The four indicators of a healthy Ruby On Rails project

Software consultants often need to evaluate existing projects. Błażej Kosmowski writes a thoughtful post on four things he focuses on: Outside-In TDD, use of design patterns, a balance between DRYness and readability and automation (around code quality). I like all of those and would add a few more around project deployment, like automation of deployment, staging to production promotion of code, etc.

The Disciplines of Web Design

Joshua Ogle writes a good introduction of what the different disciplines of web design are (visual design, user interface, user experience) and how to interact with each other. I found it very informative. I usually focus on backend programming, but work with designers and their concepts often.

Instrumentation: The First Four Things You Measure

In the context of computer programming, instrumentation refers to an ability to monitor or measure the level of a product’s performance

Wikipedia

Instrumentation provides insight into what exactly is happening to your running code. Antoine Grondin lays out what are the basics of what to measure, to be able to quickly understand the situation in times of trouble. From experience, I can say that just modest investments in instrumentation provide great value.