Autocomplete fields in Rails 3.1 with JQuery-UI
Almost every time you create a web application you will have to add at least one autocomplete field in your application. Here is one of the possible ways of ...
Rails 3.1 beta on Ubuntu
As I have written before, I use Ubuntu for my rails development, and have been using it as my main OS last 10 months. I have been trying all the rails 3.1 be...
Installing Rails 3 in Ubuntu 10.04
As I am exploring different languages and platforms for web development, I have encountered(a few months ago) ruby on rails. It has impressed me so much that...
Writing
Why I write
I never wondered about this topic, but going through some old newsletters I signed up for and never followed through, I found a really great email course on ...
Caution! Reading will change your life (for the better)
I tend to read a lot, averaging at least one book per week. Remembering back, I think the reading started when I was a kid, during the war, being in a shelte...
Unused tools (and skills) get rusty and fall apart
I was having an interesting twitter conversation a few days ago. The tweet that started it all claims that most male programmers don’t have beautiful, or eve...
Taking out the trash (So you can have new, shiny stuff)
Are you like me, and have a couple ideas (blog posts, products, applications) lingering in your head? Are you also like me, and do nothing whatsoever about t...
Gaining more Authority by becoming an author
I recently read the book Authority by Nathan Barry, and I wanted to share what I have learned from it. The book is basically a course on how to self-publish ...
Blogging, or the lack of it
As you can notice, I’ve been blogging very sporadically over the years. And I’m trying my best to amend that. There have been times of super productivity, an...
systems
How to migrate your Redis database from one cloud provider to another
I’ve been doing a migration of our whole infrastructure from AWS to Azure recently. One of the services we use is Redis, which we use for caching purposes an...
Migrating Route53 DNS records to Azure
Recently I’ve been notified that we need to move our operations away from AWS to Azure. One of the steps I found interesting (and never did before) was migra...
The subtle art of debugging weird issues
As a senior reliability engineer I’m tasked with solving weird issues on a weekly basis. Issues you could sometimes classify as heisenbugs, at other times th...
Canary deployment with Ruby on Rails on Kubernetes
If you are reading this, chances are that you are using Ruby on Rails as your framework of choice. There have always been two main options in the past for de...
Why kubernetes?
I’ve been installing servers, deploying code to them, and exposing them to customers for most of my career. I started doing it by myself in the start. Those ...
What is a reliable system?
I plan to (let’s see how it pans out) write a series of articles on what I learned (and am still learning) during my stay at intuo. There is so much stuff I ...
JQuery
Select and de-select all checkboxes using jQuery
On almost every application I’ve worked on, there was a similar user story:
Dynamically moving div with jQuery
Surely there has been a instance when you are creating an application that has a sidebar and a main content div. In the case of content being too long, the u...
Integrating turbolinks in your Rails application
We are all excited in a new addition to rails plugins family that is turbolinks. If you have tried to include it in your application, you may have noticed th...
Will Paginate in Rails using remote request
Have you ever wondered why is there no remote option for will_paginate gem? It’s too complex and data dependent to handle all possible situations. I have mad...
Preventing users from exiting a form on your website with JQuery
I have encountered a problem with users on a webapp that i co-created. The users would click back after entering data in a form, or close the current tab or ...
Programming
Setting up Encryption at REST with Amazon RDS and PostgreSQL
In order to make sure our customer data is as safe as possible, we decided to implement encryption at rest. Although we tried a few different approaches, we ...
A good setup goes a long way
I’ve been limited to a 13” screen to do my work on for ages and ages, well since July 2013 at least. The only person who did the limiting was myself. One of ...
Automated testing will add value to your software project
We have read enough about TDD and it’s demise in the last year. Since David published his post about how TDD is dead there have been a couple of flame wars c...
I attended my first Coderetreat
As the title says, I attended my first (and definitely not last) Coderetreat. And we also made history, because it was the first one in Croatia. It was organ...
Learn a new programming language (basics) fast
While doing my best to understand Emacs, that I have been using as a primary development, writing, and play environment, I have felt the need to learn Emacs ...
Ember.js
Understanding the Ember run loop
All of the Ember.js internal code, and most of the stuff you write while creating an Ember.js app runs with the help of the run loop. It is used to batch, or...
Dynamic components in Ember.js
When building Ember.js apps you will try to avoid code duplication as much as possible. One of the ways of doing that is using Ember components. Components a...
Simple inheritance with Ember.js
When doing Object-oriented programming, we are always seeking ways to reduce the duplication in the code we write. Reusing existing code is something that ev...
Notify an Ember.js app that a deployment has happened
The approach with refreshing regular web applications after deployment is pretty straightforward, you click on a link, it goes to the server, server renders ...
ember-cli 101 Book Review
Ever since I first heard of Ember.js (even before the 1.0 days), I’ve been wanting to learn it. But the learning curve of the framework always veered me off ...
.net
Sending an SMS message using .NET CF on Win Mobile
My best man asked me a few months ago to create him an app that would allow him to send a predefined sms to a predefined number on a click of a button using ...
Allow only one instance of MDI child in your VB.NET MDI application
I have encountered a problem in class today, we needed our Contact Manager application only to run one instance of every MDI child form, so the user will not...
Creating ASP.NET MVC application against Oracle database pt. 1
This is a first in a series of posts, as I will try to build ASP.NET MVC application against Oracle XE database, but this example can be used for any Oracle ...
How to get directory contents in C#
I am creating a backup application and have to get the list of files in some directory here is the simple way to do it. If you only need contents of one dire...
ruby
Rescue exception in Ruby and continue
Usually when we run scheduled jobs we like to bunch a few things together for convenience. Let’s say that you have hourly, daily, weekly, monthly task list t...
Autocomplete fields in Rails 3.1 with JQuery-UI pt. 2
As I have written in my previous post, I’m playing with autocompletion in my web app. I have found some new tricks, that will speed up the process. Never lik...
Autocomplete fields in Rails 3.1 with JQuery-UI
Almost every time you create a web application you will have to add at least one autocomplete field in your application. Here is one of the possible ways of ...
Installing Rails 3 in Ubuntu 10.04
As I am exploring different languages and platforms for web development, I have encountered(a few months ago) ruby on rails. It has impressed me so much that...
linux
Zero downtime redis migration (or upgrade)
I wrote about migrating the Redis database from AWS ElastiCache to another provider a few years ago . In my case it was Azure, but it doesn’t matter. I used ...
Why kubernetes?
I’ve been installing servers, deploying code to them, and exposing them to customers for most of my career. I started doing it by myself in the start. Those ...
Rails 3.1 beta on Ubuntu
As I have written before, I use Ubuntu for my rails development, and have been using it as my main OS last 10 months. I have been trying all the rails 3.1 be...
Installing Rails 3 in Ubuntu 10.04
As I am exploring different languages and platforms for web development, I have encountered(a few months ago) ruby on rails. It has impressed me so much that...
sre
The subtle art of debugging weird issues
As a senior reliability engineer I’m tasked with solving weird issues on a weekly basis. Issues you could sometimes classify as heisenbugs, at other times th...
Canary deployment with Ruby on Rails on Kubernetes
If you are reading this, chances are that you are using Ruby on Rails as your framework of choice. There have always been two main options in the past for de...
Why kubernetes?
I’ve been installing servers, deploying code to them, and exposing them to customers for most of my career. I started doing it by myself in the start. Those ...
What is a reliable system?
I plan to (let’s see how it pans out) write a series of articles on what I learned (and am still learning) during my stay at intuo. There is so much stuff I ...
csharp
Sending an SMS message using .NET CF on Win Mobile
My best man asked me a few months ago to create him an app that would allow him to send a predefined sms to a predefined number on a click of a button using ...
Creating ASP.NET MVC application against Oracle database pt. 1
This is a first in a series of posts, as I will try to build ASP.NET MVC application against Oracle XE database, but this example can be used for any Oracle ...
How to get directory contents in C#
I am creating a backup application and have to get the list of files in some directory here is the simple way to do it. If you only need contents of one dire...
Oracle
Limit and offset in Oracle
If you are considering about using some kind of pagination like will_paginate or some pagination of your own flavor, and you are stuck using Oracle i have a ...
Installing Rails Server on Ubuntu 12.04 with RVM, Nginx, Passenger and Oracle support
We have a new product ready and it is a Ruby on Rails webshop bundled with an ERP software written on Oracle Forms 6i. I will not go into the details of this...
Speaking at a conference with no time to prepare
I was surprised to know that i am presenting a product this week at the oracle user conference HROUG.hr
oracle
Moving oracle tables with lob columns to another tablespace
I have encountered a problem with oracle database that it does not reuse lob data. So, if you have 5000 rows of some lob data, and you delete them from the t...
Datediff function in Oracle
As I am working on Oracle database at my day job, I have found something that is by default on sqlserver but not in oracle. That is the datediff function tha...
sql
Moving oracle tables with lob columns to another tablespace
I have encountered a problem with oracle database that it does not reuse lob data. So, if you have 5000 rows of some lob data, and you delete them from the t...
Datediff function in Oracle
As I am working on Oracle database at my day job, I have found something that is by default on sqlserver but not in oracle. That is the datediff function tha...
ubuntu
Rails 3.1 beta on Ubuntu
As I have written before, I use Ubuntu for my rails development, and have been using it as my main OS last 10 months. I have been trying all the rails 3.1 be...
Installing Rails 3 in Ubuntu 10.04
As I am exploring different languages and platforms for web development, I have encountered(a few months ago) ruby on rails. It has impressed me so much that...
javascript
Autocomplete fields in Rails 3.1 with JQuery-UI pt. 2
As I have written in my previous post, I’m playing with autocompletion in my web app. I have found some new tricks, that will speed up the process. Never lik...
Autocomplete fields in Rails 3.1 with JQuery-UI
Almost every time you create a web application you will have to add at least one autocomplete field in your application. Here is one of the possible ways of ...
Windows
Importance of installing your own development machine
If you are a software developer like me, every once in awhile comes the opportunity to install your new development machine. Some of the causes can be a new ...
Deploying Rails applications on Windows
Due to some legacy issues, and HP workstations being shit that you can’t turn the hardware virtualization on, I had an issue with one client regarding speed ...
Linux
Installing Rails Server on Ubuntu 12.04 with RVM, Nginx, Passenger and Oracle support
We have a new product ready and it is a Ruby on Rails webshop bundled with an ERP software written on Oracle Forms 6i. I will not go into the details of this...
Importance of installing your own development machine
If you are a software developer like me, every once in awhile comes the opportunity to install your new development machine. Some of the causes can be a new ...
Remote
A good setup goes a long way
I’ve been limited to a 13” screen to do my work on for ages and ages, well since July 2013 at least. The only person who did the limiting was myself. One of ...
Working Remote
You are surely tired of your commute, every day, waking up way before it’s convenient for you, cramming in public traffic, with people around you, wasting yo...
Design
Your users are out to get you
How many times did you create a UI with a specific user flow in mind, and most of the time your users did something else? Did you ever experience users ignor...
Review: The Design of Everyday Things
I’ve recently read a great book, recommended by Merlin Rebrovic in one of his blog posts. I’ve always seen design as something abstract, something you need t...
Self
Doing new things is hard, choose your hard
In my last post I touched on the topic of quitting, and how easy it is to take the easy path instead of the hard one and quit. Most of us quit all the time, ...
Domain switch
If you are a somewhat regular reader, you have probably noticed that I’ve changed the domain name from babinho.net to berislavbabic.com. Maybe you didn’t not...
kubernetes
Canary deployment with Ruby on Rails on Kubernetes
If you are reading this, chances are that you are using Ruby on Rails as your framework of choice. There have always been two main options in the past for de...
Why kubernetes?
I’ve been installing servers, deploying code to them, and exposing them to customers for most of my career. I started doing it by myself in the start. Those ...
aws
How to migrate your Redis database from one cloud provider to another
I’ve been doing a migration of our whole infrastructure from AWS to Azure recently. One of the services we use is Redis, which we use for caching purposes an...
Migrating Route53 DNS records to Azure
Recently I’ve been notified that we need to move our operations away from AWS to Azure. One of the steps I found interesting (and never did before) was migra...
azure
How to migrate your Redis database from one cloud provider to another
I’ve been doing a migration of our whole infrastructure from AWS to Azure recently. One of the services we use is Redis, which we use for caching purposes an...
Migrating Route53 DNS records to Azure
Recently I’ve been notified that we need to move our operations away from AWS to Azure. One of the steps I found interesting (and never did before) was migra...
redis
Zero downtime redis migration (or upgrade)
I wrote about migrating the Redis database from AWS ElastiCache to another provider a few years ago . In my case it was Azure, but it doesn’t matter. I used ...
How to migrate your Redis database from one cloud provider to another
I’ve been doing a migration of our whole infrastructure from AWS to Azure recently. One of the services we use is Redis, which we use for caching purposes an...
communication
How to 10X your PR review quality
During my career in software development, proper communication (or lack of it) has been crucial in instigating some creative discussions and/or flame wars du...
The value of a great post-mortem
I never lose, I either win or learn. Nelson Mandela
philosophy
Processes and systems make your life easier
Everything is a process, whether we document it or not.
The joy of missing out
I was listening to a podcast with Jason Fried the other day and heard this term: “The Joy of Missing Out” or JOMO. It took me a couple of days to process wha...
psychology
Accepting ignorance is the basis of the scientific method
“Ignoramus” (“We don’t know”, Latin)
A great support person is an angel and the devil in one package
Companies are discovering that hiring people to mollify critics and disappointed customers is cheaper (in the short run) than changing things, learning fr...
support
Documenting versus fixing
When you would rather have something properly documented than fixed.
A great support person is an angel and the devil in one package
Companies are discovering that hiring people to mollify critics and disappointed customers is cheaper (in the short run) than changing things, learning fr...
databases
How to avoid meetings and replace them with emails
Regardless whether you are starting out or a seasoned veteran in your field of work, one thing is constant: Customers will want to hop on calls with you to ...
(Relational) Databases are awesome
When I say databases, I think about relational database systems. It doesn’t matter which flavour of relational database you choose. They are all fine and str...
vbnet
Allow only one instance of MDI child in your VB.NET MDI application
I have encountered a problem in class today, we needed our Contact Manager application only to run one instance of every MDI child form, so the user will not...
mobile
Sending an SMS message using .NET CF on Win Mobile
My best man asked me a few months ago to create him an app that would allow him to send a predefined sms to a predefined number on a click of a button using ...
OSX
Importance of installing your own development machine
If you are a software developer like me, every once in awhile comes the opportunity to install your new development machine. Some of the causes can be a new ...
Android
POS printing on Android
So, you want to develop your big Point Of Sale(POS) solution on android but don’t know how to print the receipts. You have a few options:
Elasticsearch
Refresh your elasticsearch index with zero downtime
I’m using a basic elasticsearch-rails setup on one of the applications I’m working on. The thing is, we sometimes need to make changes to the ES index, add n...
Emacs
Learning Emacs
So, I’ve started using emacs in my daily development and writing process, after a couple of years using vim exclusively. Why did i do it? Mostly curiosity, a...
Marketing
The LinkedIn experiment
If you are an engineer you probably don’t see much use from LinkedIn as a service. It is full of recruiters, who can be very annoying from time to time. You ...
health
Rest
When was the last time you’ve stopped and took a break? Not a weekend or 3-4 days, but a proper vacation. Something that lasts at least a week or two., a mon...
AWS
Setting up Encryption at REST with Amazon RDS and PostgreSQL
In order to make sure our customer data is as safe as possible, we decided to implement encryption at rest. Although we tried a few different approaches, we ...
PostgreSQL
Setting up Encryption at REST with Amazon RDS and PostgreSQL
In order to make sure our customer data is as safe as possible, we decided to implement encryption at rest. Although we tried a few different approaches, we ...
RDS
Setting up Encryption at REST with Amazon RDS and PostgreSQL
In order to make sure our customer data is as safe as possible, we decided to implement encryption at rest. Although we tried a few different approaches, we ...
Teamwork
Can we just get along?
I don’t know much about corporate culture in the past, but from what I saw, inter-departmental wars were business as usual. Marketing coming up with their id...
Communication
Can we just get along?
I don’t know much about corporate culture in the past, but from what I saw, inter-departmental wars were business as usual. Marketing coming up with their id...
debugging
The subtle art of debugging weird issues
As a senior reliability engineer I’m tasked with solving weird issues on a weekly basis. Issues you could sometimes classify as heisenbugs, at other times th...
automation
Power of automation
Not while I have two healthy hands.
process
Power of automation
Not while I have two healthy hands.
operations
A great support person is an angel and the devil in one package
Companies are discovering that hiring people to mollify critics and disappointed customers is cheaper (in the short run) than changing things, learning fr...
writing
Documenting versus fixing
When you would rather have something properly documented than fixed.
architecture
5 things where Server Rendered apps beat SPA
I’m a huge proponent of server rendered apps. As someone that started with cluttered desktop apps close to two decades ago, and did his best to push as much ...
life
I got hit by a car
Exactly two months ago I was out on my very usual bike route and I heard the radar warning me that a car was behind me, then I heard the car braking hard and...
infrastructure
Mitigating infrastructure risk
When you are building a product on the internet, you should aim to get it out as soon as humanly possible. Things you don’t want to care that moment include ...