Bendyworks’ Blog

Testing Security with Brakeman

<p>Security in web applications is not something developers discuss often enough – some think of it as a taboo subject, or something the NOC guys have to deal with. Some treat security as a post deployment afterthought. Sometimes little thought is given...</p>

The Isthmus: Bendyworks' Big Idea

<p>Madison’s Weekly Newspaper, Isthmus, <a href="http://www.thedailypage.com/isthmus/article.php?article=38036">picked up a story</a> from local freelance journalist <a href="http://meisenstories.net">Marc Eisen</a>. The story, one in a series on Madison’s Next Economy, focuses on Brad Grzesiak’s idea of creating a tech corridor on the East Side of Madison.</p> <p>Several...</p>

OMG! Rails Rumble!

<p>Last weekend, three Bendyworkers and a Swink-person (Swink-ee?) participated in the <a href="http://railsrumble.com/">Rails Rumble</a>, a competition to build a web application in just 48 hours. Rather than hacking on the backend like I usually do, I ended up almost exclusively forging...</p>

Moldover: Godfather of Controllerists

<p>Last night I was able to attend a workshop at Madison Media Institute featuring <a href="http://moldover.com">Moldover</a> and his <a href="http://twitter.com/jremsikjr/status/255857203418890240/photo/1/large">crazy custom mixers</a> and modified instruments such as <a href="http://twitter.com/jremsikjr/status/255857280048840704/photo/1/large">the Robocaster</a>. At the end of the night I was so impressed I twisted his arm until he came to Bendyworks...</p>

Cthulhuian Document Preparation With Troff

<p><strong>tl;dr:</strong> If you are looking for a lightweight document preparation system in the style of LaTeX, try out <code>troff</code> which is probably already on your system.</p> <h2 id="intro">Intro</h2> <p>Lurking deep in UNIX, even on your shiny new Mac, is the eldritch horror of troff. It waits...</p>

Don't Say 'Emacs' or 'Vi'

<h2 id="a-brief-tour-of-some-other-editors">A brief tour of some <em>other</em> editors</h2> <p>Quick, think of your favorite <code>$EDITOR</code>. If you’re anything like me or the people I work with, you’ve got a horse in this race. And again, if you’re anything like myself or my comrades, you’ll probably say <em>Emacs</em> or...</p>

Version Control for Poetic Time Travelers

<p>Matthew McCullough (<a href="http://twitter.com/matthewmccull">@matthewmccull</a>) leads Git workshops across the world. He recently visited Madison, Wisconsin to discuss and demonstrate advanced topics such as rerere merging, the reflog, interactive rebase, cherry-pick, show-branch, branch filtering...</p>

Your Papers, Please

<p>Sometimes a line of discussion will open up into areas of unexpected intensity. Suddenly people are vehement and they won’t let go. When that happens, it’s interesting, and it might mean something.</p> <p>This happened at <a href="http://http://madisonruby.org/" target="_new">Madison Ruby</a> (<a href="https://twitter.com/madisonruby" target="_new">#MadisonRuby</a>) during...</p>

RailsBridge: a Difference That Makes A Difference

<p>So, <a href="http://www.madisonruby.org/">there’s this conference in town this week</a>.</p> <p>It’s going to be damned good: attend if you can. One of the most remarkable parts of it is the <strong>RailsBridge Women’s Outreach Workshop</strong> being offered on Wednesday evening and during the day on Thursday....</p>

The Hidden Life of Stylesheet Preprocessing

<p>Like any piece of art, a stylesheet should be indivisible and bold, but natural. It should arrive to the browser in one elegant file, a succinct connection between page semantics and presentation. Preprocessing distances a stylesheet from the Sturm...</p>

Growth day happenings – Friday the 13th

<p>(This is the first of a recurring series describing our work during most, if not all, growth days at Bendyworks. Note that we won’t do growth day on Friday the 20th, because it’s <a href="http://uxmad.com" target="_new">UXMad</a>.)</p> <h2 id="whats-a-growth-day">What’s a “Growth Day”?</h2> <p>Bendyworks invests in our developers...</p>

Don't Play CSS Tetris

<p>“Want to see the future?” Dale Sande (<a href="https://twitter.com/anotheruiguy/">@anotheruiguy</a>) leaned toward me with a conspiratorial gleam in his eye. His laptop was crowded with code and design layouts. He proceeded to show me that I have been doing CSS all wrong.</p> <p>My first mistake is using...</p>

What are we doing over the next few weeks? 2012-07-09

<p>What’s coming up the rest of the month?</p> <p>The major event is clearly <a href="http://www.uxmad.com/" target="_new">UXMAD</a>.</p> <p><img src="/assets/images/blog/extra/2012-07-10-ux_mad_2012_poster-6ab6b223.jpg" alt="uxmad poster"></p> <p>This is a premier user experience conference for a decidedly less than premium price. Thursday the 19th there will be hands-on workshops; Friday the 20th and Saturday the...</p>

Bwoken Version 1.1 Released

<p>Version 1.1 of Bwoken has just been released! This feature release includes the ability to run UIAutomation tests on a device rather than the simulator, in addition to a number of internal improvements to Bwoken.</p> <p>Developers we come across have always...</p>

Craftsman Swap Podcast

<p>Bendyworkers <a href="https://bendyworks.com/workers#devin">Devin</a> and <a href="https://bendyworks.com/workers#chris">Chris</a> were recently interviewed on the <a href="http://thinkrelevance.com/blog/tags/podcast">Relevance podcast</a>. They sat down to speak with <a href="http://thinkrelevance.com/team/members/craig-andera">Craig Andera</a>, <a href="http://thinkrelevance.com/team/members/jared-pace">Jared Pace</a>, and <a href="http://thinkrelevance.com/team/members/alan-dipert">Alan Dipert</a> of Relevance, on the topic of our recent <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_craftsmanship">craftsman swap</a>.</p> <p>Back in March, Chris Wilson visited Durham...</p>

Introducing Bwoken

<p>Bwoken is a UIAutomation test runner for both iPhone and iPad, which lets you write your tests in CoffeeScript, then run them in bulk from the command line. Watch the video, then head on over to its <a href="http://bendyworks.github.com/bwoken">homepage!</a></p>

Local development team grows with new Bendyworks mentorship program

<p>The software industry faces a pressing issue: we just can’t find enough seasoned developers.</p> <p>Universities may produce excellent computer scientists, but recent grads are typically short on practical knowledge and experience.</p> <p>Regardless of pedigree...</p>

George Boole Returned As a Zombie and is Gnawing on My Brain

<p>This is about that oft-neglected corner of programming, the humble boolean. Perhaps, by thinking about what’s going on in many boolean expressions, we can iron out his quickly-forking complexity. And, oh, what luck! Here’s a slab of boolean logic that...</p>

Mobile and Professionalism for Students

<p>Yesterday, at the request of their teacher <a href="http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~suman/">Suman Banerjee</a>, I presented a view of what it’s like to be a professional programmer to a class of Computer Sciences students at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. The focus of the talk was “Mobile &amp; Professionalism...</p>

ConciseKit

<p><strong>Note:</strong> This article was cross-posted from Brad’s personal blog: <a href="http://www.namingthingsishard.com/2012/01/31/concisekit.html">Naming Things is Hard</a></p> <p>Over the last month at Bendyworks, I’ve been pairing with <a href="http://twitter.com/JaymesWaters">Jaymes</a> on our latest initiative: adding iOS development to our repertoire. As a Ruby developer learning...</p>

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