Pull Request Roulette gets some love!

   You may recall my earlier mention of my latest silly little side-project, PullRequestRoulette.com.  I decided it was actually useful enough to publicize it a bit more widely, and submitted it to the Ruby 5 podcast, and Peter Cooper over at Ruby Inside.  I didn't actually expect anything to come of it, or maybe fifteen seconds of airtime at most, but yesterday's episode of Ruby 5 mentioned it, for what felt like maybe a full minute! One down, well spent, fourteen left.  :-)  (Unless you also count my being mentioned twice on the June 22 edition of Paul Harris's "Knuckleheads in the News" -- as a submitter, not a knucklehead!)

   They mentioned the horrible color scheme.  Quickly, along came Matthew Burket with a pull request to add Zurb Foundation and do some much nicer styling.  (I've been meaning to check into Zurb Foundation, as it's lighter-weight and less-overused than Twitter Bootstrap.  This might be my chance to learn it.  Unfortunately I'm a bit busy at the moment and about to go on a vacation.)  And exactly as Ruby 5 had suggested, he then submitted that pull request to PullRequestRoulette.

   Peter Cooper hasn't covered it yet (it's only been a few days, so no rush), but he did email me back, saying "It might be a StatusCode thing also."  So, watch for it there.  Makes sense, since it's not really specific to Ruby, though it is written in Ruby 2.0, with Rails 4.0.

   Last night, I was also tapped at the next-to-last minute to talk about it at Arlington Ruby Meetup, where David Bock was to be "talking about all the things".  At the very last minute (I was to be the second to last speaker), since things were running a bit late, I was asked to yield my time to Dave Thomas.  (No, not the Wendy's guy, but one of the two original Pragmatic Programmers.)  I retained one minute (doesn't count as fame since it was only a smallish roomful of people) to tell people the basic concept and the URL, which led to a mention on Twitter from Jason Wieringa, retweeted by Chana (who doesn't reveal her last name there so I won't here, JIC she values her privacy).

   Yes, that Dave Thomas was there!  (Talking about Elixir.)  Squeeee!  I didn't get to chat with him directly, tho I probably could have were I a bit more assertive during the usual after-party at Northside Social.  A few people mentioned having learned Ruby from him.  I hadn't, but you may recall the very earliest entries in this blog being solutions to his Code Katas.  And of course I've read The Pragmatic Programmer, which he co-wrote with Andy Hunt.

   David Bock said he thought PullRequestRoulette could be very useful and successful, just needing some personality and momentum.  Matthew Burket's pull request will help with the personality, please help with the momentum!  Add a pull request, commit to reviewing one, and spread the word!

Thanks,
Dave