The Rails Edge Denver - Marcel Molina Jr

Posted by Scott Sun, 19 Nov 2006 02:12:00 GMT

I’m here at The Rails Edge Conference in Denver and will summarize some of the talks. This topic is of interest only to those interested in Ruby or Rails, so if that is you – read on. If not, please disregard.

Active Record Demystified by Marcel Molina Jr.

Rails Core Team member Marcel Molina Jr. presented a walkthrough of ActiveRecord::Base#Save ActiveRecord::Base.find as part of the “Active Record Demystified” talk.

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The Rails Edge Denver - Dave Thomas

Posted by Scott Sat, 18 Nov 2006 02:12:00 GMT

I’m here at The Rails Edge Conference in Denver and will summarize some of the talks throughout the conference. This topic is of interest only to those interested in Ruby or Rails, so if that is you – read on. If not, please disregard.

Dave Thomas – Buried Treasure

Dave gave a great talk on a ton of little things that all add up to make Ruby and Rails a great environment in which to be working. He covered things such as using svn, the console, handing Strings, Arrays, libraries, blocks, TextMate, and irb. Too much good stuff to mention here!

Scott’s Take

If you are a Ruby on Rails developer, get yourself to the next The Rails Edge.

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Products or Services (or Both?)

Posted by Scott Thu, 16 Nov 2006 02:10:00 GMT

Tomorrow I will be attending the Day 1 of The Rails Edge series presented by the good folks at Pragmatic Studio.

Choice of Language and Framework

Our company is solidly behind web applications as the future of software delivery, especially as Internet connectivity becomes ubiquitous. We are also commited to Ruby on Rails as our development environment of choice. Nothing else has met the speed of development and, more importantly, the joy of development than that which I have experienced with Ruby and Rails. We have developed (but not yet deployed) our first application using Rails.

You can read more about Ruby and Rails in my review of David Black’s book Ruby for Rails.

Choice of Business Model

While choice of language is largely a matter of personal preference, choice of business model is a result of studying the industry; especially looking at other software companies’ experiences in the both product markets and services markets.

Products or Services?

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RailsConf 2007

Posted by Scott Sat, 29 Jul 2006 01:09:00 GMT

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Derailed: The Denver Rails User Group

Posted by Scott Sat, 29 Jul 2006 01:08:00 GMT

I attended the Denver on Rails User Group, aka “Derailed” last night at the Tattered Cover bookstore downtown Denver. There were about 20 folks there in various stages of Rails experience. Some having worked with it from the start and some just starting. Some guys were excited to be working in Rails full time and others were enviously watching from their non-Rails day jobs.

While I just sat quietly and contributed nothing, what struck me most about the group in general was everyone’s willingness to share knowledge and the general excitement over Ruby on Rails. Despite the looks of bewilderment in many IT professionals’ eyes while they scratch their head and wonder what all the fuss is about, I can tell you that people do get excited about the framework and what it means to their work. People are making serious systems with Ruby on Rails. The excitement level is growing at such a fast clip that the next Railsconf is going to be one like never seen before (RailsConf 2007 – May 17-20, 2007 – Portland Oregon) – everyone is going to be wishing they were at Railsconf.

Until then, find a local Rails user group or other Rails conferences and training events. If you are in the Denver area and interested in Ruby on Rails, I recommend joining this fine group of developers. More information at the Derailed google group.

There were two live, hands-on presentations. Both presenters did a good job and the work they put into their talks encouraged me to visit again and hopefully someday have something to present. I will not repeat the presentations here but urge you to visit:

Phil Ripperger’s presentation on Rails and Web Services.

Kevin Williams also gave a talk on What’s New in Rails 1.2. Example code is available here.

Thanks Phil and Kevin.

I plan on being at the next Derailed meeting.

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Ruby for Rails Book

Posted by Scott Tue, 18 Jul 2006 00:10:00 GMT

This book is a must have for Ruby on Rails developers.

While you could develop Rails applications without understanding Ruby, to do would completely miss out on the reasons Rails was created in Ruby. Ruby is a powerful and enjoyable language.

For those of you that do not know of David Black, here is a part of the bio from his book: “A Ruby community leader, David Black is the director of Ruby Central, the parent organization of the annual International Ruby Conference (RubyConf) and the International Rails Conference. David is a Ruby core contributor and the creator and maintainer of RCRchive.”

The reasons that I think you must know Ruby to become an effective and efficient Rails programming machine:

1. To understand the Rails source code

2. To make your Rails apps do something beyond pushing data in and out of a database.

3. To take advantage of “Ruby everywhere”

4. To use Ruby for non-Rails tasks (automation).

5. To enjoy developing Rails apps!

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