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	<title>nealenssle.com</title>
	<link>http://nealenssle.com/blog</link>
	<description></description>
	<lastBuildDate>Tue, 27 Sep 2011 11:39:24 +0000</lastBuildDate>
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		<title>Rocky Mountain Ruby Conf 2011</title>
		<description><![CDATA[The Foraker Labs team had a great time at this year’s Rocky Mountain Ruby Conference (#rockymtnruby). It was fantastic to see a full house at the Boulder Theatre for the two days of the conference, and we enjoyed hanging out with old friends from within the Boulder Ruby community, as well as getting a chance [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://nealenssle.com/blog/2011/09/27/rocky-mountain-ruby-conf-2011-highlights/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>How to sort query results using a SELECT clause in the ORDER BY</title>
		<description><![CDATA[The other day I needed to order a SQL query using by a value derived from a sub-query. Turns out it&#8217;s pretty straightforward:

SELECT *
FROM posts
ORDER BY (SELECT last_name FROM comments WHERE post_id = posts.id) DESC;

The ORDER BY clause will use whatever&#8217;s returned from the subquery to order things.
]]></description>
		<link>http://nealenssle.com/blog/2011/05/23/order-by-with-select/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>How to pick a random element from an Array</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Here&#8217;s a nifty little patch to Ruby&#8217;s Array class to provide a method for picking an element at random:

class Array
  def random_pick
    self.sort_by { rand }.first
  end
end

So then you can do things like this:

def what_is_your_favorite_color?
  colors = [ 'red', 'blue', 'green', 'yellow', 'purple', 'pink', 'black' ]
  colors.random_pick
end

Please don&#8217;t [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://nealenssle.com/blog/2011/02/28/how-to-pick-a-random-element-from-an-array/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>How to be successful as a web developer</title>
		<description><![CDATA[&#8230;in 5 easy steps:
1. Stop complaining about the client.
2. Stop complaining about the project.
3. Stop complaining about the team.
4. Stop complaining about the technology.
5. Start solving problems.
]]></description>
		<link>http://nealenssle.com/blog/2010/11/22/how-to-be-successful-as-a-web-developer/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>How to detect if a Rake task is being run with --trace</title>
		<description><![CDATA[So occasionally I want to output a debugging message for a Rake task. That&#8217;s easy enough. But what if I only want to output that message if the Rake task is being run with the --trace option? It turns out the answer is to check the Rake.application.options.trace flag in your task to determine if the [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://nealenssle.com/blog/2010/11/12/how-to-detect-if-a-rake-task-is-being-run-with-trace/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>How to become a better programmer in 90 days</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Foraker Labs just posted this (unofficial) YouTube video of the lightning talk I had a chance to give at the Mountain.rb Ruby conference last week in downtown Boulder, Colorado:
How to Become a Better Programmer in 90 Days
In this brief talk I present highlights from three books on my required reading list that (I believe) will [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://nealenssle.com/blog/2010/10/13/how-to-become-a-better-programmer-in-90-days/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Mountain.rb 2010 recap</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I had a great time along with some of the rest of the Foraker crew at Mountain.rb, Boulder&#8217;s own Ruby conference.
Check out my recap of Mountain.rb, posted in two parts on the Foraker blog.
]]></description>
		<link>http://nealenssle.com/blog/2010/10/11/mountain-rb-2010-recap/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Teaching clean code principles via de-factoring?</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Here&#8217;s a new idea (to me, at least): Teach clean coding principles by starting with some very readable, very clean code. Then refactor (defactor) it into an incomprehensible, indecipherable quagmire of messy awfulness.
Why? The topic of &#8220;clean code&#8221; is a tough one to teach. Ask a random sampling of programmers and you&#8217;ll probably get a [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://nealenssle.com/blog/2010/09/06/teaching-clean-code-via-defactoring/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>How to find your Ruby gem installation path</title>
		<description><![CDATA[It took me a bit too long to Google this, so I thought it was worth a note: You can find the location or path to where your Ruby gems are installed at with this command:

gem environment gemdir

Hope it&#8217;s useful!
]]></description>
		<link>http://nealenssle.com/blog/2010/03/30/ruby-gem-installation-pat/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Management by walking around</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Part 3 in a series on managing programmers
The third installment in this series is about something I learned well before I got into management. In fact, it&#8217;s probably the reason why I got into management at all:
Get up out of your chair.
As geeks we&#8217;d rather just sit there. Sit in our chairs and send yet [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://nealenssle.com/blog/2010/02/06/mbwa/</link>
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