Posted by Curt Hibbs
Tue, 28 Feb 2006 19:23:00 GMT
I just read through Scott Raymond’s
list of new features
that will be in Rails 1.1. It is both impressive and extensive. This really feels more like a 2.0 to me.
In fact, the core team (and over 120 other contributors) haven’t slowed down one bit, and the next major release of Rails is imminent. If you’re running Edge Rails, you already have access to all the latest features, but perhaps a few have missed your radar. So I’d like to round-up what’s new since 1.0 (or at least, everything that’s interesting to me—I’ve skipped a ton of bug fixes and smaller changes.) Let’s start with the easier parts.
Posted in rails | no comments
Posted by Curt Hibbs
Fri, 24 Feb 2006 06:11:00 GMT
DHH just posted that his (and Dave Thomas’) book Agile Development with Rails has been translated into French, Japanese, and German.
Coincidentally, just today I receivced word that the Rolling with Ruby on Rails tutorials have been translated into Spanish (part 1 and part 2). They had previously been previously translated into French and Japanese.
Its really nice to see this level of interest in non-English languages.
Posted in rails | 1 comment
Posted by Curt Hibbs
Wed, 22 Feb 2006 16:56:00 GMT
I have often wondered what’s its like to take the
Pragmatic Rails Studio,
how
Dave
and
Mike
approach the teaching of Ruby and Rails. If you have wondered the same thing, then you’re in luck—John Nunemaker just posted an excellent
three-part series
detailing his three day experience at the recent Studio in Chicago.
Posted in rails | 2 comments
PHP is a point & shoot; Rails is an SLR
Posted by Curt Hibbs
Mon, 20 Feb 2006 19:51:00 GMT
I declare this to officially be Metaphor Day. After reading this post, I realized that:
(via Obie)
Posted in rails, other | 5 comments
Posted by Curt Hibbs
Fri, 17 Feb 2006 17:01:00 GMT
Planning a conference is really tough. You have to guess how many people will sign up, and guessing accurately is really important.
On one hand, you can’t rent a 900 person facility if only 300 people are going to show up (unless you like losing money). On the other hand, you really want to be able to accomodate everyone who is interested.
RailsConf 2006
initially opened registration with a capacity of 400. That sold out in about a week, which shows that their original guess was way too low. But who would have known?
It appears that they renegotiated with the hotel and were able to secure an additional 150 seats. When they reopened registration those
seats sold
out in less than 24 hours! This really makes me wonder how many people would have signed up if the capacity had been there.
All is not lost, however. They still have openings left at the
Canada on Rails
conference. Many of the top Rails developers and authors are going to be there (including DHH himself). Go check it out!
Posted in rails | no comments
Posted by Curt Hibbs
Thu, 02 Feb 2006 08:00:00 GMT
The first
Internation Rails Conference 2006
(aka RailsConf 2006) just opened for registration!
I don’t know what the capacity is, but I’m sure it will be soldout. So, if you really want to go, register as soon as possible (I just finished my registration).
Look at the keynote lineup
(some heavy hitters in the software industry):
- Martin Fowler
- Paul Graham
- David Heinemeier Hansson
- Dave Thomas
Posted in rails | 1 comment
Posted by Curt Hibbs
Thu, 05 Jan 2006 08:00:00 GMT
I almost forgot to blog about this (I’m not used to blogging about my own stuff)...
I just released
Instant Rails 1.0.
Instant Rails is a one-stop Rails runtime solution containing Ruby, Rails, Apache, and MySQL, all preconfigured and ready to run. No installer, you simply drop it into the directory of your choice and run it. It does not modify your system environment. It even includes the Rails-based blogging software
Typo
preinstalled as a sample application (thanks to David Morton for doing this).
This initial version of Instant Rails is a fork of
EasyPHP
and, consequently is Windows-only.
Fortunately, I got
four other people
excited enough about this project to join me in developing Instant Rails 2 which will be cross-platform.
Posted in rails | no comments
Posted by Curt Hibbs
Wed, 21 Dec 2005 08:00:00 GMT
Last February when Jesse James Garrett
first wrote
about the new term he had coined, AJAX, I was
one of the first
people to run up and down the hallways shouting, “Yes! Yes!” because I immediately recognized the value of attaching this new moniker to some previously obscure (but increasingly important) techniques.
I don’t know if
Productivity Arbitrage
has that same resonant ring to it that AJAX had, but I think Obie Fernandez has certainly crystalized the concept very well. If you want to know why you should start using Ruby Rails now (especially if you are a consultant), then this is a must-read.
Want a realistic example of what I’m describing? Two well-respected consultancies find themselves competing head-to-head for a project: a fairly typical internal web application, of the type that large corporate clients often request. Both consultancies follow Agile practices. Timely delivery for this project is critical (as usual), but delivering on-time is particularly important in this case. The client will get hit with severe regulatory penalties if the new system is not implemented within a year’s time.
The decision makers at Consultancy A propose a Java-based solution at a price of a million dollars, and they estimate final delivery within 10 months. Their bid is competitively-priced and they feel confident about it. They plan to allocate an experienced team using a mature platform (Java). They calculate, using rough figures, that 6 resources x $97 blended hourly rate x 10 months equals about $1MM, a gross margin of about 25%. A higher margin would be better, but all-in-all this deal is not too shabby.
The folks at Consultancy B also have extensive experience building the kind of webapp needed and they see a potential productivity arbitrage play. Instead of Java, they differentiate themselves by pitching a Ruby on Rails solution. Quite innocently, they undercut their competition by pricing their bid at $800K and promising delivery within 6 months. According to their calculations, (and once again, these are rough figures), 4 resources x $192 rate x 8 months equals about $800k. That rate ($192) represents a much higher gross margin, even taking into account that Consultancy B pays its consultants higher salaries.
Can you guess who won? Consultancy B won! At the contract signing, the client CIO says that it was a “no brainer” and lists the following reasons in order of increasing importance…
Please go read
Productivity Arbitrage
now, and be sure to include reading the other posts to which he links. This is about real-world consultancies staking their business on the productivity advantages of Ruby on Rails!
Posted in rails | no comments
Posted by Curt Hibbs
Wed, 21 Dec 2005 08:00:00 GMT
Yesterday, I commented on
a blog post by Microsoft’s Robert Scoble who asked why developers are
leaving .NET for Ruby on Rails.
As I said then, the post itself was short, but there were many comments posted, and a lot of those posts directly answered his question.
I many more comments have been posted since then, and as I was reading through them, this one caught my eye (excerpted from comment #65):
I now develop everything in RoR.
I managed a development of an internet portal system for a University. I was employed for three years (until the end of this month!) and had a project budget of £1.2 million. We built in .NET and based most of the framework on Microsoft Content Management Server. It took 4 developers, 2 SQL boxes, several hundred thousand lines of code and many, many hundreds of thousands of pounds to get something that was so-so together.
I reimplemented the whole thing in RoR in about a week, on my own, and it was a quicker system when it was finished. I was able to develop on my feeble little iBook, deploy onto a FreeBSD server and plug it into MySQL. The finished product looked identical to the MS solution but was cheaper, quicker and more fun to develop.
This is a telling and compelling story!
Even taking into account the fact that this was a reimplementation, so the design was already known, it is still very impressive that this system could be reimplemented in a week.
Posted in rails | no comments
Posted by Curt Hibbs
Tue, 20 Dec 2005 08:00:00 GMT
Ryan Ripley writes
about what it takes to be a success in the marketplace (we all know the technical excellence, alone, is not enough), and why Ruby on Rails had all of the required pieces. Its a good read!
At the end, he concludes:
So there you have it: strong story, timing, going viral, and being authentic. I truly believe that if you are missing just one of these factors, having the greatest framework or in general any product, will not help you.
(via Obie)
Posted in rails | no comments
