I'm Jared Norman, a software consultant, open-source maintainer, and member of the Solidus core team. I believe that the software industry is short-sighted and fails to capitalize on its own best ideas. My company, Super Good Software, helps organizations learn from the past and build software more effectively.

Latest Post

The Rubby Game v0.1

I just finished playing the first iteration of a board game I created about building Ruby on Rails applications. It was actually kind of fun!

Popular Posts

System tests haven't failed

What's with all the buzz about system tests in the Ruby on Rails community right now?

Adding Parameterized Layouts to phlex-rails

Out of the box, phlex-rails currently doesn't support parameterized layouts. I found a quick way to hack support in.

What if service objects were just Procs?

Service objects, a popular design pattern in the Ruby on Rails community, are analogous to higher-order functions, and we can demonstrate that more clearly by refactoring one into a Proc without changing its API.

August 03, 2023

Don’t assert return types

Have you ever seen a test in Ruby (or any dynamic language) that tested the type of a method? I’ve always hated those tests, but never really explored why.

January 09, 2024

Goodbye, Pivotal Tracker

Pivotal Tracker is shutting down. It might not have been perfect, but I'll still miss it.

The Null Object Pattern and Ruby

Object-oriented programmers have a solution to null propagation, the null object pattern, but is it a good fit for Ruby and other dynamic languages?

January 24, 2024

The Most Customizable eCommerce Platform

I often tell people that Solidus is the most customizable eCommerce platform on the market. I've broken down what that means and how it achieves that.

February 08, 2024

Introducing Dead Code

I'm sorry. I started a podcast. Please subscribe to it.

TDD on the Shoulders of Giants

What do we Rubyists stand to learn from Nat Pryce and Steve Freeman's Growing Object-Oriented Software, Guided by tests? I break down what my team learned from the book about how to make writing tests a more valuable exercise.

December 18, 2023