James Wilding | Ruby on Rails Developer

Why You Won’t Build The Next Basecamp & Why It Doesn’t Matter

When I started work as a web developer, back in 2005, Basecamp was the big new thing — web apps in general were the big new thing. Ambitious developers wanted to “build the next Basecamp”, and that’s a phrase I still hear today, six years after Basecamp became popular.

Building the next Basecamp is a pointless aim for any startup, and here’s why. First, the target is too vague: “the next Basecamp”, what does that mean? Basecamp came along when web apps were fresh and new, and the web app market was young enough to have room for big, generic products which covered a lot of ground — Basecamp is essentially a project management tool aimed at a very broad market. Now the web app market is more mature, you’re more likely to be successful if you niche down and build something that targets a very specific audience. You might make less money, but at least you’ll make some money (and you’ll stand a much better chance of making more than just “some”!).

Second, “build the next Basecamp” is too often used as a lazy stand in for “make lots of money with a web app”. Don’t mistake effect for cause: “make a lot of money” is an OK goal in itself, but you won’t achieve that goal just by wanting to achieve it — I don’t care how much pop psychology you read. You’ll get to your goal by making something good that sells!

Third (and this is most important, even if you don’t think it is): if you’re talking about building “the next Basecamp” then any spark of creativity you might have will be drowned by your (probably subconscious) desire to blindly copy the people who have already got to where you want to be. Read Rework, learn Rails, build a web app…it worked for them so why not for me? The only problem: success comes from inspiration, not from duplication. Forget what’s happened before and use your own ideas: they’re the only chance you’ve got.

Case-Insensitive Searches With PostgreSQL On Rails

Most Rails developers will have used one or both of MySQL and SQLite for development work. In both of these flavours of SQL, the “like” operator performs case-insensitive searches; this example from the MySQL documentation is a good illustration of how this work:

The default character set and collation are latin1 and latin1_swedish_ci, so nonbinary string comparisons are case insensitive by default. This means that if you search with col_name LIKE ‘a%’, you get all column values that start with A or a.

Let’s assume that you want this behaviour.

If, like a lot of Rails developers, you use Heroku for hosting or staging, you’ll run into a problem: Heroku uses PostgreSQL, and PostgreSQL’s “like” is case-sensitive. In practice, this means that you’ll test your code in development, deploy to Heroku, and see different results. How to fix this?

This fix is simple: PostgreSQL provides an “ilike” operator which performs case-insenstive searches (the behaviour for “ilike” is the same as for “like” in MySQL and SQLite). So, we can check which SQL adaptor Rails is using and use either “like” or “ilike” as appropriate. Here’s an example in an ActiveRecord scope:

scope :search, lambda { |phrase|  
  if connection.adapter_name == 'PostgreSQL'
    where("title ilike ?", "%#{phrase}%")
  else
    where("title like ?", "%#{phrase}%")
  end
}

This gives us the correct behaviour whatever flavour of SQL we’re using.

Note, by the way, that I’ve slightly simplified things here: “like” in MySQL and SQLite aren’t always case-insensitive, but they do act that way most of the time. Check the MySQL and SQLite documentation for more details.

Hyper 0.4.2 Released

Version 0.4.2 of Hyper, my framework for small HTML websites, fixes a bug that stopped new sites from having a public folder. Grab the code from Github or install via Rubygems:

gem install hyper

If you’re coming to Hyper for the first time and want to see what it can do, try the edge of space map.

Image by phunk on Flickr

It’s Not About The Settings

I remember the first time I used Windows properly: there were lots of settings. Pages and pages of settings. Entire magazines made a profit from explaining how people could, and should (and should not) use the settings to do, well, anything. Want to read your email only on Tuesdays in March? There’s a setting for that.

There is, I think, something called the poverty of choice: when you can do anything, it’s hard to do something. For a long, long time personal computing used choice as a benchmark: the more options you were given, the better a piece of software or hardware was. This led, inevitably, to companies Dell and their confusing array of PC options.

Choice is good for experts. I want to decide which album to listen to this evening; I am an expert on my music collection. But I don’t want to do the detailed research to work out what album to buy next: that’s what iTunes reviews are for. The vast invisible mass of iTunes reviewers does my thinking for me.

Most people are not experts. Most people have too much choice. Most people, myself included, want to be guided when they’re on unfamiliar ground. And this is where the personal computing industry failed until recently: it assumed that normal people like my mum wanted a level of choice which (with respect to my mum) they really couldn’t — and didn’t want to, didn’t need to — handle.

Some people complain that iPhones and iPads are too locked down, not open to customisation. Yes: that’s the point. They offer the smallest set of choices necessary to help us achieve more with less thought, less effort. Isn’t that what technology is all about?

Legacy

When I woke up on the morning of October 6th, I visited Apple blog Daring Fireball and saw a deep black background in place of the usual grey. That can’t be good, I thought: someone has died. Then I saw the headlines.

When someone in Steve Jobs’ position dies, two things happen: first, the person’s friends and family suffer; second, the person’s achievements are celebrated, picked over, and the person is — often — idolised. That day, I watched the second of those things happen, and imagined the first.

My family has suffered two deaths from cancer in the past few years, and I know that whatever someone has achieved in their life their death still feels as painful as you could imagine. Everyone achieves something important, whether it’s battling cancer, raising children, or changing personal technology for the better: we all deserve to be remembered and celebrated for the difference we make in the world.

But Steve Jobs’ real legacy isn’t an unreachable plateau of genius: it’s the example he set, an example of someone who believed in himself, trusted his instincts, and had the courage to do what he thought was right. That’s something we can all achieve, in our own ways, if we remember what’s really important.

Here’s an excerpt from Jobs’ widely-quoted Stanford commencement address (justifiably regarded as being in a different league to the usual graduation cliches):

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

The best way to celebrate someone’s life is to learn from it.

Pocket Whois for iPhone

Last week I launched Pocket Whois, a whois app for iPhone and iPod Touch; it’s available on the App Store for just $1.99 (scroll down to find out how to get the app for free). 

As a web developer, I use whois tools almost every day to check DNS settings, to find out whether a domain is available to register, or to see whether a registration has been processed. One of the things I’ve found difficult about other whois apps is that they show the whois information as-is — if you’ve ever seen raw whois data, you’ll know that it’s not exactly the easiest thing to understand (the way the data is presented varies too, which doesn’t make things any easier). So my goal with Pocket Whois was to build an app which shows whois data clearly and consistently.

I also wanted to build an app which non-technical folk can use to check domain availability. The idea here was that while some users want the full whois information straight up, many users actually just want to see whether a domain is registered (with the option to see the full information too, of course).

So, what features does Pocket Whois provided for the discerning iPhone user?

• clear presentation
• complete whois data
• bookmarking (save domains for reference)
• exporting (send whois data by email)
• “web check”: find out how (or if) a domain is being used

Pocket Whois is also (as fas as I know) the only whois app which can explain why whois searches fail. For example, the app will handle a search for example.ar by explaining that the .ar registrar only allows web-based searches; on other apps this search would fail without explanation.

It’s early days for this app, but I’ve got big plans: I want to build a domain information tool which is powerful and user-friendly. If you’re using Pocket Whois and would like to help shape the development of future versions, drop me an email at support@pocketwhoisapp.com — I reply to everything personally. The same email can be used to get support, or to report bugs.

If you’re looking for a simple, intelligent whois app for iPhone, you should checkout Pocket Whois now. Thanks for reading :)

[Get the app for free: if you’d like to write about Pocket Whois on your website or blog, email me at the address above and I’ll arrange for you to have a free copy of the app for review purposes. All you need to do is post an honest review of the app on your website.]

Working On Elance

For about a year now, I’ve been running my business through elance.com. Elance is a web-based agency which connects freelancers with employers: most people there are hired on a project basis; Elance takes a percentage of project fees. Think of it as eBay for freelancers.

I first read about Elance in The Four Hour Work Week, and decided to give it a try as a place to hire people to work for me. As an experiment, I set up a profile to advertise myself as a freelance Rails developer, too. 

The hiring people thing didn’t go anywhere. The freelance thing? Well, that went pretty well.

Two Incomes, But Not In A Good Way

Before I started using Elance, I was doing a mixture of website design and website development work (for the uninitiated, design work involves making websites look nice; development work involves making websites do cool stuff — think Facebook or Twitter).

To be honest, the website design work was a bit of a nightmare. I’ve heard it said that website design is one of the worst freelance businesses you can get into, and after giving it a try I definitely agree: a combination of hundreds of bad designers, plus clients who don’t know how to recognise a bad designer, makes getting good work a nightmare.

The website development work, on the other hand, was fun: interesting, challenging, and better paid. The thing was, I couldn’t find enough clients to make it pay full time. I’d tried job sites and direct sales, with some success, but I still had to lean on the crutch of that awful, boring design work: my business was split down the middle, and it was stressing me out.

A Very Un-British Confession

At this point, I’ll mention something quite personal (which we British don’t do often): for the past ten years I’ve had some serious problems with my health. Not life-threatening, but life-changing: something that stopped me doing a lot of the stuff I took for granted. I had to fit my life around my illness, to help me take control: freelancing became a necessity, not a choice — I needed the flexibility.

When you’re sick, stress is bad. Stress at work is very bad, because we spend most of our time working. Stress with my design work was dragging me back into the state I was in five years earlier, when my illness was really bad — I hated it. 

Starting Small & Growing

In September 2010, I got my first job on Elance. It was a small piece of work: basically a test, designed by the client to check I could do what I said I could do. I passed the test; the client gave me more work. Suddenly I was making money.

Things really grew from there. I didn’t imagine I’d do as well as I have: clients appeared from nowhere (Elance’s reach is amazing) and after about six months I was turning people away, taking my pick of the best clients and the best projects. It was, and is, an amazing situation to be in and I count myself very lucky.

It’s Not About The Money

I don’t normally talk about money, but I’ve earned about $70,000 through Elance since September 2010. To most people that’s just a number, but five years ago I was too sick to walk, working a part-time office admin job where the manager treated me with zero respect — $70,000 in a year isn’t about money, it’s about progress.

I’m sharing this to show that a turnaround is possible if you’re open to new ideas. Elance has (in some circles) a reputation as being a place to go to get bad work for bad money: I disagree. For me at least, it’s been transformative.

Hyper 0.4.1

I’ve released version 0.4.1 of Hyper, my Ruby framework for small HTML websites. This release fixes a bug that stopped Hyper from serving status assets (images, javascripts, stylesheets, etc).

Install with rubygems:

$ gem install hyper

I’d love to hear feedback: check my “Hire Me” page for my email address (and if you’re wondering about the photo, it’s a bug!).

Image from staflo on Flickr