
Making a dent in the tech universe
Sustainability in IT business. What you can do to decarbonise
Most of us are onboard with the fact that humans have been overconsuming the earth's resources at an unsustainable rate. Action from a global, government, and local government level is still unsatisfactory. Everyone needs to start doing their bit, and hopefully each little bit adds up and makes a big difference.

Devs for Ukraine Conference
On the early mornings of 26th and 27th April (4am NZ time) members of the developer teams from Abletech and Addressfinder attended the [Devs For Ukraine](https://www.devsforukraine.io/) Conference, a free, online engineering conference with the goal to raise funds and provide support to Ukraine.

Getting started with Stripe, Rails and React in three easy steps
A client recently requested to add the functionality to be able to accept credit card payments within a Rails application that we were building. Specifically, they wanted users to be able to purchase vouchers using credit card payments and pass on any processing fees. Once the payment was complete, the transaction had to be recorded within the app and an email needed to be sent out to both the purchaser and the giftee. Stripe came into the picture then.

.*](/img/OAdtiilj0m-1920.webp)
Pragmatic Refactoring
Last year, I read the amazing *99 Bottles of OOP* by Sandi Metz, Katrina Owen & TJ Stankus. The book explores OOP concepts and how to refactor code while being one cmd + z
away from green tests. It teaches “practical techniques for getting things done that lead, naturally and inevitably, to beautiful code”, by changing one line at a time.
 on [Unsplash](https://unsplash.com/s/photos/venice-carnival?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText)](/img/R5kdHs3xbc-1200.webp)
Testing ActiveRecord Concerns
ActiveRecord classes manage persistence and have a tight relationship with their database tables. This relationship, sometimes, makes testing tricky and even trickier when testing Rails concerns. This article describes how to test a concern in isolation from its ActiveRecord class and its associated database table.
 on [Unsplash](https://unsplash.com/s/photos/hope?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText)](/img/Rp3IDOBeKp-1200.webp)
An alternative to service objects
Service objects are overused. They have become the default solution for any new features in a Rails codebase. They’re also hard to talk about as they mean different things for different people. Here is how I define them:

Rails best practice security exceptions
However, these security features can adversely affect real users and you may notice ActionController::InvalidAuthenticityToken
exceptions appearing in your production runtime which can be challenging to reproduce.

Noodle consuming student to caffeinated developer
After finishing a Bachelor of Science majoring in Computer Science, and several months of job searching, I applied for an internship at Abletech.

Coding newbie to junior developer
I felt the need to grow. I was dissatisfied with the opportunities offered by my established career so I considered my options.

Ruby Conf in Wellington
The Ruby community holds conferences all over the globe, using local and international speakers, for Rubyists of all levels. The latest conference was a single day of talks held at Te Papa in Wellington which is two blocks from Abletech’s headquarters.

Brighton Ruby 2019
In the UK, there are two Ruby conferences held each year — Bath Ruby and Brighton Ruby. North West Ruby user meetup group enthusiasts encouraged members to attend Brighton Ruby since it was the only Ruby conference being held this year.

Addressfinder Dashboard
Find out what Chris did, how he did it, and what he learnt along the way.

How to get a Summer Internship with Abletech
We’re often asked how students and graduates can increase their chances of getting a paid summer internship with Abletech. Here are a few options to help you stand out from the crowd:

Volunteer-led coding weekend — RailsBridge
Volunteers and participants at the 2018 workshop. Photo cred: RailsBridge

RubyConf 2018
This year’s RubyConf AU was held in Doltone House at Jones Bay Wharf, Sydney. Here’s a review of my highlights:

Interning at Abletech
Matt reflects on three months at Abletech. He’s been working with Ruby on Rails and describes coding, testing and deploying for both in-house and external clients. Watch a video to hear more about his experience of Test Frameworks, RSpec, Capybara, Microservices, Docker, APIs, Git and more!


My First Month at Abletech
Working at Abletech is awesome. The team is really friendly and I’ve worked on a wide range of projects. From the moment I arrived for my first day, I was made to feel right at home and not at all like an intern. Carl gave me a tour of our office, I met the Abletech and Sharesight teams and, most importantly, learned how to operate the coffee machine! Everyone is incredibly skilled and talented and always available to help out when I’m stuck on a problem. It has also been a supportive learning environment where I’ve felt valued.



Rails Girls SUPERCHARGED⚡️
For the first time ever Rails Girls Wellington are running an event designed for people who no longer feel like beginners.

Kick-start your tech career
Here are Abletechers Kate Norquay, Oliver Greenaway and Carl Penwarden at the Wellington ‘meet & greet’ with up-and-coming graduates.

Chatbot & Natural Language Processing
The talk covers the basics of implementing a chatbot through Facebook Messenger using a Natural Language Processing (NLP) API called RecastAI.

Devs for Ukraine Conference
On the early mornings of 26th and 27th April (4am NZ time) members of the developer teams from Abletech and Addressfinder attended the [Devs For Ukraine](https://www.devsforukraine.io/) Conference, a free, online engineering conference with the goal to raise funds and provide support to Ukraine.

Getting started with Stripe, Rails and React in three easy steps
A client recently requested to add the functionality to be able to accept credit card payments within a Rails application that we were building. Specifically, they wanted users to be able to purchase vouchers using credit card payments and pass on any processing fees. Once the payment was complete, the transaction had to be recorded within the app and an email needed to be sent out to both the purchaser and the giftee. Stripe came into the picture then.

.*](/img/OAdtiilj0m-1920.webp)
Pragmatic Refactoring
Last year, I read the amazing *99 Bottles of OOP* by Sandi Metz, Katrina Owen & TJ Stankus. The book explores OOP concepts and how to refactor code while being one cmd + z
away from green tests. It teaches “practical techniques for getting things done that lead, naturally and inevitably, to beautiful code”, by changing one line at a time.
 on [Unsplash](https://unsplash.com/s/photos/venice-carnival?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText)](/img/R5kdHs3xbc-1200.webp)
Testing ActiveRecord Concerns
ActiveRecord classes manage persistence and have a tight relationship with their database tables. This relationship, sometimes, makes testing tricky and even trickier when testing Rails concerns. This article describes how to test a concern in isolation from its ActiveRecord class and its associated database table.
 on [Unsplash](https://unsplash.com/s/photos/hope?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText)](/img/Rp3IDOBeKp-1200.webp)
An alternative to service objects
Service objects are overused. They have become the default solution for any new features in a Rails codebase. They’re also hard to talk about as they mean different things for different people. Here is how I define them:

Rails best practice security exceptions
However, these security features can adversely affect real users and you may notice ActionController::InvalidAuthenticityToken
exceptions appearing in your production runtime which can be challenging to reproduce.

Noodle consuming student to caffeinated developer
After finishing a Bachelor of Science majoring in Computer Science, and several months of job searching, I applied for an internship at Abletech.

Coding newbie to junior developer
I felt the need to grow. I was dissatisfied with the opportunities offered by my established career so I considered my options.

Ruby Conf in Wellington
The Ruby community holds conferences all over the globe, using local and international speakers, for Rubyists of all levels. The latest conference was a single day of talks held at Te Papa in Wellington which is two blocks from Abletech’s headquarters.

Brighton Ruby 2019
In the UK, there are two Ruby conferences held each year — Bath Ruby and Brighton Ruby. North West Ruby user meetup group enthusiasts encouraged members to attend Brighton Ruby since it was the only Ruby conference being held this year.

Addressfinder Dashboard
Find out what Chris did, how he did it, and what he learnt along the way.

How to get a Summer Internship with Abletech
We’re often asked how students and graduates can increase their chances of getting a paid summer internship with Abletech. Here are a few options to help you stand out from the crowd:

Volunteer-led coding weekend — RailsBridge
Volunteers and participants at the 2018 workshop. Photo cred: RailsBridge

RubyConf 2018
This year’s RubyConf AU was held in Doltone House at Jones Bay Wharf, Sydney. Here’s a review of my highlights:

Interning at Abletech
Matt reflects on three months at Abletech. He’s been working with Ruby on Rails and describes coding, testing and deploying for both in-house and external clients. Watch a video to hear more about his experience of Test Frameworks, RSpec, Capybara, Microservices, Docker, APIs, Git and more!


My First Month at Abletech
Working at Abletech is awesome. The team is really friendly and I’ve worked on a wide range of projects. From the moment I arrived for my first day, I was made to feel right at home and not at all like an intern. Carl gave me a tour of our office, I met the Abletech and Sharesight teams and, most importantly, learned how to operate the coffee machine! Everyone is incredibly skilled and talented and always available to help out when I’m stuck on a problem. It has also been a supportive learning environment where I’ve felt valued.



Rails Girls SUPERCHARGED⚡️
For the first time ever Rails Girls Wellington are running an event designed for people who no longer feel like beginners.

Kick-start your tech career
Here are Abletechers Kate Norquay, Oliver Greenaway and Carl Penwarden at the Wellington ‘meet & greet’ with up-and-coming graduates.

Chatbot & Natural Language Processing
The talk covers the basics of implementing a chatbot through Facebook Messenger using a Natural Language Processing (NLP) API called RecastAI.