asemanfar - a blog about programming

As some of you may know, the build portion of Rails Rumble 2008 was this past weekend. Three of my friends and I competed and I have to say it was an all-around awesome experience.

We created an online game where you can bet on real-world events such as the outcome of an election. Our designer, Chris Bielinski, did an awesome job of whipping up a sweet looking design and making a usable interface in lightning-fast time. It's really important to note the importance of a good designer, I don't think we would have the inspiration to go as far as we did without such a sweet looking design. The other two Rails programmers, Rob Olson and Nathan Esquenazi also kicked ass. With a couple of well-seasoned Rails programmers, there is pretty much nothing that stood as a road block. Together, we plowed through most of our main feature set and had enough time to implement some sweet interface features.

There are a few things that I wanted to emphasize that really contributed to our productivity:

1. Don't be afraid to ask questions. There were plenty of times that we asked each other questions about the Rails, Javascript, architectural features, or implementation-specific details.
2. Have an idea of what you want to do. Think out some details in advanced, but don't over architect.
3. Write tests. Especially because the build phase is restricted to 48-hours, we couldn't afford to have any app-500s thrown; tests are worth it.
4. Kick ass designers kick ass. I really can't emphasize enough the importance of having a nice-looking, usable interface.

To anyone who is considering competing next year, I highly recommend it.

You can check out our app at PlayUbetcha.com or the official Rails Rumble URL of ubetcha.r08.railsrumble.com.

Also worth mentioning: I haven't seen all the apps, but from the ones I have seen, props to QFlip and MeetInBetween.us.