Posted by Curt Hibbs Sun, 16 Apr 2006 05:32:00 GMT
Almost a year ago, Sunao Tanabe translated part 1 of my Rolling with Ruby on Rails tutorial into Japanese.
Now, Yoichiro Hasebe has translated part 2 of Rolling with Ruby on Rails into Japanese!
Thank you, Yoichiro!
Posted by Curt Hibbs Sat, 15 Apr 2006 06:58:00 GMT
I don’t usually post on topics that are not related to software development, but I often lament over the fact that so much of our news reports are one sided.
Did you know that almost a week ago, 60 world renowned scientists wrote an open letter to the Canadian Prime Minister requesting a rational examination of the science of global warming? I try to following the global warming debate pretty closely and I never heard about this until Dave posted about it.
Wow, you’ve really got to be on the lookout for this stuff. The media just doesn’t report it. It’s not in my local newspaper. It’s not in the national newspapers or news magazines. I haven’t heard a single word about it uttered on the radio. Most TV news never even mentions this stuff. How are we to stay informed if we don’t spend inordinate amounts of time digging through the web to find out what’s going on.
I just searched Google News and I only found two reports:
A comment posted to Dave’s blog article listed three Canadian reports.
Why would the mainstream media see this as not worth reporting?
On a related note, let me ask you: do you have news sources that you trust to give you balanced coverage? If so, then please share it with us.
Posted by Curt Hibbs Wed, 12 Apr 2006 18:20:00 GMT
I few weeks ago I reported that Washington University (in St. Louis) was offering a Ruby class and that it was possible that a Rails class would be offered as well.
The first Ruby class started last night, and I just found out that the Rails class is now official, and will be taught in four evenings starting on August 22:
As I reported before, both the Ruby class and the Rails class are thanks to the efforts of Object Computing Inc., which developed the courses and is supplying the instructors.
Posted by Curt Hibbs Fri, 07 Apr 2006 17:58:00 GMT
Ruby finally made it into the top 20 list of programming languages, as measured by the TIOBE Index!
Posted by Curt Hibbs Fri, 07 Apr 2006 16:09:00 GMT
Yesterday, Cedric posted a fairly well written blog entry titled Why Ruby on Rails won’t become mainstream. This is not Rails bashing, as the author is quick to point out (he admits to being a big fan of Ruby on Rails), but rather his honest assessment of what he sees as the current deficiencies in Ruby on Rails.
The article is a good read, and I agree with most of his deficiency list (though not all). But I do not draw the same conclusions, and many of the posted comments said the same thing. Adam Schepis posted his reasons on his own blog.
Part of the problem is without some definition of what you mean by “mainstream” its hard to know if everyone is talking about the same thing.
Be sure to read the comments to Cedric’s blog posting, many of them are as good as the post itself. DHH himself posted a tongue-in-cheek response that made me laugh out loud:
Thank you for the kind writeup, Cedric. I definitely agree that Ruby on Rails has a tough road ahead becoming truly mainstream. That road is always tough, for any technology. Less for technical reasons and more for cultural and marketing reasons.
But nothing gets me fired up like knowing we have something valuable that lots of people haven’t discovered or experienced yet.
Although evangelism and rhetorics sometimes do bore. Perhaps I should just, as the guy with the God complex, widely considered to be arrogant, and once called “king of the internet”, pass down some stone tablets and command people to obey. Free will is overrated. (hm)
UPDATE: David just post his full response on his own blog. Given his understanding of “mainstream”, he doesn’t really want Rails to go mainstream.
To me, mainstream is mostly about reaching people who just don’t care. There are certainly benefits to having such a broad reach that it can include people who don’t care, but the downsides are at least as big. Especially in open source projects like Rails that we’re primarily involved in to do something for ourselves. Solve our own problems, not be a vendor, and all that.
Posted by Curt Hibbs Fri, 31 Mar 2006 22:36:00 GMT
Paul Graham does a good job of laying out the current situation in software patents. But I still find the whole sordid business slightly disgusting.
Posted by Curt Hibbs Fri, 31 Mar 2006 22:27:00 GMT
If this is true, then its really disturbing. I want to be able to rely on user ratings at Amazon, but if they are artificially skewed by eliminating negative comments, then these ratings will lose my trust.
Of course, one story does not make for a systemic pattern, but this has raise a red flag for me and I will be watching for corroboration.
Posted by Curt Hibbs Fri, 31 Mar 2006 18:44:00 GMT
If you are trying to get the productivity benefits of Ruby on Rails while staying in Java, you should check out a promising new lightweight framework, Waffle
While I am, personally, firmly in the Ruby on Rails camp I try to follow the many Java projects that try to bring the RoR productivity advances back home to Java.
I don’t believe that any of these frameworks can ever match the full productivity levels of RoR itself, but a lot of improvement is definitely possible. Not only that, but it is highly desirable to do so because there are many legitimate reasons to stay in Java.
As someone who has been involved in RoR since nearly the beginning, I have a pretty good internal understanding of synergistic facets of RoR that combine to provide these productivity benefits. Most of the attempts to bring RoR-style productivity to Java have been improvements, but really haven’t provided the Java developer with a breakthrough level of productivity.
So, I was really excited when I read about Waffle. From everything I’ve read, it has really distilled some of the essential characteristics that enable RoR’s productivity, and implemented them in Java. For now, take this with grain of salt because I have not actually used it yet. What I am saying, is that from my RoR experience I think Waffle is worth checking out.
Also, I’d be interested in hear from anyone who actually uses Waffle to hear your first-hand experience report.
Posted by Curt Hibbs Tue, 28 Mar 2006 18:38:00 GMT
The Rails dev team has released Rails 1.1 and, as usual, it is a very impressive release. You can read about it here.
The Instant Rails team is working hard to get Instant Rails 1.1 out today or tomorrow that will include this new release of Rails.
Stay tuned…
Posted by Curt Hibbs Mon, 27 Mar 2006 18:25:00 GMT
As Amy Hoy said in the comment she posted: “Holy guacamole!”, and I have to agree—there are a lot of Ruby and Ruby on Rails books coming out this year. You can thank Rob Sanheim for compiling this list.
