Blog
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Don’t use double quotes in PostgreSQL
I spend a large proportion of my time teaching classes in a variety of open-source technologies — specifically, Ruby, Python, PostgreSQL, and Git. One of the questions that invariably arises in these classes has to do with the case sensitivity of the technology in question. That is, is the variable “x” the same as the…
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Convention over confusion
One of the most celebrated phrases that has emerged from Ruby on Rails is “convention over configuration.” The basic idea is that software can traditionally be used in many different ways, and that we can customize it using configuration files. Over the years, configuration files for many types of software have become huge; installing software…
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Hello, world (again)
Hello out there! I’ve been privileged to work with many great people and companies since 1995, when I first started working as a consultant. I’ve helped companies to create Web applications from an idea, to learn programming languages, to improve their business processes, and to optimize their databases. The time has come to describe some…