Tip #15 - Read Other People's Code

April 26th, 2008

It is a great tip, and one I do fairly often, go download some code and read it until you understand it.

This is a short tip!

Sometimes you just need a different perspective.

Getting and installing say, restful authentication, or downloading the Joyent Connector and reading through some of the code will give you lots of good ideas about where to go and what to do in your own application development.

A great one for the intermediate Railsite is the Caboose sample apps These really give you a new view on how to make an app.

Anyway, happy hunting!

Mikel

Posted by mikel Filed in Ruby on Rails, Ruby on Rails Tips

2 Responses to “Tip #15 - Read Other People's Code”

  1. Joseph Pecoraro Says:
    May 11th, 2008 at 01:34 PM

    Short but sweet. I think this is something very important for any programmer. Perl (and the same can be said for Ruby and many other languages) was both criticized and praised for its “there is more than one way to do it” philosophy.

    Often times programmers are reluctant to try things a different way… these programmers are not flexible and, to be honest are hurting themselves. Like mikel shows here, seeing how others code will give you lots of good ideas, interesting new algorithms, tricks, data structures, and more.

    When you see a cool open source program take the time to check out the source to see how they did something you thought was cool. In the end you might end up learning, or better yet improving the product and contributing!

    Also its really cool to take a look at a project, be amazed, and email the author and tell him what you thought was cool. I’ve done this a few times and always gotten a great response. Support fellow programmers and don’t be afraid to complement one another.

  2. Trevor Turk Says:
    May 13th, 2008 at 12:09 AM

    I referred to Beast quite a bit while learning Rails:

    http://beast.caboo.se/

    I also have an open-source project of my own that people might find useful when learning:

    http://almosteffortless.com/eldorado/

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