Matthew Bass

Software Developer & Entrepreneur

Matthew Bass is an independent software developer, entrepreneur, speaker, and writer. He has over ten years of experience across a diverse set of technologies and has worked at places like SAS Institute, the world's largest privately held software company. An agilist from the very beginning, he continues evangelizing and experimenting with pair programming, test-first and behavior-driven development, and continuous integration. Matthew has spoken at several regional and national software conferences and regularly writes for publications like InfoQ.



Blog

Are most of your projects one-time or maintenance?

Posted Tuesday, June 15, 2010

I’m curious about something. If you’re an independent contractor, consultant or freelancer, are most of your projects one-time gigs or do they more frequently involve long term maintmore »

Quote of the Week: Mark Twain

Posted Monday, June 14, 2010

“Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on, or by more »

Thanks for reading!

Posted Saturday, June 12, 2010

July 29th will mark the fifth anniversary of this blog. I realized today that I have never properly thanked you, my readers, for continuing to support this endeavor. There are so many other things you could be pemore »

RubyConf in New Orleans

Posted Friday, June 11, 2010

This year’s RubyConf is being held in New Orleans on November 11th – 13th. Count me in. I’ve only driven through the area once so it’ll be interestinmore »

Rails 2.3.8 – an embarrassing trip

Posted Thursday, June 10, 2010

November 30, 2009: Rails 2.3.5 has justmore »

Quick ‘n dirty Lindo step for Cucumber

Posted Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Lindo is great for verifying your Rails tests by opening the HTTP response body in a browser for inspection. It works with most popular testing frameworks including Test::Unit and RSpec. But what aboumore »

iPhone development

Posted Sunday, May 9, 2010

For the past few months, I’ve been exploring the fascinating world of iPhone development. I have several application ideas and am working pretty hard on getting something to market. My first app will be free, though I hope to work up to a lmore »

Walk for Life

Posted Thursday, April 15, 2010

I’m participating in the 2010 Walk for Life this month to support Pregnancy Support Services of Wake Forest. The walk is a family-friendly event that raises awareness and funding for the center. The cool thing is that you don’t need to more »
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Presentations

Git with Ruby

Git is the hottest source control system available today. Come see why this open source project has taken the Ruby world by storm and learn how you can put it to use next week by leveraging several excellent Ruby libraries.more »

Homesteading: The New Entrepreneurial Model

Many years ago a community would come together to help a neighbor get started. They'd all pitch in, knowing that when they needed help, those same friends would come to their aid as well. This model of community self-sufficiency has been recycled in the smore »

Power Ajax with JQuery

JQuery is a lightweight alternative to the Prototype JavaScript library. It offers a more concise syntax than Prototype as well as powerful built-in features that aren't available elsewhere. Come learn how to leverage JQuery and Ruby to integrate powerfulmore »

Unobtrusive JavaScript: Stop Cluttering Your HTML

Separation of concerns is important, especially when building web applications with Ruby. Making JavaScript unobtrusive is a technique whereby the JavaScript is pulled out into a third layer alongside the HTML and CSS. Obtrusive JavaScript damages the reamore »

Building and Publishing Ruby Gems

Ruby packages are called gems. A gem simply contains application or library code. The gem command is used to download, install, and manage Ruby gems on your system.more »

Leveraging Custom Markup in Ruby

Several robust markup languages have risen up around Ruby. These include ERB, HAML, YAML, and several others. Join us for a brief overview of these languages.more »

Generating Rich PDFs with Prawn

Prawn is a Ruby library that was developed with the goal of making PDF generation in Ruby easy and fast. It gives an order of magnitude speed increase over its predecessors like PDF::Writer. The markup is straightforward yet powerful and can be leveraged more »

Which Ruby Testing Framework Should I Use?

Ruby has dozens of different testing libraries, each with its own strengths and weaknesses and each taking a slightly different approach to testing. How can we possibly choose which one to use?more »

Books

by Jared Richardson

  • Has your career been a product of random chance? Learn how to take control. These solid, repeatable steps show you how to chart the course you want, then how to follow it. The book is aimed primarily at a technical market, but the content is applicable to most professional fields.