Posted by Curt Hibbs Thu, 25 May 2006 23:35:00 GMT
I only discovered this site a couple hours ago, but it has already become my favorite api reference site:
It uses api reference material gathered dynamically from authoritative sources, and it includes api documentation for Ruby, Rails, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, DOM, and much more…
Highly recommended!
Posted by Curt Hibbs Sat, 13 May 2006 17:06:00 GMT
Wow! I thought I wouldn’t see this for another year. The JRuby guys got the cookbook Rails app running on JRuby (it uses an Active Record to JDBC adapter). Read all about it here.
Good work guys!
Posted by Curt Hibbs Sat, 13 May 2006 10:20:00 GMT
If you’re doing Ajax and any kind of JavaScript work and you don’t know about the Firebug extension for Firefox, then you are in for a real treat.
For me, Firebug is already an essential tool, but it just got better!
Posted by Curt Hibbs Sat, 13 May 2006 09:15:00 GMT
There are a few items on my wish list for Rails aplications. The two top ones are a meetup.com replacement, and something similar to the Python based Trac.
I’ll admit that the meetup.com item is a vendetta of sorts (that’s probably too strong). Meetup.com provides a really nice service. It was meetup.com’s low barrier to entry that enticed me to get off my butt and start the St. Louis Ruby Users Group (only days after I told someone that I didn’t have the time to start a users group).
The problem I have with meetup.com is I feel that they screwed over their users. Initially, the service was free. This, and the fact that their service was nicely implemented caused an explosion of signups. Once they had suckered in a lot of users groups they started charging $19/month.
I have no problem with them charging for their service, but $19/month was way too high. I don’t have access to their records but I’ll bet there was a mass exodus, and there would have been even more if there had been a decent alternative. I felt that at $3 to $5 a month, they could easily corner the market and discourage competitors. But at $19 I expected to see some competition real-soon-now.
That never materialized, but I think meetup.com has now lowered the price to $9/month. Its too late for me, though—they’ve already left a sour taste in my mouth.
I still think a meetup.com replacement would make a great Rails project. Someone needs to step up and just do it!
Trac is a really nice project management system. It combines all the needed pieces (wiki, issue tracking, releasing planning, subversion source control, etc.) into one nice, attractive package.
This also would make a great Rails project, although I’ll admit there are fewer compelling reasons for this one since Trac is open source.
But it would be nice to have one in Rails because Rails developers would be more likely to to customize it when needed and develop and contribute extensions. There are so many Rails developers that I could see a strong ecosystem developing around this project (much like what has happened with Typo).
It wouldn’t need to be developed from scratch either since many of the needed pieces are already available as Rails apps:
There’s a great opportunity here for someone!
Posted by Curt Hibbs Sat, 06 May 2006 00:59:00 GMT
This is a real teaser…
Andy Hunt reports that Dr. Dobb’s Journal has a cover story about Ruby on Rails in the June 2006 issue in which they say:
DDJ will be tracking Rails closely in the coming months because it may represent a historic tipping point in development environments.
Cool… I want to read more! But the link just takes me to the page for the Pragmatic Bookshelf’s Rails book.
I figure that’s a simple error, so I Google for the DDJ site, go directly there and look for the article. Nope, not there! Actually, there’s no mention of the June 2006 articles, only articles for May 2006.
Looks like Andy got to see some advance copy, and the rest of us are just going to have to wait!
Arrrrg…
UPDATE: Its out now… you can read it here.
Posted by Curt Hibbs Fri, 05 May 2006 16:19:00 GMT
I’ve always loved atronomical photography. If you feel the same way, then here are some new, must see images of the earth.
This spectacular “blue marble” image is the most detailed true-color image of the entire Earth to date. Using a collection of satellite-based observations, scientists and visualizers stitched together months of observations of the land surface, oceans, sea ice, and clouds into a seamless, true-color mosaic of every square kilometer (.386 square mile) of our planet. These images are freely available to educators, scientists, museums, and the public. This record includes preview images and links to full resolution versions up to 21,600 pixels across.
via reddit
Posted by Curt Hibbs Sat, 29 Apr 2006 18:07:00 GMT
Microsoft’s Don Box recently had some interesting things to say about Ruby:
From where I sit, Ruby has the language thought leadership position and is the competitor I hope AndersH is losing the most sleep over nowadays.
...
BTW, I agree that Ruby stands to eat at least as much mindshare from Java as we do.
I also am hopeful that we’re SLIGHTLY less vulnerable to Ruby than Java is, but I hope none of my colleages in the big house get any comfort from that hope ;-)
One thing I do know is that Ruby has pretty much eclipsed Java on my competitive radar.
via James Britt
Posted by Curt Hibbs Fri, 21 Apr 2006 18:29:00 GMT
Ruby is kicking butt—I really liked that quote from one of Tim O’Reilly’s posts on the State of the Computer Book Market (which he does annually).
Of course, he’s talking about book sales specifically in the category of programming languages. As a Ruby advocate, the best part for me was the statistics for Ruby book sales compared to other dynamic languages:
Ruby continues its meteoric ascent. In book sales, it is now slightly larger than Python, 80% the size of Perl, and 1/3 the size of PHP. As more publishers jump on the Ruby and Rails bandwagons, we expect these numbers to grow even more significantly next quarter.
Posted by Curt Hibbs Mon, 17 Apr 2006 19:14:00 GMT
I saw this before, about a year ago, but Tim O’Reilly just reminded me. Its a funny and disturbing video of what it could be like to order a pizza in a future where companies are wired in and know everything about you.
Posted by Curt Hibbs Mon, 17 Apr 2006 18:40:00 GMT
Dave Thomas just posted Eric Knapp’s report about how the productivity boost of Ruby on Rails has more repercussions than just the obvious saving of time and money. It is also an enabler for things that were previously not possible.
My client can no longer replace any IT employee when someone leaves. They are down to one network administrator (!) and two programmers.
...
Then I started sharing rails with him. I like rails and I tend to be enthusiastic. About ten minutes into my presentation he interrupted me and said, “So, this could save my IT department, couldn’t it?”
I this in an important, possibly overlooked, aspect of a 10x to 20x productivity increase, which fits in nicely with ideas I wrote about in The Longest Tail.
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