Blogs from the Ranch

The Rapid Feedback Loop

One of the best features of Ruby on Rails development is the “Rapid Feedback Loop” that allows developers to quickly make a change and...

Iteration-Based Contracts

On the rails-business list, someone asked recently about Iteration Based Contracts.

Making the Case for Redis

Most database-backed applications, especially Ruby applications written in Rails do fine with a SQL Database, like MySQL. Adam Wiggins of Heroku does a...

BNRPersistence

I just open sourced a simple persistence layer for Cocoa and iPhone that uses Tokyo Cabinet. If you are frustrated with Core Data,...

Production Server Sysadmin Essentials from the Scout Team

Deploying Rails applications has definitely become easier with the use of tools like Capistrano and Phusion Passenger (a.k.a. mod_rails/mod_rack), but really keeping them serviceable,...

Open-Source in Action

A new client of ours had a big problem. The site they built was getting too many searches (a very good problem to...

Core Animation Target-Action Layers

When you write a Core Animation heavy application, you spend a lot of time implementing code that executes when an animation finishes. Typically, the...

iPhone Review Process

(Disclaimer: These are my (Joe Conway) opinions. Not Aaron Hillegass’ or any of the rest of the Big Nerd Ranch staff.)

How to Time

I was asked three times last week how I find how long an activity takes on the Mac and the iPhone.  Here is the...

Atlanta Startup Weekend Nov 13-15

Alanta’s (3rd?) Startup Weekend is on Nov 13 - Nov 15 at ATDC.

Part II: We Just Undid Three Months of Dev work. Here’s What We Learned.

We Just Undid Three Months of Dev work. Here’s What We Learned.

Scout, our server monitoring service, has grown quite a bit in 2009.