Another intern post!

• robert
• May 29th, 2008
• 10:46:00 AM

Hmm, well looky there! Another intern post on the blog! All within the same 24 hours; that’s odd, it’s almost as though someone forced us to write a post

Though, that is not the case; it is really because we have been making so much progress on the project! (I think they bought it Kevin, can I have my Quesadilla now?)

What have I been working on, you ask? Well, unlike Allyn, I have not been fixing coffee for Zink (Kevin) and Dusty (read the last paragraph in his post) despite how we were assured that this was not a coffee fetching internship. And I have not been looking at grids.

I, on the other hand, have been working planning social events! Yes, that is right. I am the co-social chair along with Erin #1 (Please correct me if I got my title wrong).

Here at BrightMix, we know how to party, and how else to party, than… Seeing Indiana Jones!

We have been working hard on our project, so what better way to celebrate than spending a Thursday afternoon watching a movie.

Yesterday we had a show-and-tell of what we had accomplished on the project in the past two weeks. And surprising, we have done a lot! So much showing and telling went on that it was dinner time before we knew it so Kevin and Dusty went and ordered Valentino’s Pizza for dinner! (Conveniently located 351 feet from Brightmix.)

Beyond that, the coding on the project has been going very well… Though not well enough that I would neglect my Ruby on Rails rant… It was hard finding something to rant about this time; it took me about 23 seconds before I could come up with rant.

And today the rant will be on: Rails Plugins!

Although Rails Plugins might seam… Helpful? They are far from. In the short term, they are very powerful entities. Despite that they give you the ability to add nifty features really fast, most of them are not coded to be dynamic.

I have found myself modifying plugins to get them to act the way I want them to because they are lacking in functionality. This goes against what you would think a plugin would add; functionality.

To me it seems like the Ruby on Rails plugin community does not care about other people using their plugin; they just care about their needs and desires. This can be seen in how they leave out the simple things to make their plugins versatile.

A common example that I have seen is how some plugins require a require certain classes with certain class names. Although the predefined names for the classes will fit 99% of the rails projects out there, why not add the extra 1 line of code to make the plugin dynamic for the other 1%?

In the end, rails plugins are nice, they give a starting point to adding features, though they are lacking when it comes to flexibility. Luckily plugins are open-source and can easily be modified!

Well, that’s it for me… We’re going to see Indiana Jones now!