Things I like

This is a small list of tools and techniques that impress me.

Ruby on Rails

Okay, Rails is not the be-all and end-all of web development, but when I started using it in 2006 it was a huge relief after PHP. It showed the world that web developing needn’t be so hard That trend is continuing and accelerating – innovative solutions to problems are being developed all the time. Using Ruby on Rails is now my full-time job and I’m definitely very happy for it!

Webby

This site is made using Webby. Inspired by Ruby on Rails, Webby has layouts, partials and helpers, but no database, so it’s ideal for small static content websites. You can write your pages in erb, textile, haml, markdown. You can write Ruby code to generate navigator links, breadcrumb trails and pagination. You run it all through a parser which converts to HTML files which can easily be deployed to any web server.

Github

Github has completely transformed coding for the better. Git is an incredible source control system, and the social aspect that Github brings is a huge advantage to the open source community. The ease with which we can follow project progress, fork a repository and submit patches, all with a documented history and the ability to comment on commits … wow, I have nothing but praise for Github!

CouchDB

Never has a database excited me so much! CouchDB is a document-oriented database which is very different from a relational database. It has no schema – you can add any fields you like into a document. It uses map-reduce technology to find documents very quickly. It supports replication and conflict resolution. It has a RESTful interface. I am very interested in using Rails with CouchDB – see my CouchDB on Rails series.

Twitter

More than just Twitter itself, the community vibe and the ever-changing ways in which people are using Twitter, plus the phenomenal Twitter clients that we’re seeing now, such as TweetDeck, Nambu and Tweetie. This is credit to Twitter for their excellent API. The omniscience of Twitter Search completely blows my mind – I have no idea how they do it!

PasswordMaker

You want a unique, secure password for every site on the internet but you have trouble remembering which you used where. The answer is: don’t remember them! Use PasswordMaker to generate your passwords whenever you need them. Simple enter the site name, plus a master password. PasswordMaker performs a hash algorithm and produces a very secure password for you to use on that site.