Five things I love and hate about ruby on rails

Love

1. How easy it is to transition from any other object oriented language.

2. The RESTFul architecture.

3. The plugins and gems.

4. The unit testing tools Shoulda, Coulda, Cucumber and even Test:Unit.

5. The user community and their passion for development.

Hate

1. The scattered array of documentation that is mostly outdated.

2. The complicated deployment process

3. The constant upgrades that break all of my previous apps (I have to say freezing was a great idea)

4. The constant debate over the best IDE

5. How most of the books are outdated by the time they are released. We need to make more of these books living documents.

Overall rails is a the best application framework I have ever used for various reason but there are some kinks that need to be worked out as the community matures.  Thank you to all of the developers in the community for keeping the fire burning.

The Kobe Bryant approach to networking

While I was watching Kobe doing work the Spike Lee documentary, I noticed something that Kobe said that made me realize basketball and networking are very similar activities. Kobe said “If I miss three shots I think to myself the 4th will have to go in and if I miss again the 5th will certainly go in”.

This is a similar strategy on how a person should network. If you contact a person and they don’t respond on the first three trys then you must believe they will on the fourth. You may think, isn’t that stalking? The answer is in the business world no it’s called persistance. Every person worth networking with has a busy schedule and if they don’t remember that you called, it’s not on purpose they are just busy.

One strategy I use is to make sure I contact people in multiple ways. Raising then odds in my favor that they remember I contacted them. What strategies do you use?