This document discusses the development of the Zooppa website using Ruby on Rails. It advocates for an agile development process with prototypes, incremental development, frequent releases, interface-first design, and testing. This approach allows for crystallizing ideas early, minimizing risks, incorporating feedback, and adapting quickly to changes. The document emphasizes simplicity, focusing on the essential features, and continuous refactoring to improve code quality without changing external behavior.

1. Productivity with
RubyOnRails
or how I stopped worrying and love Zooppa
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2. What’s it ?
• I give you a brand
• You make an AD
• You rate the BEST ones
• I pay you
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4. Winner contest
C1Deejay section Video
Ads
• 1303 stars (281 votes), 371 comments
• Using a concept of another user
• 1500 z$ (1500 real $) for the video, 500 z$
for the concept (500 real $)
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6. Vincitore Contest C1
Deejay sezione Print
Ads
• 798 stars (185 voti), 99 comments
• 1000 z$ (1000 real $)
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7. • Image and Video Upload
• Voting (antifraud system)
• Users personal area (edit profile,
conversion from Z$ to $)
• Users ranking
• Contest management
• A lot of complex relations between data
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8. 40 days of time and a
few dozens of JPGs as
specifications
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9. How ?
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11. • The right team
• Prototypes and incremental development
• Release Often
• Interface First
• Tests
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12. Benefits
• Bring the team to contribute instead of
implementing acritically
• Minimize errors
• Work on a real basis and not on abstract
specifications
• Change doesn’t hurt
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13. The team
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14. Ends and objectives
perfectly clear
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15. A good formulated idea
is an idea without
details that are not
fundamental
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16. Less details, less
discussions, more
prototypes
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17. GOD SAVE HIGH
LEVEL
LANGUAGES
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18. Prototypes and
incremental
development
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19. Going from an idea to a
functional prototype is
very quick (especially in
Ruby)
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20. A prototype is a good
base to start
implementing
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21. • Crystallizes the idea
• The developer can start to take a grasp of
the application domain
• Minimizes the risk of overestimating or
underestimating a problem
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22. In Zooppa we’ve never
thrown away a
prototype, we just
refactor
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23. Refactoring is simpler
then starting with a
new implementation
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24. When refactoring,
employ RubyOnRails in
full
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25. Release first and
release often
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26. Daily internal releases
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27. Release often to the
public
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28. Manifesto for Agile
Software Development
• Individuals and interactions over
processes and tools
• Working software over comprehensive
documentation
• Customer collaboration over
contract negotiation
• Responding to change over following
a plan
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29. Zooppa value are
users, our customers
are more than 8000
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30. Constant specification
change
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31. Releasing is changing
perspective
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32. Feedback from different
professionalities is pure
gold
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33. Or: how the lack of
analisys can become a
strenght (if the project has
been set up in the correct way)
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34. Interfaces
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35. Interfaces are
understandable by
definition
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36. MVC
(use the V to build the MC)
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37. Impossible to overengineer
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38. KISS and make it work
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39. An interface allows to
build a software
keeping in mind the
main features and focal
points
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40. What’s outside the
interface isn’t
important
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41. You can refactor what’s
outside the interface
and your users will
never know
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42. Test
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43. Rails has the best
testing framework
actually on the market
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44. Plugin and gems
• Rcov
• Watir
• Rspec
• Arts
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45. Without analysis, the
only salvation is testing
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46. Tests become
functional specifications
on real code
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47. • Functional Specifications = Functional Tests
• Data Integrity Specifications = Unit Tests
• User Interaction Specifications =
Integration Tests
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48. Making a new
developer productive in
a project is difficult
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49. Understanding an API
by looking at how it’s
used is much more
simpler than
understanding it by
looking at how it’s
implemented
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50. • Less code dependencies problems
• Less bugs
• Joining the project is quicker and a new
developer doesn’t need to be followed step
by step
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51. I didn’t stop worrying,
I’m still a compulsive
paranoic
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52. At least, thanks Rails
and a good
developmente strategy,
I’m the fool, not my
software
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