Test this. Engtech pointed me to Agile Web Development Rails (2nd ed) which mentions me by name. That makes me half as proud as the context in which it appears: TDD with assert_select.
Collateral damage. If you’re following Bill de hÓra and Jean-Jacques Dubray, debating REST vs What?Simplicity?, you will also want to read this. It’s an earlier (2005) research paper on the topic, called Developing Web Services Choreography Standards – The Case of REST vs. SOAP. And it comes to this topic looking at the social dynamics and the collateral damage of resulting specs:
We also have shown that the standards process involves a social dimension. So the technical arguments may not be the only driving force behind standards participants’ behavior. Our decision analysis supports this. At the present time, the decision to adopt one or the other of the standards may be partially based on technical merit. But it is also based on an anticipation of which standard will dominate.
It’s like that. (Via Tammo van Lessen)
Money quote. This time, from Jim Downing:
How do you know when you’re solving the wrong problem? When your solution involves a 133 page standard with a section entitled “Human Task Behavior and State Transitions”, just to allow a system to give tasks to people.
Luddite. Tim Bray is running a Ruby tool survey. Head over there and cast your vote for the one true IDE. Meanwhile, for the sake of prosperity, here’s my development environment circa 2007:
Editing: vim
Searching: ack
Testing: spec
Debugging: p
Executing: bash
Automating: rake
Social anything. So it comes to this. You can’t even build an under construction Web site without first implementing the social network aspects, that way at least your users can rate the construction sign while waiting for the site to come live. Which is why I’m so thrilled BofA has added user reviews on their online service.