pik, IronRuby, MRI, and a .Net Project

On a recent ASP.Net MVC project I was leveraging IronRuby and Cucumber to get some BDD specs in place to drive development. Though this post isn't about the benefits of BDD, it was very easy to get the specs worked out with my Product Owner, and the demos went really quickly. For the most part, I was using IronRuby to run functional tests at the controller level.

Then we decided to add on some GUI tests. With Ruby and Cucumber already in place, we decided to give watir a try. Except once we went on to using watir, IronRuby was no longer needed to test the website. We could instead use MRI 1.9.2 as our interpreter and get a little more speed out of our watir tests, and leverage the latest version Cucumber.

Since we're doing our development in Windows we don't have the luxury of RVM, but pik is a great solution to switching Ruby interpreters on Windows. During development, a few pik switch statements keeps all our cucumber tests in sync with either our IronRuby testing or our watir testing. However, if we wanted to run them all at once I had to write a little batch file to handle it. (I'm a dev, I'm lazy, I just want to type one line in the command prompt and have it all kick off...)

After knocking the rust off my batch file fu, here is the contents of that batch file...

@echo off

@call pik sw 100

@call rake

@call pik sw 192

@call rake watir

Here's what's happening in our little five line helper file. First line just doesn't echo your commands back out to the command prompt. After that we call pik sw 100, which is pik switch to IronRuby 1.0.0. Then our default rake task is called, which builds the project, runs the unit test suite (in nUnit in this case), then run the IronRuby cucumber tests. pik sw 192 is switching to Ruby 1.9.2, then calling rake watir just runs our watir tests against the already built website. Pretty straightforward.

Now that was only for our dev machines in order to do one line build test, test, test during development. Our CI server was much easier to configure.

We were using TeamCity as our CI environment when we added watir to the mix, but the batch file wasn't needed as TC allows for different build tasks to use rake and specify which interpreter to use. So it was as easy as add an IronRuby build task call the default rake task, then create another rake build task and call the watir task in the rake file. We have since switched from TeamCity to Jenkins, but the set up with a build task per interpreter is identical.

(Don't have pik installed and you're a Windows using, Ruby loving programmer? Ben Hall's post on getting pik installed and running is the best reference I've found.)

Why Not Add Some Ruby?

If twitter is good for one thing it’s starting debates amongst your friends. Today didn’t disappoint as Mike started us off with: “things i miss from rails while i'm doing java: rails.”

It started in the productivity trap, which is going to be subjective to the developer doing the work, so it’s a tough one to measure. Can I do some things faster in Ruby than I can C#? Yes, but the inverse is still true.

One point I need to make is I’ve seen a few of these discussions and often they become Rails v. C#/.Net, which isn’t really a fair comparison because Rails is a web framework. To go apples to  apples, you need to compare Rails to ASP.Net MVC, not .Net in general. You wouldn’t compare WebForms or WPF to Ruby or Python, would you? (You shouldn’t compare WebForms to much of anything…but I digress.)

So, Jon asked a pretty valid question: Why don’t more people switch? Since I come from a .Net background, I’ve really only seen this debated as it pertains to .Net.

For a number of the arguments around the IDE, Intellisense, Static v. Dynamic typing, there are plenty of other blogs that have covered this, here’s a recent one I really liked: Ruby is Scary.

For my quick entry here, I’ll say this…I can have VIM or TextMate open and have a couple tests written before the VisualStudio splash screen has closed. Also, those two tools have yet to throw an “Out of Memory” exception on me, can’t say the same for Studio.

And I don’t really miss intellisense.

On with the show…

On the heels of Jon’s question Bill Sempf jumped in. As a bystander, Bill was very much representing the average .Net dude, and the arguments I’ve heard from the average .Net dude. (Bill has looked into Ruby, we’ve paired writing Ruby. That’s not really the point here, though.)

Ruby, the Average Dev, and the Complex System

@JonKruger: That's not my problem. I just don't think that 80% of the dev teams out there can handle coding in Ruby. (link)

That was Bill’s entry to the discussion, and I’m not sure I can disagree with him. However, I’m going to be snobbish and self centered and say I want to work with the 20%. If you’re in the 80% and can’t code Ruby…or Python, or F#, or any other language you have to learn…I don’t want to work with you. You can stay in “The Enterprise.”

@JonKruger: My point is those stories are told by top-tier devs, and not everyone is one of those. (link)

Again, tough to disagree with Bill’s assertion here. Not everybody is a rock star, and that’s cool. If you’re a budding rock star, you’ll be able to write some effective Ruby code.

In between those tweets were a few others, mainly around supporting complex systems using Ruby. Personally, I haven’t written a large scale application in Ruby, so I can’t lean on any experience here in writing the typical central Ohio “claims app” in Ruby.

What I have done with it has worked well. So my first counter to Bill’s argument on the complex systems: Use it where it fits. Ruby brings a great set of DSLs to the table for testing, web frameworks, and testing. Yeah, said it twice. Year one of Codemash (Jan of ‘07) I listened to Neal Ford talk about DSLs to help write your applications and Polyglot programming. Using Ruby to support your app – to write build scripts, tests, POC web sites – falls right in on the polyglot thing.

On the testing side, I’d much rather read a batch of RSpec tests than a batch of nUnit tests. Cucumber is already helping my current team get through some testing issues. Let me repeat that: I’m using Cucumber in a .Net environment RIGHT NOW to help the team get better test coverage on their application.

Learning a New Language

@JonKruger: There is a difference between learning the language, and being productive in it. (link)

I’m in total agreement with Bill here. Which is why I’m such a big fan of the incremental approach to using Ruby on your projects.

Great place to start: use Rake as your build script. I’ve done this for a couple years now, it’s a great way to dip your toe into Ruby, get comfortable with the language and a few of its concepts without really getting in on your production code. On the .Net side, use Albacore with Rake and you’ll have a build script in no time.

Next up you can start writing some tests in it. That’s a pretty good way to pick up a new language, anyway. And with the nice testing tools with Ruby, you can learn a new language and ease some testing pain.

But, the main point here, don’t be afraid of picking up a new language. How many do you know already? If you’re a web developer, you probably already know Javascript, CSS, HTML, C# (or some back end language), a little SQL, and a healthy dash of XML. Picking up another one isn’t going to be too difficult.

Essence v. Ceremony

I first heard this from Neal Ford, possibly at eRubyCon a couple years back. But, Stuart Holloway had a great blog post about it prior to when I heard Neal speak.

To me (and many others), Ruby gets to the essence of what you’re after quickly. I find myself working within it’s idioms easily, not fighting them constantly with adapter patterns, dependency injection, and ORMs. I find that my tests flow naturally from the various testing tools I use in Ruby, and the code that makes those tests pass benefits from that.

So, to Bill’s point, maybe Ruby isn’t ready to have average devs write big, complex, “enterprise” systems in it. But, it is ready to support what you’re writing today. Right now. Why not give it a try?

Unless you’re afraid of learning…

IronRuby: 0 to Cucumber in 15 minutes

Once again, a 140 character (or less) “outburst” gets me in trouble with a follower and I end up with a blog post. This one is one I probably should  have written a while back. I’ve enjoyed working with IronRuby the last few months, so this little intro is long overdue.

First things first, you’ll need to install IronRuby. Head off to the download page, and click on your msi of choice and let the installer do its thing.

Since my goal here was to get cucumber ready to roll against some .Net assemblies, you’ll need to install a few gems. IronRuby comes with Ruby Gems already installed, so thankfully to install the ones you need you just need to type ‘igem install’ a few times.

“Wait, what? igem? WTF?” Yeah, that’s one of the IronRuby-isms, putting an i on the front of a couple of commands. If you’ve done a bit of Ruby, you’ll have a little muscle memory to retrain, but it’s a small hurdle. (You’ll also type ‘ir’ instead of ‘ruby’ to run a script and ‘iirb’ instead of ‘irb’ to get to irb.)

So, on with our gem installing…

igem install rake

First install is rake. I’m not going to use it right away on the cucumber running, but I’ll use it at some point, I always do.

igem install albacore

Like rake, I’m not going to use this one right away, but I’ve found it to be the one must have gem if you’re using rake with your .Net builds and test runners. It just makes you life that much easier.

igem install rspec

I’m not starting out writing rspec in this example, but cucumber is going to use its matchers.

igem install cucumber –-version “=0.6.4”

This is the one we’re after for this example. Be sure to add that version command on there because IronRuby isn’t quite ready for the latest version of Cucumber. But, 0.6.4 is going to get the job done for us.

igem install iron-term-ansicolor

The first time you run cucumber, it’s going to advise you to install this gem to get color coding in the terminal window. Go ahead and do it now, and you skip that warning. (Or don’t, and check the message for yourself. ;) )

Now all you need is some features, some step definitions, and a dll to write it all against. As luck would have it, I have just that written up in a code sample that I just used at Codestock a couple weeks ago. (And also coming soon to an Ohio user group meeting near you…) Here’s the root of that project: http://github.com/timwingfield/TestingSeaPound

The features directory there is where you’ll find my cucumber samples and the dll they are running against. Download it and give it a shot. Once you get it downloaded, open the command prompt in whatever directory contains the features directory (not the actual features directory) and type:

cucumber features

Happy IronRubying!

Upcoming Speaking Events

As is normal for me this time of year, I’ve got a number of events that I’m attending to do a little speaking and a little learning. This round will take me to three states, but only one time zone (thank goodness).

Indy Tech Fest, May 22

I’ll be presenting on Lean Software Practices. We’ll go through the seven principles of Lean Software Development, and I’ll present some experiences with each as I’ve practiced Lean over the last few years.

Indy Tech Fest might not be too familiar to us here in central Ohio, because it’s outside our MS region. (gasp) But, the folks in Indy do a bang up job with their events, and they have a large, active .Net community. This is my second year venturing west to join the folks at Indy, and it was a great time last year.

The Path to Agility, May 27

This is the first Path to Agility conference, and it’s being put on by the Central Ohio Agile Alliance at the Arena Grand theater in the Arena District of downtown Columbus. They’re bringing in Ken Schwaber to keynote the event, so I am most decidedly on the undercard.

I’ll be presenting my Kanban experiences over the last few years. It’ll introduce Kanban and how to use it to deliver software. I’ll relay the good experiences and the bad experiences.

There is quite a line up for this conference, and there’s still space available. If you can get a Thursday off work, it’ll well worth the $100 to attend. There are some top notch local agile people presenting. (The Clippers are at home that night, stick around for some baseball.)

Central Ohio Day of .Net, June 5

The “home” event. Can’t miss this one, it’s a great time every year.  Getting the Cincy, Dayton, and Columbus folks under the same roof has made for a great event the last two years.

I’ve been selected to give two talks this year. Upside, I’m giving two talks. Downside, it’ll cut into my hallway sessions.

The schedule isn’t out yet, so I don’t know which session fits where. I’m presenting a beginning IronRuby talk, where we’ll get it installed, bang out some ruby code, hit a few CLR objects, and possibly take a few whacks at a piñata to bring the fun level down a little. The second talk will be the same Lean presentation I’m giving in Indy.

Codestock, June 25-26

My second trip to Knoxville to get in on Codestock. This is a great event. It’s got .Net roots, but offers quite a bit outside the normal .Net conference sessions. There are a lot of choices to make on what to attend over the two days. They did move to downtown Knoxville this year, so I’m looking forward to the new venue.

I’m speaking twice here, as well. I’ll deliver a Kanban talk, and an IronRuby talk. The IronRuby talk is going to go a bit deeper on testing than the one I’m giving at CODODN.

An added benefit to Codestock is Wendy and the boys go along, and we turn it into a mini-vacation. So, I’ll get a little pool time in, which usually doesn’t happen at conferences not named “Codemash.”

Ohio User Group Tour, July 22, 27, 28

We’re going to IronRuby it up at the Columbus, Cincinnati, and Dayton user groups in July. This talk is going to go into testing our C# code with IronRuby, and what advantages there are to this. The reason the CODODN talk is the beginning talk is because I was scheduled talk for these user groups back in December. Since it’s roughly the same crowd, we’ll do the intro at Day of .Net and dive into the testing at the local user groups.

Expect to see some RSpec running against C#, Rails running on IronRuby, Sinatra running on IronRuby, and mabye we’ll get crazy and put a Rails front end on an nHibernate repository or something. All hell’s gonna break loose during this one!

If I survive all this, I’ll have like 3 weeks of summer to kick back and relax…

Mongo Mapper: Spelling Matters

Added Mongo Mapper to my test Sinatra app today, and kept getting a gem not found error. All the examples that came up in my various Google searches had:

require ‘mongomapper’

After a reinstall of the gem and a few curse words, I tried a little experiement:

require ‘mongo_mapper’

That did the trick.

Five Days with My MacBook Pro

With a few changes headed my way in the coming new year, it was once again time to get some new hardware. I took the leap and opted for a MacBook Pro. (2.66GHz/4GB/320GB/15” so not the biggest, baddest one.) Here are a few of my initial leaving-Windows-and-Dell thoughts.

I can say after five days that I’m pretty sure I made the right move. There are a few things I’m struggling with in the switch, mainly my fingers going to the correct keys. Years of hitting CTRL on a windows keyboard has me hitting the fn key on the MBP, which doesn’t do much. Getting used to the Command key will take some time, but the oddest keyboard issue I’m having is hitting the B key. The reach is apparently shorter because I’ve put a lot of spaces where there should be a B.

On the flip side, it didn’t take me very long to get used to the multi-touch functions on the track pad. Having an iPhone doesn’t hurt, but the two, three, and four finger operations didn’t take long to become comfortable with. Scrolling through blog readers, articles, and Tweetdeck is a lot easier.

Installing applications is a lot easier, and a lot quicker than on Windows. To be fair, I haven’t installed a lot of huge apps, but the fairly large ones I did install went really quickly. The only real side-by-side comparison of installation I have is Tweetdeck, and it was a fraction of the time getting it up and running on the Mac. Most apps are just download, mount the image, drag to applications, unmount the image, and run it.

Now on to one of the bigger reasons I was after a Mac: Ruby on Rails development.

Rails on Windows was painfully slow at times. I tried all kinds of stuff to get my specs to run in less time than it took me to go downstairs and brew a cup of coffee. After copying the git repo of one of my sample apps over, I ran the specs and it reported .7-ish seconds. And it actually WAS .7-ish seconds. Not the 45 seconds of dead time at the command prompt while it fired up servers and stuff then reporting .7-ish seconds when it was done with the tests that I was used to. I’m already looking forward to doing some more of this.

Before I start sounding like a total fan boy, it hasn’t all been awesome. There was a 2 hour fight with an iso and some printer drivers to try and get my printer at home to work. Still haven’t got it to work, so I gave up and grabbed Brendan’s netbook to print off what I needed.

I’m also not enthralled with only having 1440 x 900 resolution. But, I’m getting old and my eyes would get tired staring at the hi-res Dell I had before, so maybe I should not worry about this one too much.

Also, couldn’t find any decent blog writer that lived up to Windows Live Writer, so this is being written in Live Writer in my Windows VM. (Bootcamp + VMWare Fusion + Win7 is freaking awesome. Looking forward to some .Net dev when I get Studio installed.)

Suffice it to say, the positives out weigh the negatives so far. I’m sandals-to-work away from swallowing the blue pill with the Apple logo on the side of it. :)

Rails Study Apps

I’m trying to pick up some rails in my spare time. Been plugging away at my pet project when I can, which leads to a lot of googling while I do it. If one of my known Rubyist friends is at a Code and Coffee session, I spend a fair amount of time picking their brains and pairing up to learn what I can in an hour or so.

That all works pretty well, but at my pace I’ll be forever getting my Ruby code to look less like C# and more like Ruby. So, as Steve blogged recently, why not find a few Rails apps to read? So, I hit up my twitter friends: http://twitter.com/timwingfield/status/6464205602

I got three pretty good responses, and finally got time tonight to pull them down and take a quick look at them. I don’t have a lot of info on any of them, but I did browse the source to get a feel for what was going on.

Radiant CMS

http://github.com/radiant/radiant

This one was recommended by Dugald Wilson. Decent amount of code here to look at, and uses RSpec for the test framework. This one definitely fit the bill for what I was after.

Spot.us

http://github.com/spot-us/spot-us

I got this one as a tag team recommendation from Scott Walker and Matt Darby. This is a non-profit company doing Community Funded Reporting and is coming from the folks at Hashrocket. More RSpec out of this project, and again a fair amount of code to pour over.

Redmine

http://github.com/edavis10/redmine

The third one came through Ben Wagaman. This one uses TestUnit instead of RSpec, but still some decent reading. I’m going to have to dig into the tests a bit more on this one, though, because the file names aren’t jumping out at me as model/controller/etc type tests. But, that’s the point of this exercise, to see what other folks are doing.

I’ve got a little flying and a lot of driving ahead of me this weekend, hopefully I get some time to dive deeper into what each of these apps is up to, and get some more Rails code under my belt.

If you’ve come across a few more open source Rails apps out there, please drop a link in the comments.

I forgot what the M in MVC was for

What brought me to this conclusion was my reading up on a little Rails. I finally took the dive. I’ve been avoiding Rails for a while in favor of just learning Ruby. Steve loaned me “Rails for .Net Developers,” and the research was underway in earnest.

On page 89, the light bulb went off. But not for Rails so much as for how I’m writing my ASP.Net MVC apps. Here’s the bit that got me:

• Models are the classes that represent your business domain and that are responsible for communicating with your data. In Rails, this means the tables in your database.
• Views represent your presentation layer, for example, HTML and JavaScript.
• Controllers are responsible for connecting the models and views and managing the flow of the application.

That reads pretty straightforward to me. Hell, I’ve stood in front of groups of devs on more than one occasion and said, “Views are what gets rendered, controllers marry up the views with anything they need from the model, and the model is everything that’s not a view or a controller.”

So, what’s been going wrong? I’ve been putting way too much business logic in my controllers.

The structure of most of the MVC apps I’ve worked with is a typical .Net program structure. We’ve got a core where our business domain lives, and some type of ORM set up to talk to the database. From there, we expose that domain up to the UI through some simple domain services.

The issue comes when I consume those services. I’m using my controller actions to marry all that up and present it to the UI. I think my “excuse” to this point has been that I have two models: My domain model, which I’m accessing through my domain services, and my presentation model, which lives in the Models directory in the ASP.Net MVC structure. My controllers have to care about two places to get their information to provide to the views. At the least I’m violating the pattern and at worst I’m likely repeating myself somewhere and creating a future maintenance issue.

I think I can see where this happened, too. Think back to the Bad Old Days of dealing with Web Forms, and the cubby code behinds that came with it. In order to avoid the 197 line PageLoad method, I would have a lot of little one-off methods scattered about the code behind file. Switch over to MVC, and it seemed perfectly normal to have a similar structure. Alarms should have gone off when I had 5 classes in the Models directory but 18 methods in one controller class.

But wait, there’s more!

While perusing some code on my current project, I came across the [NonAction] attribute decorating a couple of controller actions. Re-reading that…I had NonAction decorating Actions. That has a certain “Jumbo-Shrimp” feel to it, doesn’t it? I suppose the non-action could fall under “managing the flow of the application” from above, but I’m thinking any non-actions might need to be refactored into the model.

Moving forward on my MVC apps – of any flavor, Ruby or .Net – I think I’ll move to a much thinner controller model in favor of loading up the model with business logic. Though I thought I knew the pattern fairly well, I didn’t practice what I preached.