Peter Cooper Page 31 : Ruby Inside

Lone Star Ruby Conference 2008 – Austin, Texas – September 4-6, 2008

By Peter Cooper / July 8, 2008

Registration for Texas’s own Ruby conference, the Lone Star Ruby Conference, has opened. The overall event takes place between September 4 – 6, 2008 in the Norris Conference Center in Austin, TX. Tickets are $250 for the two-day conference portion, or $425 for one day of training / tutorials followed by the two day conference. The prices shoot up come August 10.

The schedule is bumper packed with some great sessions and tutorials. James Edward Gray II and Gregory Brown will be delivering a three hour training session on Ruby’s IO functionality, Jim Weirich and Joe O’Brien will be delivering a tutorial on Test Driven Development, Gregg Pollack and Jason Seifer (of RailsEnvy fame) will be giving an advanced ActiveRecord workshop, and lots more besides. Read More

Trollop: Simple Yet Powerful Command Line Option Processor

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By Peter Cooper / July 7, 2008

Trollop is a command-line argument processing library for Ruby. Developer William Morgan says Trollop is “designed to provide the maximal amount of GNU-style argument processing in the minimum number of lines of code.” It makes a refreshing change to the more popular, but generally scary, cmdparse. The homepage features some examples of its usage.

Once you’ve installed trollop with the usual gem install trollop, you could write:

require ‘trollop’

opts = Trollop::options do
opt :http_1_0, “Force HTTP/1.0″
opt :http_1_1, “Force HTTP/1.1″
opt :hide_referer, “Hide referer”, :default =true
opt :connections, “Set number of simultaneous connections”, :default =2
end

p opts

Running the script with no command line options would result in opt becoming:

{:http_1_0=false, :http_1_1=false, :hide_referer=true, :connections=2, :help=false}

You also get a –help (or -h) option for free that describes how to use the options:

Options:
–http-1-0, -h: Force HTTP/1.0
–http-1-1, -t: Force HTTP/1.1
–hide-referer, -i: Hide referer (default: true)
–connections, -c : Set number of simultaneous connections (default: 2)
–help, -e: Show this message

Note that trollop takes care of assigning the short-hand individual letter options, assigning the next letter within the string if the previous ones are taken. Read More

RubyKaigi 2008 News: 1.9.1 In December, Ruby Heading For ISO Standardization

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By Peter Cooper / July 7, 2008

(Credit: june29 – photo under CC 2.0 Attribution license)

RubyKaigi 2008 took place a couple of weeks ago. As the main Japanese Ruby conference, RubyKaigi is the de-facto authoritative Ruby conference, and the news that came out of the conference this year did little to shake its stature.

The online enterprise news publication InfoQ has covered the conference in two parts. The first features a mini interview with Matz, where he talks about the low adoption rate of Ruby in the enterprise and the role of certifications in the Ruby world. The second InfoQ post reveals that Matz is preparing to “standardize” Ruby, with the ultimate aim to submit a Ruby standard to the ISO, and Koichi Sasada reveals that Ruby 1.9.1 (notable, as it will be the first officially stable / production-ready release of Ruby 1.9) is set to arrive this December. Read More

rbiphonetest: Unit Testing iPhone Apps with Ruby

By Peter Cooper / July 6, 2008

Dr Nic Williams has been busy playing with iPhone and Objective C development lately and, unsurprisingly, has found a way to bring Ruby into the mix. He has developed rbiphonetest, a Ruby-based testing framework for iPhone / Objective C applications that uses RubyCocoa to provide the necessary bridge. As well as producing an in-depth 20 minute demonstration screencast, he has also packed some key information into his blog post.

If you’re a Rubyist with ambitions of developing native iPhone applications using Objective C (and perhaps even Ruby one day), it’s certainly worth a look (as are all of Dr Nic’s projects, of course). Read More

Ruby and Rails Jobs for July 2008

By Peter Cooper / July 1, 2008

(Remix of an original CC 2.0 licensed work by Joichi Ito.)

From the Ruby Inside job board (costs $99 for a 60 day listing – and you get featured on Ruby Inside like this) come a few new opportunities:

Senior Java Developer with Ruby (Vonage, New Jersey) – Vonage, the well known VoIP company, are looking for a software developer with both Java and Ruby experience. They offer a fun, casual and relaxed environment, a $100/month food credit, dry cleaning and laundry service, medical, dental and vision plans, as well as stock options. In return, you should have both strong knowledge and experience of both Java and Ruby. Read More

Rails Camp UK in August 2008: Wanna Hack Near London For A Weekend?

By Peter Cooper / July 1, 2008

Note: This item has also been posted on Rails Inside. I don’t tend to make it a habit of crossposting items, but as Rails Inside is still very new, I am sure many Ruby Inside readers will want to know about it. Beware, however, you will need to subscribe to Rails Inside to get the skinny on new Rails events in the long term :)

Following on from the outstanding success of the “Rails Camp” events that have taken place in Australia, comes Rails Camp UK, the equivalent for Brits (and brave travellers). The first is from Friday, August 15th to Monday, August 18th and takes place just a 30 minute train ride away from London, in Orpington, Kent (my teenage stomping grounds, as it happens). Read More

Rails Inside: The Rails-Only Alternative to Ruby Inside

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By Peter Cooper / June 30, 2008

It’s been years in the making, but it has finally arrived.. Rails Inside, the Rails-only equivalent of Ruby Inside! Featuring an all-new template, Rails Inside presents information in a similar format and style to Ruby Inside but with a focus entirely on the Ruby on Rails scene. If Rails is your main thing, or a significant part of your development life, get over there and subscribe (by RSS or e-mail – the e-mail version actually looks surprisingly nice I’ve found).

Rails stories will still crop up on Ruby Inside but in slightly lower numbers. With its focus, Rails Inside will feature lots more interesting Rails stories and cover smaller (but still interesting) announcements that Ruby Inside wouldn’t traditionally pick up anyway. Read More

Ruby Featured in User Friendly Comic Strip

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By Peter Cooper / June 29, 2008

A light hearted entry, but Ruby has featured quite significantly in the latest edition of the popular User Friendly comic strip series. Unfortunately, a bearded Perl and Emacs fan gives Ruby the slap down, but what’s new?

Update: It seems this comic strip might not be as new as it initially seems.. see comments. Read More

Tips For Hiring Ruby Developers

By Peter Cooper / June 27, 2008

(Photo credit: slushpup – License: CC 2.0 Attribution)

Six months ago, we featured 11 Tips on Hiring a Rails Developer here on Ruby Inside (and it got a crazy number of comments), but now Ryan Ritirisi has put together a great list of 15 Questions to Ask During a Ruby Interview. They include questioning developers in a way that can separate professional Ruby developers from the hobbyists (or those who are only familiar with Ruby through Rails templates, say).

Pete Forde of Unspace suggests, however, that asking clever questions isn’t necessarily the best way:

The best way to recruit amazing talent is to approach people that you already know are at the top of their game. Read More

The erubycon Ruby Conference: Columbus, Ohio – August 15-17, 2008

By Peter Cooper / June 27, 2008

erubycon is a Ruby conference taking place in Columbus, Ohio between August 15 and 17, 2008. The e seemingly stands for “enterprise” with The Enterprise (and not the Star Trek variety) being a key focus. Earlybird registration is $199.00 and is open till July 4.

The speaker list is quite substantial and includes Neal Ford (Thoughtworks), Stuart Halloway (Relevance, Inc), Jim Weirich, Josh Holmes, Giles Bowkett (is there a conference Giles doesn’t speak at?), Evan Light, Anthony Eden, Michael Letterie (IronRuby), Brian Sam-Bodden, Jeremy McAnally (ENTP and the Humble Little Ruby Book) and Lance Carlson (Ruby Skills).

The schedule so far appears to have a focus on solid, information-rich practical presentations rather than airy keynotes and fluffy thought pieces, so it could prove to be quite a learning experience. Read More

June 2008 Ruby Security Advisory: A Summary

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By Peter Cooper / June 22, 2008

Photo by JL2003 – CC 2.0 Attribution License

The official Ruby blog is reporting “multiple vulnerabilities” in the official Ruby interpreter (MRI). A significant number of versions are affected:

All versions prior to 1.8.5
All 1.8.5 versions prior to patch 231
All 1.8.6 versions prior to patch 230
All 1.8.7 versions prior to patch 22
All 1.9.0 versions prior to 1.9.0-2

Jeremy Kemper, at the official Rails blog, advised upgrading immediately, but with the warning that Ruby 1.8.7 only works with Rails 2.1 and later. Numerous commenters, however, have noted significant issues with Rails applications once they’ve upgraded to Ruby 1.8.6p230 and 1.8.5p231. Read More

“Beginning Ruby” eBook Only $10 For The Next 24 Hours

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By Peter Cooper / June 20, 2008

I’ve had word from Apress that they’re doing a one-off 24 hour $10 sale on the e-book version of Beginning Ruby as part of their “daily deal” series. The 24 hours is up – sorry! – but the e-book is still available from Apress at the usual rate of $27.99. It comes as a password protected PDF – no crazy DRM.

Beginning Ruby (Amazon link to the print version) is the ideal book for those new to Ruby, whether fresh to programming or coming from other languages. As well as covering Ruby in a general sense, it also covers the community, a handful of interesting RubyGems, database programming & SQL, object orientation (from the ground up), Rails (though very briefly), and network programming. Read More

RubyNation – A Virginian Ruby Conference – August 1 & 2

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By Peter Cooper / June 19, 2008

RubyNation is a new Ruby conference launching August 1 & 2, 2008. It bills itself as an annual Ruby conference serving the Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, and Washington DC areas. It costs $175 to register and you get admission for both days, lunches, snacks, drinks and a conference t-shirt.

Of particular note is the level of speakers the organizers have managed to obtain to such a new, locally organized conference. Neal Ford, Stuart Halloway, Rich Kilmer, David Bock, Giles Bowkett, Yehuda Katz, David Keener, Russ Olsen, Bruce Tate, and Glenn Vanderburg are all confirmed speakers so far.

As an aside, and not to detract from RubyNation, why aren’t there more multi-day Ruby / Rails events that don’t have hours of scheduled sessions, like RailsCamp? Read More

The Best of RubyFlow – Early June 2008

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By Peter Cooper / June 17, 2008

Here’s the regular update of the most interesting stories posted on RubyFlow (a community-driven Ruby news sister site to Ruby Inside) in the past couple of weeks:

Markdown – 59 times faster: Ryan Tomayko wants to “move past BlueCloth.” The result is two significantly faster Markdown libraries for Rubyists.

Cry: Cry is a Ruby library that provides a nice object oriented way to create, transfer, and manipulate frozen parse trees.

New Ruby Social Network: Acts As Community is a new social network for Rubyists.

Building an MP3 Player with Ruby and Shoes: Satoshi Asakawa has put together a cute tutorial demonstrating how to create a GUI-based MP3 player using Ruby and _why’s Shoes library. Read More

Dave Thomas’s Object Model and Metaprogramming Screencasts

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By Peter Cooper / June 13, 2008

Disclaimer: I have no financial connection to the Pragmatic Programmers and other than through receiving these videos to review get no direct benefit from this review.

It was only a few weeks ago I announced that the Pragmatic Programmers were getting into the screencasting business. The first Ruby related videos were from the Everyday Active Record series by Ryan Bates. The reaction to these across the Ruby blogosphere has been very positive, and true to their word, the Pragmatics have been quick to release some more interesting videos. The latest addition is the Ruby Object Model and Metaprogramming series by Dave Thomas (of Pickaxe fame). Read More

Author Archives: Peter Cooper