DEV Community: Kyle Boe

Who's looking for open source contributors? (January 31st edition)

Kyle Boe — Fri, 31 Jan 2020 17:45:50 +0000

After a few month hiatus we are back! Kicking off 2020 with some OSS.

As always, find something to work on or shamelessly promote your project here.

Everyone who posted in previous months is welcome back this month, as always.

Happy Coding!

Photo by Trent Szmolnik

Who's looking for open source contributors? (August 2nd edition)

Kyle Boe — Fri, 02 Aug 2019 20:47:39 +0000

Find something to work on or promote your project here.

Please shamelessly promote your project. Everyone who posted in previous months is welcome back this month, as always.

Happy Coding!

Photo by Christopher Rusev

🔥 Hot Takes 🔥 One Sentence. No Explanation.

Kyle Boe — Wed, 31 Jul 2019 17:25:43 +0000

Title says it all.

Sometimes we just need a break from the seriousness of software.

Who's looking for open source contributors? (July 1st edition)

Kyle Boe — Mon, 01 Jul 2019 16:06:30 +0000

Find something to work on or promote your project here.

Please shamelessly promote your project. Everyone who posted in previous months is welcome back this month, as always.

Happy Coding!

Photo by Fezbot2000 on Unsplash

My macOS Dev Env Tools

Kyle Boe — Fri, 07 Jun 2019 21:57:18 +0000

In no particular order, listed below are the tools I use on a daily basis to write code and be productive. If you have strong opinions about why X should replace Y on this list, leave them in the comments because I am always looking to make my workflow faster and more efficient.

Terminal Tools

iTerm2 (v3)

Highly customizable compared to Terminal. I get a lot of mileage out of the natural text navigation configuration (holding option/alt to move between word breaks)

Homebrew

My package manager of choice. I use brew bundle quite a bit to ensure that my Dev Env dependencies can be easily migrated to a new machine if anything happens to my current one.

Tmux

From their site:

tmux is a terminal multiplexer: it enables a number of terminals to be created, accessed, and controlled from a single screen. tmux may be detached from a screen and continue running in the background, then later reattached.

If you can get past the size of the config file (psst. feel free to use mine), this tool is a must. If you've ever accidentally closed a terminal window where you needed something that was on it, you'll benefit from learning how to use Tmux.

Non-Terminal Tools

I had to group things by functionality because there are some acknowledgements that need to be made. I'll mark the one I use, but know that I have at least tried the others.

Text Editor

I am a Sublime Text convert after seeing how easily extensible VS Code is.

Easy Mode:

Hard Mode:

Window Manager

While I only use Spectacle, there is a huge honorable mention due to koekeishiya, the dev behind ChunkWM. He is a legend in terms of writing window managers.

Easy Mode:

Spectacle ⬅
Magnet

Hard Mode:

ChunkWM

Note-Taking

I cannot recommend Notion enough. Their feature set blows most everything out of the water. Just check out their product page and see for yourself.

Misc Productivity

Alfred

This Spotlight Replacement (and a whole lot more) is the core of my productivity. Alfred is highly extensible and worth the price for the text snippet functionality alone.

Bartender

With everything having a menu bar icon, Bartender helps clean up the noise and only bring things to your attention on your terms.

Dash

From the site:

Dash is an API Documentation Browser and Code Snippet Manager. Dash stores snippets of code and instantly searches offline documentation sets for 200+ APIs, 100+ cheat sheets and more. You can even generate your own docsets or request docsets to be included.

Solid tool for offline documentation (and integrates with Alfred).

Tools ≠ Practice

The TL;DR of any post like this is that tools do not equal development practice. This toolset has been built out of necessity; spending time refining my workflow to make it more efficient. If you use a different set of tools that works for you, great. The environment tools you use do not make you a better or worse developer.

Who's looking for open source contributors? (May 31st edition)

Kyle Boe — Fri, 31 May 2019 17:42:53 +0000

Find something to work on or promote your project here.

Please shamelessly promote your project. Everyone who posted in previous months is welcome back this month, as always.

Happy Coding!

Photo by Arif Riyanto on Unsplash

Who's looking for open source contributors? (April 30th edition)

Kyle Boe — Tue, 30 Apr 2019 19:02:04 +0000

Shamelessly copying Ben Halpern's most recent post.

Find something to work on or promote your project here.

Please shamelessly promote your project. Everyone who posted in previous months is welcome back this month, as always.

Happy Coding!

Moderate Parameters: The Path From Protected Attributes to Strong Parameters

Kyle Boe — Wed, 24 Apr 2019 22:08:11 +0000

Originally published on Hint's blog.

We all know Strong Parameters isn't exactly cutting edge technology in 2019. It was originally introduced in Rails 3.2 (March 20, 2012) and was made the default/standard in 4.0 (June 25, 2013).

Even with Strong Parameters 7 years in the rear view mirror, there was still legacy security support in the form of the protected_attributes gem. However, with the release of Rails 5, this gem was officially unmaintained.

Based on our UpgradeRails experience helping clients move to the latest and greatest versions of Rails, this is still a large technical hurdle that many teams face.

With this in mind, we built a tool that allows for safe and confident migration to strong parameters.

We call it Moderate Parameters.

Here's How It Works

Moderate Parameters is a tool that provides safety nets and logging of data sources in the controller by extending ActionController::Parameters functionality.

Add the gem (repo/rubygems) to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'moderate_parameters'

Then, inside of the recommended strong parameters private method, replace permit with moderate and add a little context:

(Note: controller_path and action_name need to be included as shown. They are methods that provide naming context for the logger.)

class UsersController < ActionController::Base

. . .

private

# def user_params
#   params.require(:user).permit(:email, :first_name, . . .)
# end

  def user_params
    params.require(:user).moderate(controller_path, action_name, :email, :first_name, . . .)
  end
end

And...that's it.

Moderate Parameters will begin logging controller context and parameter keys that have not yet been whitelisted. This means that, in the above example, if you forgot to include :last_name in the list of permitted parameters while creating a user, your log would look like this:

Users#create is missing :last_name from the permitted parameters

Test Like You Fly

We have built Moderate Parameters to be deployed to production. This way we can ensure that all parameters are being accounted for every controller in the entire Rails app. Data will still flow through the app as expected, with the added benefit of painting a clear picture of what moving to Strong Parameters looks like.

Once the full parameter list has been clearly outlined (meaning your Moderate Parameters logs are empty), switching over to Strong Parameters is as easy as swapping moderate for permit:

class UsersController < ActionController::Base

. . .

private

  def user_params
    params.require(:user).permit(:email, :first_name, :last_name)
  end

# def user_params
#   params.require(:user).moderate(controller_path, action_name, :email, :first_name, :last_name)
# end
end

We Can Help!

We have built up a set of services that can run alongside Moderate Parameters in production to procedurally parse and generate exactly what Strong Parameters should look like.

If Strong Parameters or something like it is preventing you or your team from enjoying the latest in Rails security and features, let us help you ensure your success. Our team has decades of experience helping teams turn unmanageable upgrades into cutting-edge products taking advantage of all that Rails has to offer.

Monday Music Exchange

Kyle Boe — Tue, 22 Jan 2019 00:34:59 +0000

Hey fellow DEV's!

I am always on the hunt for good music to listen to while programming and can quickly find myself in musical ruts. Let's all avoid musical ruts together and post some of our favorite tunes in the comments.

I'd love to make this a weekly thing if there is enough interest. I'll post a playlist of everything shared from the previous week in the following week's post.

P.S. Spotify URI's are now embeddable 😁

Keyboard Curiosity

Kyle Boe — Tue, 13 Nov 2018 00:22:55 +0000

What types of keyboard is your "daily driver"?
Do you use a mechanical keyboard? Built-in laptop keyboard?
Do you use different keyboards for work/personal use?

Personally, I use a Vortex 75 Race 3 (pictured above). I like how compact and portable it is and am a big fan of the Cherry MX Clear switches.

At home, I am hacking on a PCB from OLKB called the Planck. I had to buy all of the switches/caps/case separately but it was a fun project and ortholinear keyboards are fun to learn.

Would love to see what the community uses!