Performance test and debugging for Noobs - Rails, Heroku and Rails

Monday I stopped by the New Relic office for live streaming #RailsConf. Creator #DHH talked about the future of Rails - Rails 4 and multiple caching options, designing pattern details. I saw New Relic last time when they brought the Obama tech team to SF. Not impressed, but today I hit a Heroku bug and was tired of tailing the logs (having to constantly go back to my machine) and Pg Admin to shared Amazon servers... yeah too much overhead for my one-pager. What do I do? Also, what's a better opportunity to learn a tool without having to read the documentations? We all know documentations are important in coding.

For Rails app hosted on Heroku

STEP 1

Deploy to Heroku and select New Relic as an Add-on

STEP 2

Command line $heroku addons:add newrelic in the Rails app directory of your newly deployed app

You may be prompted for heroku.com/verify

That means you have to enter your credit card, no worries, you won't be charged. But you may want to reset your Heroku password to something more secure.

Run $heroku addons:add newrelic again after "verification"

STEP 3

Feel free to run $heroku addons:docs newrelic to open up the documentation
Or visit https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/newrelic

STEP 4
Follow documentation to add gem to gemfile (gem 'newrelic_rpm') then bundle install

STEP 5
In Rails app directory:

$curl https://raw.github.com/gist/2253296/newrelic.yml > config/newrelic.yml

STEP 6
Modify your newrelic.yml file that you just received in the config directory of your Rails app. Change your app name

app_name:"your app name here"
or use the environment variable format provided

STEP 7
Go to your app refresh a few times, navigate through a few pages and generate some traffic

STEP 8
Log back into Heroku, navigate to your app admin, then the Add-on, select new relic, you will be automatically log into your Dashboard

You just gained access to your full performance and error log for both front end and back end. I was able to get data on page rendering, DOM load, script and database performance. It was awesome. For those who don't like $heroku logs --tail, or simply aren't on the right computer all the time with the right toolbelt. Here's an awesome way to view your stats.

While the stats is a bit of overkill compared to Google Analytics for an average user, but the error log (narrowing down to controller, methods, and specific ruby stack trace) was invaluable even for a noob.

A common noob mistake that I and many people make: forgetting to update the repo, so you will need to
$git add . (or add whatever)
$git commit -m"e.g. adding the newrelic.yml file"
$git push
$git push heroku master

Portfolio for inspirational training

Hi Magali, Thank you for viewing our portfolio page made especially for you.

Have a great day! Cheers,

Eva, Tamara and Dilys

We encourage our vision lead to start with wireframing, a creative designing process that creates a medium of discussion among the idea leader, designers and developers. This creates a designer prototype that will inspire discussions, rapid prototyping and result in final products that embodies the original visions. You can use wireframing software, draw, whiteboard, any fun colorful and interactive process that you like!

Homepage

Elements

Pure neutral CSS

Modern minimalism layout

Pinterest-like layout

Unusual Colors

Mobile themes

Sample live websites:
Mexican Travel Website
Pure CSS Design Website, interactive forms
Form generator site

Bootcamps and Words of Caution

I read these two great posts on a blog owned by a Dev Bootcamp graduate, and a successful professional developer. They are great words of caution for candidates of bootcamps:

The Economics of Dev Bootcamp (And Other Hacker Schools)

You Could Be Kicked Out Of Dev Bootcamp

And I replied to the posts with my own observations:
I have always been a little suspicious of their stats. I agree with you that a word of caution is needed. I am also attending a bootcamp now. Unlike traditional schooling it is faster, cheaper, more effective in the real engineering world, but for sure, it's no amazing education pill. Many who have different learning styles feel the burn. As peers, we are trying really hard to look out for one each other, and fill in the gap. Hope all candidates exert caution. 

It is also good to point out that some schools like App Academy does it preemptively , e.g. they quiz you and test out your programming capability before hand as a part of the application process.

I am running long here, Natasha's post are really enjoyable and thought-provoking. She's so right that *lots of preparation is needed* before joining a bootcamp. And also during the bootcamp, keep in mind that some already went through other forms of advanced training and will often say *that(programming) is easy*. Please don't get discouraged. It depends so much on the individual students. The best students in the current class have surprised our peers. They come from all walks of life.

And you wonder why Javascript is important!

It is easy to get distracted these days with Ruby on Rails, Django... fancy frameworks, pop DB noSQL. The fundamentals often get ignored and pushed to the back burner. We start to forget Javascript is still the omnipresent front end language, and in many cases, it is more than that - think Backbone, Node... Yes, it is truly everywhere. It might be an oldie like C and Java, but none of the trio is going anywhere.

That pushes me back to the not so distant memory of Codecademy, which started as all Javascript. Is it important? Yes, it was a conscious choice (according to at least one interview count). Js is the language of the web hence, Codecademy decided to use that for its beginner tutorials.

Need more convincing, fast? Indeed: it helps to know Javascript to use jQuery, front end interactive web design, AJAX displaying new info without refreshing a page, APIs, tons of web APIs spit out json and use js, and of course just the fundamentals : grammar. Javascript is particular, it is good to start with a particular, picky language and move on to less restrained ones later (it's feels like a relief!), and it makes you pay great attention to syntax. Detail-oriented helps save debugging time.

Q&A Choosing Web Development Bootcamp [VIDEO]

LoroCard is now open source!

Getting started on Front End design or development?
Check out my Project LoroCard. Its code is now fully on GitHub. Feel free to use it to practice GitHub as well: git clone your own copy, pulling, reporting issues and submitting questions.

This project is pure front-end. You can pull the entire source code!

:) enjoy

http://lorocard.com/

https://github.com/theoptips/lorocard

A Happy Dosage of Sheryl Sandberg for Aspiring Girl Coders and Businesswomen

Lean In the book by Sheryl Sandberg

Her life isn't all privileged. She had to fight, adapt and learn, and stand up again too.

"chapters after chapters of advice and studies" - CNN

Levo League live office hour with Sheryl Sandberg

Also a great resource for aspiring ladies

http://www.levoleague.com/office-hours/sheryl-sandberg

Sheryl Sandberg explains Lean In briefly on CNN

Too busy to read, or thinking Sheryl's too lofty to everyday women?

http://www.cnn.com/2013/03/18/opinion/sandberg-take-risks/index.html

Sheryl Sandberg at my college back in the days - Stanford

Relentlessly Pleasant and other studies, tips about how to be a successful woman