Ruby Weekly is a weekly newsletter covering the latest Ruby and Rails news.

Author Archives: Peter Cooper

By Peter Cooper / July 6, 2012

Welcome to this week’s Web-based syndication of Ruby Weekly, the Ruby e-mail newsletter (which just turned 100 weeks old this week – issue 100! :-))

Highlights include: Ruby 1.8.7′s last ever bug fix release, the Ruby OpenSource Challenge, a new open source code review system, and the results of a Rubyist text editor poll.

Headlines

Ruby 1.8.7-p370 Released: The Last Bug Fix Release for 1.8.7
Still using 1.8.7? Right on schedule, this is your last bug fix release, with only security fixes available for the next year before 1.8.7 is abandoned entirely.

The Ruby OpenSource Challenge
Backed by a large variety of prize givers and sponsors, the Ruby OpenSource Challenge encourages you to help improve the Active Admin project. Read More

By Peter Cooper / June 29, 2012

Welcome to this week’s Web-based syndication of Ruby Weekly, the Ruby e-mail newsletter.

Highlights include: MagicRuby 2012, a code structure/patterns ‘drama’, Mark Bates’ new CoffeeScript book, minitest 3.2.0, and the Ruby Rogues chatting with Jim Weirich (who I met for the first time this week, ironically at a JavaScript conference!)

Headlines

‘Programming in CoffeeScript’ by Mark Bates, Now Available
Mark Bates, a Ruby developer, was won over by CoffeeScript and has written a book for Addison-Wesley which has now been published. Despite being a language that compiles down to JavaScript, CoffeeScript has become relevant to Rails developers in recent times given its inclusion in Rails 3.1+. Read More

By Peter Cooper / June 22, 2012

Welcome to this week’s Web-based syndication of Ruby Weekly, the Ruby e-mail newsletter. While I have you, be sure to follow @RubyInside on Twitter as I’m going to be posting news more frequently there than on the Web site in future.


The latest highlights include: Rails 3.2.6, RailsInstaller for OS X, Pow 0.4.0, Rails 2 Asset Pipeline, Sidekiq 2.0, and Savon 1.0.

Headlines

Rails 3.2.6 Released: Fixes More Vulnerabilities
Rails 3.2.4 was released a few weeks ago fixing two serious security vulnerabilities (explained in another post below). Rails 3.2.5 then followed a day later as 3.2.4 introduced a nasty scoping bug.. Read More

By Peter Cooper / June 11, 2012

Welcome to the bumper pick’n'mix of Ruby and Rails news and releases for May 2012, fresh from the pages of Ruby Weekly (which, unsurprisingly, comes out once every week – on Thursdays).

Highlights include: RubyMotion’s release, the JRuby guys are moving to Red Hat, Spree 1.1, DHH’s RailsConf keynote, and JRuby 1.7.0 preview 1.

Headlines

RubyMotion Released: It’s Ruby, but for iOS
The biggest Ruby news of the month! RubyMotion is a Ruby implementation and toolchain for iOS by Laurent Sansonetti, the former MacRuby lead developer, that lets you build iPhone and iPad apps.

DHH’s RailsConf 2012 Keynote (YouTube)
DHH rails against conservatism, people who think about the newbies, and ex-hippies, while celebrating progress and getting the audience to chant “I will not fear change, I will not fight progress”. Read More

By Peter Cooper / May 22, 2012

Breaking news! At JRubyConf 2012 (a 3 day JRuby-focused conference in Minneapolis) it has just been announced that JRuby core team members Thomas Enebo and Charles Nutter are moving from Engine Yard to open source giants Red Hat.

The news was confirmed by Nutter in a tweet:

Engine Yard shares their side of the story and says they’ll continue to “work closely with Charles and Tom as well as Red Hat to continue development of JRuby and collaborate on JRuby features to support customers running on JRuby on Engine Yard Cloud.”

From the Red Hat perspective comes this post by JBoss director Mark Little. Read More

By Peter Cooper / April 27, 2012

Welcome to April 2012′s bumper pick’n'mix of Ruby and Rails news and releases, fresh from the pages of Ruby Weekly.

Highlights include: Matz’s new Ruby implementation, MobiRuby (Ruby for iOS), Passenger 3.0.12, Ruby 1.9.3-p194, TorqueBox 2.0, Adhearsion 2.0, and Dr Nic’s App Scrolls.

Headlines

Ruby 1.9.3-p194 Released
A small version bump for Ruby 1.9.3 which includes a security fix for RubyGems (and therefore an updated version) along with oodles of minor tweaks and fixes.

MRuby: A Lightweight Ruby Implementation by Matz
It’s been in the making for a while (remember RiteVM?) but this week Matz’s new ‘lightweight’ Ruby implementation, mruby, spread around the Rubysphere like wildfire. Read More

By Peter Cooper / April 12, 2012

And again, a mixture of travel, illness, and exhaustion have prevented me from my weekly updates on here (although Ruby Weekly is still going out on a weekly basis!) so here’s a bumper update for all of the top Ruby and Rails news from March 2012.

Highlights include: Matz wins a prize, Ruby is approved by the ISO, some awesome jobs, Bundler 1.1, Vagrant 1.0, Rails 3.2.3, Avdi Grimm’s Object on Rails book, the Pragmatic Programmers release some more awesome books and, of course, a lot more.

Headlines

Matz Wins FSF’s 2011 Award for the Advancement of Free Software
Free Software Foundation president Richard M. Read More

By Peter Cooper / March 2, 2012

Oops! I forgot to post the weekly Ruby news updates from Ruby Weekly to Ruby Inside in February so.. here’s a mega roundup of all that was new in the Ruby and Rails worlds in February 2012. I’ll try to keep posting every week from here on – sorry.

Highlights include: a new Ruby 1.9.3 release, REE’s end of life, Spree 1.0, some Rails 4 news, Devise 2.0, a new private gem hosting service.. and that’s just scratching the surface :-) Enjoy! (And don’t forget to subscribe to Ruby Weekly if you want to receive something like this every week via e-mail or The Ruby Show if you want it in podcast/audio form.)

Headlines

Ruby 1.9.3-p125 Released
Patchlevel 125 of Ruby 1.9.3 is the latest production release of MRI. Read More

By Peter Cooper / January 28, 2012

It’s the latest Web-based syndication of Ruby Weekly, the weekly Ruby and Rails e-mail newsletter (which just tipped 11K subscribers). Ruby Weekly now has a ‘tips’ page where you can submit links for potential inclusion so if you’re releasing something or have written a cool post, fill out the form and you may be in Ruby Weekly next week :-)

Headlines

Rails 3.2 Released
DHH has unveiled Rails 3.2! Not quite as big a deal as 3.1 but has a faster development mode, faster route recognition, a tagged logger, and more. With Rails master now aiming at 4.0.0, it seems 3.2 may be the last version of Rails to support Ruby 1.8. Read More

By Peter Cooper / January 20, 2012

Welcome to this week’s Web-based syndication of Ruby Weekly, my Ruby e-mail newsletter.

Headlines

Vote for your ‘Ruby Hero’ in the Ruby Hero Awards
The Ruby Heroes awards run each year and present 6 community nominated ‘heroes’ with an award at RailsConf. Nominations are now open so go and drop your nomination for the Rubyist whose code has brightened up your life the most in the past year.

Heroku Receives InfoWorld’s Technology of the Year Award
Sorry it’s just a press release but it’s great to see a company that came up from the Ruby world continue to do well. Read More

By Peter Cooper / January 16, 2012

Welcome to this week’s Web-based syndication of Ruby Weekly, the Ruby e-mail newsletter. While I have you, be sure to follow @RubyInside on Twitter as I’m going to be posting news more frequently there than on the Web site in future.


Also, if you’re interested in getting one interesting programming related quote or link each day on Twitter, check out @codewisdom.


Headlines

RSpec 2.8: The Popular Ruby BDD Tool Goes Supersonic
RSpec 2.8 and rspec-rails 2.8.1 have been released and some users have been reporting significant performance improvements. Other tweaks include improved documentation, better tag and filtering options, random example execution, and ‘rspec –init’ for adding RSpec to an empty Ruby project. Read More

By Peter Cooper / January 7, 2012

RSpec 2.8 has been released, along with rspec-rails 2.8.1 for the full Rails 3.x integration experience.

RSpec is a BDD-focused testing tool that’s particularly popular in the Rails world where everyone except DHH is using it (if you believe the hoopla). RSpec has faced accusations of being less than speedy in the past, but it seems 2.8 has had a performance firework shoved up its tailpipe:

David Chelimsky, the creator of RSpec, also notes that in RSpec 2.8:

  • the documentation has been significantly improved
  • there’s improved support for tags and filtering
  • random example running order support (with user definable seed)
  • rspec –init will create a spec directory and some starter code on a blank project – ideal for Ruby library development!
  • Read More

By Peter Cooper / January 6, 2012

Ruby Weekly has just tipped over 10,000 subscribers but I know not everyone is into getting their news via e-mail, so here’s the latest frequent roundup of the latest Ruby and Rails news for you, all on the Web :-)

Key News, Releases, and Headlines

Hungry Academy Application Process Closes This Weekend
LivingSocial’s ‘Hungry Academy’ will provide a paid, on-site 5 month Ruby and Rails learning experience and mentorship program to a small group of lucky applicants. Interested? You’ve only got a few days left to apply.

DOS Attack Vulnerability Found in Ruby 1.8′s Hash Algorithm
Ruby 1.8.7-p352 and earlier are affected by a wide reaching (as in Python and Java are also affected!) hash related vulnerability. Read More

By Peter Cooper / January 2, 2012

jobs.pngRecently Forbes wrote about the rise of ‘developernomics’, noting that companies are seeing programmers as a ‘safe haven’ investment in otherwise troubled times. Maybe.. maybe not.. but the Ruby and Rails job market is as hot as ever, so if you’re looking for a new position, be sure to negotiate well! ;-)

To promote a job, see our Post A Job page. Your listing not only ends up on the Ruby Inside and RubyFlow sidebars but also in the 10114 subscriber Ruby Weekly for free (as a bonus) and on our 7305 follower @rubyinside Twitter account.

Senior Engineer – Edinburgh, United Kingdom

FreeAgent, the pioneers in web-based accounting, is looking for a senior engineer to join their engineering team in a brand new office in beautiful Edinburgh. Read More

By Peter Cooper / December 15, 2011

Ruby isn’t known for its game development chops despite having a handful of interesting libraries suited to it. Java, on the other hand, has a thriving and popular game development scene flooded with powerful libraries, tutorials and forums. Can we drag some of Java’s thunder kicking and screaming over to the world of Ruby? Yep! – thanks to JRuby. Let’s run through the steps to build a simple ‘bat and ball’ game now.

The Technologies We’ll Be Using

JRuby

If you’re part of the “meh, JRuby” brigade, suspend your disbelief for a minute. JRuby is easy to install, easy to use, and isn’t going to trample all over your system or suck up all your memory. Read More