Help

• Is there a reason why java on 64 bit linux doesn't seem to go above 4GB of ram even if it's given more? Some docs say that 2GB is the max, which is clearly not the case. Other projects report they have JVMs as large as 12 gigs. The search for a reason for the OOM errors goes on.

• How do you mock the backtick or array operator with RR? This is done in rspec by mocking the symbol on the class that it's being called in, but it's not obvious in RR. Suggestions included finding a different way to test the behavior, wrapping the system call in a function that's easily mockable, or investigating another way to shell out.

Interesting

• Free Ruler, the measurement tool of choice for pivots who need more than the pixels measurements of Command-Shift-4, doesn't just know the pixel density of the display it's running on. 20" Aluminum iMacs are significantly different from what it assumes.

• The Jasmine javascript BDD testing framework project was jealous of the newcomer Cedar's @cedarbdd twitter. They've struck back by creating @jasminebdd. You can follow both for updates, announcements and tips.

• Some devs working on a mobile JS app recently discovered Prototype's wrap function after implementing the same thing many times before. They did preface this with "is anyone else still using Prototype" so as to not offend the jQuery zealots.

Interesting

• Don't put your expectations on a proxy, as the proxy might not get called in your code as the proxy may have turned into a real object by the time you use it. The right thing to do is to put your expectations on your proxy target, and you can do this on either either the target or proxy_target of the proxy object. Proxy_target is strongly preferred by some pivots.

Help

• One project in the office is deploying varnish to EY Cloud, and was wondering if anyone else had gone down this path before. There is a EY Cloud chef recipe for varnish, but it is not supported thus changes with EY cloud may break it in the future.

Danger

• A pivot warns that the recent facebooker gem (1.0.70 and 1.0.71) come with a gemspec that reports version 1.0.67. This causes bundler and RubyMine to both be very confused. If you find yourself in this situation complain loudly and then remove all previous version from your system.

Help

A pivot asks if anyone has used any of the multitude of grid frameworks in a production site. Assorted developers have used and liked Blueprint, Compass and 960 grid. Blueprint was the most used, but no one had any complaints. It seems that often times people think they need a grid when really they just want a three column layout.

Interesting

Another pivot reports that they are very happy after setting "paste and match style" to the default behavior for Cmd-V. The peanut gallery pointed out that you might want to paste without matching styles occasionally, and it was decided this would be an acceptable use of the mouse when it was necessary. Read more at Thaweesak

And an anecdote

The paste and match style discussion reminded another developer of a time when they were trying to compare two things pasted from terminal. They learned the hard way that there are character encoding or other issues that caused cause the diff to not include all the differences that they were looking for.