Added an HTML Escape keyboard shortcut to turbo-javascript Atom Text Editor package

A little bit of tinkering in Coffee script to make it simpler to type <%= %> in EJS and other template packages.  It works for me, so I cloned the source code from git and sent a pull request on a proposed branch.  It took two pomodoros away from my studies, but I think it's worth it in the time and effort and frustration it will save me.  Also, it's neat to tinker with a package to make it better — there's value in it for its own sake.

Rails Day 5: VirtualBox It Is, Then

After a lot of fiddling with Docker, I have decided to stick with a simple development environment in a customised Ubuntu box in Vagrant.  I will get back to Docker, but for now I'll stick to what I know and get on with the business of learning Rails properly.

I find sometimes when I'm learning something new and difficult that I have to bash away at it, fail, and then come back a week later.  The concepts haven't quite come together in my head and my work blocks get chewed up without my having much to show for it.

In the meantime, I have a functional Rails development environment with Postgresql running in Vagrant/VirtualBox:

Adding a Snippet for Ruby in Atom Text Editor

Actually unnecessary, as Atom's Ruby bundle already has this built in, but I realised this after I had worked out a "class" snippet.

'.source.ruby':
  'Console class':
    'prefix': 'class'
    'body': 'class ${1:method_name}\n\t$0\nend'

Oh well, I learned a bit about CSON.

Atom Text Editor: My New IDE?

When I first learned Python I spent a lot of time in interactive mode:

And when I finally started using Gedit, the syntax highlighting and bracket completion felt luxurious.

But the time has come for a proper IDE.  I can't justify shelling out $200 for RubyMine just yet, but Atom 1.11.2 looks very promising.

Of course, I could learn to use Emacs or Vim, but that's probably a bit too far for me at this stage.  I'd like to get there one day though.