
Show HN: Miyagi - A Journal of Application Development - ryandaigle
http://miyagi.herokuapp.com/
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ryandaigle
When we look out at the world today we have trouble finding a trusted source
for high-level technical content regarding application development. Miyagi is
our experiment to address that need.

While initially seeded with content from within Heroku the intent is to
publish and promote good ideas independent of their origin. I'd be interested
in hearing 1) if you feel, as we do, of the need for such a site and 2)
general interest in contributing to or reading such content.

~~~
dizzystar
This is all too advanced for me, but I think it is a good idea. I only wish
the articles were a tad longer. The SQL article looks really good, but the
Tests article stops far short from its title and seems more preachy than
useful.

I think the challenge of writing any good coding resource is balancing
philosophy with content. Most books and articles swing far into philosophy
with little assertion to back it up, usually at the cost of content. The
authors always forget that the reason I bought the book or opened the article
is because I am, 99% of the time, already sold on the philosophy, idea,
programming language, [flavor]. The Tests article offers little substantial
content and doesn't bother to offer up any specific examples. Yes, there is a
mention of RoR and its ORM, but then it concludes: "Well designed code will
never substitute testing, but does give you the reassurance that no code
coverage can match." In regards to this, I think Rich Hickey said it best:
"gem install hairball."

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ryandaigle
Thank you for this feedback. You're validating the general direction we were
hoping to pursue. Expect to see more high level content always paired with
meaningful examples and real world application.

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swanson
Nice easter egg in the footer - clicking the sun/moon icons toggles between a
dark and light color scheme.

You seem to be missing a subscribe button for the email form in the top-right
corner.

Additionally, it would be nice to have a page about how to submit articles and
whatnot.

~~~
ryandaigle
I was hoping people would just get that hitting enter in an input field
submits the subscribe form. I'll need to make that more explicit, thanks.

Regarding submission of articles, I'd like to work with authors earlier in the
writing process rather than just receive a bunch if completed work that may
not be right for the site. However, even that should more transparent, I
agree.

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fratis
Are you guys part of H&FJ's secret web font beta, or are you using Archer on
the web in violation of your license agreement with them?

(Serious question. I want to know if they're accepting applications. Still
eager to get Gotham on my site.)

~~~
flixic
Looks like a violation, because .woff is hosted on their site and unprotected.

~~~
ryandaigle
We're looking into this immediately. Thank you for raising the issue.

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flixic
Best you can do: don't use Archer, use either something from Google or from
Typekit.

Typekit uses many layers of protection, and implementing them would be
difficult and not worth the time.

Second best thing: at least Base-64 encode the font, and limit woff usage to
your domain only. Still trivial to hack, and doesn't really count as good
protection, but better than what it is now. And you would still be violating
ToS.

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jessedhillon
I enjoyed the article on process partitioning, however the article advocating
assertions in place of tests is very immature. It needs at least some
explanation of how you might implement the advice, and how asserts would
actually provide equivalent protection. I was very surprised when it ended, it
feels incomplete.

~~~
harpb
You may have misunderstood his point or maybe I am. The way I understood, it
is not about assertions such as i = min < max ? min : max but rather about the
architecture of the software. The software should come built-in with the
features that by default prevent bad software designs.

His argument is not to abolish tests and use asserts, but rather to define a
set of cases for which you would not need to test because the framework, by
its nature, makes it unnecessary.

His example was SQL injection. (a) If I were to write my own MySql queries
which directly talk with the DB, then I would need to write tests around those
query to make sure it is not possible to execute SQL injection. (b) If I am
using an ORM that comes with feature so I don't write the sql queries, it
creates it on its own and also comes with the feature to handles possible use-
cases which would normally lead to SQl injection, in such case, there is no
need to write the test.

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GrahamL
This looks like some interesting stuff. I'd love an an RSS feed to stay up to
date.

~~~
kencausey
Agreed. I will forget the URL almost immediately. But if I can add it to my
Google Reader list then, well, you will remind me yourself.

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ryandaigle
Is Twitter of any use to you both for that purpose? @MiyagiJournal

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rcsorensen
Not the parents, but RSS feeds are awesome. Twitter is ephemeral, but a feed
can be batched and consumed at any time.

Looks like you're using Rails. Something like
[http://railscasts.com/episodes/87-generating-rss-feeds-
revis...](http://railscasts.com/episodes/87-generating-rss-feeds-revised)
should be fairly straightforward.

~~~
ryandaigle
Yep, implementation is a no brainer, was just curious about the viability of
RSS as medium. It appears it is not dead!

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srik
Definitely not, especially among the crowd you aim to write for.

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njyx
The site looks cool and interesting posts = but are you looking for technical
detail analysis or stuff on trends to consider when building systems? (Example
of the later because we just wrote it: <http://www.3scale.net/2012/12/the-
death-of-the-web-page/>)

~~~
ryandaigle
I don't want to be too narrow in these early days so I'll say we want content
that will aid developers in discovering new development techniques as well as
reinforcing the practice of ones they may already be aware of. I think both
types of content you mention can aid in that.

I'll def read your post and follow up.

