/ Recent content on Dead Programmer Society Hugo -- gohugo.io en-us Thu, 24 Jul 2025 00:01:00 -0800 /2025/07/more-than-code.html Thu, 24 Jul 2025 00:01:00 -0800 /2025/07/more-than-code.html There I was this morning in a state of almost perfect sensory deprivation, by which I mean scrolling thru social media, when all at once an extraordinary thing happened: I noticed something! It was something that I have seen before. It was something that I will see again. Programming languages change. Programming tools change. But programming is very much about fashion and style, not just pure utility. If we think about programming as style, we can find elements that in fashion would be considered timeless or classic. /2025/03/calling-mcp-servers-the-hard-way.html Tue, 25 Mar 2025 00:01:00 -0800 /2025/03/calling-mcp-servers-the-hard-way.html Lately, all of the cool kids seem to be doing something with the newest protocol on the block, Model Context Protocol. Being neither cool, nor a kid, has not stopped me from doing the same of course. I wanted to test out one of my recent experiments adding MCP support to wasmVision using that venerable tool of the ancient sages known as curl. Surprisingly, I was unable to find a simple guide to performing this task with the Internet’s own universal API client. /2024/04/buzz-factor.html Thu, 25 Apr 2024 00:59:00 -0800 /2024/04/buzz-factor.html New term we just discovered this morning: “Buzz Factor” “Buzz Factor is how many buzzwords have to fall out of popularity for your system architecture to require a redesign.” /2023/05/fish-story-points.html Tue, 23 May 2023 00:59:00 -0800 /2023/05/fish-story-points.html I just realized the odd parallels between a “fish story” and “story point estimation”. In a fish story, the fisherman tells about the “one that got away”. Famously the size of this mythical fish seems to get bigger and bigger each time the tale is retold. Everyone knows this already, but no one ever argues with the ancient mariner. And since there is no fish there to be measured, the story keeps going. /2023/05/hypercard-freedom-to-associate.html Sun, 21 May 2023 00:59:00 -0800 /2023/05/hypercard-freedom-to-associate.html Every so often, HyperCard pops up again in one of my feeds. HyperCard disappeared not long before the World Wide Web rose to dominance but is still not forgotten. What exactly was it that captured the imagination of so many? Perhaps it was the idea that everyone could be both a reader and also an author, using the same tools. HTML’s “View Source” with all its flaws was at least an echo of this freedom. /2023/05/see-you-at-gophercon-eu-2023.html Wed, 17 May 2023 00:59:00 -0800 /2023/05/see-you-at-gophercon-eu-2023.html Coming up at the end of next month it is Gophercon EU once again in Berlin. https://gophercon.eu/ Our Go/TinyGo hardware hacking session will be all day Tuesday, June 27 in the same attached biergarten as last year. Yes, it is literal hacking of hardware outdoors in summer in Berlin with beer. And drones. And brand new GopherBadges: https://gopherbadge.com/ Then the always great talks and fun over the next 2 days of the conference. /2023/05/gobot-2.0-release.html Tue, 16 May 2023 00:59:00 -0800 /2023/05/gobot-2.0-release.html Gobot v2.0 has been released! There is a long list of features and fixes, you can see the full changelog here: https://github.com/hybridgroup/gobot/releases/tag/v2.0.0 Thanks to the fine efforts of Thomas Kohler for doing all the heavy lifting to make it happen, and to all the many contributors. You are the ones who made this release happen while I have been busy with so many other things. It is very appreciated! /2023/05/the-big-move.html Tue, 16 May 2023 00:59:00 -0800 /2023/05/the-big-move.html The “Dead Programmer Society” blog is finally moved onto a proper static web site using Hugo. Now that we are (back) to the future of self-hosting, small websites, and federation, I feel inspired again. Let’s see what happens. /2012/02/blog-drought-is-ending.html Sat, 11 Feb 2012 08:21:00 -0800 /2012/02/blog-drought-is-ending.html After taking so much time off of any serious blogging (there might have been a guest post or two somewhere), I’m finally starting to feel the urge again to write something longer than 140 characters. The last year has been an incredibly busy one with The Hybrid Group, KidsRuby, and so much other goodness. So if any of you are still with me, I’ve returned. Hello! /2010/11/gabba-ruby-gem-for-doing-server-side.html Tue, 30 Nov 2010 23:05:00 -0800 /2010/11/gabba-ruby-gem-for-doing-server-side.html Yo, Gabba! Gabba, hey? Gabba is a Ruby gem to do easy server-side Google Analytics tracking of page view and custom events. Gather around and I’ll show you how it works. Google Analytics is the gold standard of website traffic reporting. In addition to tracking page views, one of the interesting capabilities it has is to track custom events. These could be shopping cart checkouts or video plays from clicking on a button in a Flash player. /2010/11/10-cool-things-from-rubyconf-x.html Wed, 17 Nov 2010 07:20:00 -0800 /2010/11/10-cool-things-from-rubyconf-x.html This last week was the fantastic RubyConf X. It has been ten years of RubyConf and in celebration of this notable occasion, the organizers located it in New Orleans and opened up the registration to a lot more people then most years past. This had the clearly foreseeable consequence of turning the conference into a really fun time! So here, in no particular order, are 10 cool things I saw or heard at the conference. /2010/03/happy-ada-lovelace-day-2010.html Wed, 24 Mar 2010 09:44:00 -0700 /2010/03/happy-ada-lovelace-day-2010.html Once again, it is Lady Ada Lovelace day, and time for me to celebrate some women software developers that I know personally. This year I want to call out four women that I have especially noticed their knowledge and dedication. In no particular order… First, a big shout out to Sarah Mei (@sarahmei). Sarah is a founder of RailsBridge, a non-profit organization dedicated to helping people learn about and make use of Ruby on Rails. /2010/03/configuring-hybrid-ruby-on-rails.html Thu, 04 Mar 2010 10:30:00 -0800 /2010/03/configuring-hybrid-ruby-on-rails.html This last weekend, we completed migration of a slightly more complex Ruby on Rails application than the usual to Engine Yard’s EY-Cloud. It took a few tries, and a tiny bit of research, before we completely understood what to do to get it up and running with all of the needed capabilities. Naturally this was due to gaps in my own knowledge, and I wanted to post about what I had learned, and how awesome EY-Cloud really is! /2010/02/i-was-guest-blogger-at-larubyconf-2010.html Mon, 22 Feb 2010 11:40:00 -0800 /2010/02/i-was-guest-blogger-at-larubyconf-2010.html Longtime readers of this blog know that I can really get into writing about Ruby conferences, and I had a great time this last weekend at LARubyConf 2010. This time, I got to try some thing new: I was guest blogging the conference for TheBitSource, which has been providing some great coverage of other tech events like PyCon and SCALE. Please check out my complete recap from the 2nd annual Los Angeles Ruby Conference LARubyConf 2010 here. /2010/01/crossing-phonegap-for-multiplatform.html Mon, 18 Jan 2010 08:30:00 -0800 /2010/01/crossing-phonegap-for-multiplatform.html I had first heard of the PhoneGap open source framework for multiplatform mobile development last year at the FutureRuby conference in Toronto. Honestly, I did not really concentrate on all they were saying at the time, and in the flurry of info including back-to-back mobile sessions with Rhomobile, I did not fully retain a clear picture of what they had to offer. My bad. It was not until late last year, while working on plans for a very cool mobile application, that I was reminded about PhoneGap by one of my colleagues. /2010/01/sparkline-some-interest-with-ruby-on.html Tue, 12 Jan 2010 12:12:00 -0800 /2010/01/sparkline-some-interest-with-ruby-on.html Recently, I added some sparkline graphs to a Ruby on Rails application. A sparkline is a very small graphic that displays a large amount of information, typically shown over time, and usually embedded in some other text. Invented by the father of modern infographics Edward Tufte, the sparkline has become a fixture of many online applications that want to visually display some stats in a simple, integrated way. When it come to adding sparklines into a Ruby on Rails application, there are a couple of different options. /2009/12/thanks-for-great-code2009.html Thu, 31 Dec 2009 09:07:00 -0800 /2009/12/thanks-for-great-code2009.html It has been an amazing year for both personal and professional code development. Starting with the inspiration to begin Project Flying Robot, to the prestige of presenting at LARubyConf, FutureRuby, TWTRCON, IgniteLA, 140 The Twitter Conference, RubyConf, and Conferencia Rails, and lastly the year-end fun of starting out the ongoing #code2009 Twitter meme, so popular that it spawned a couple of mashups and got picked up by Hacker News and uber-language blog Lambda the Ultimate. /2009/11/flying-robot-world-tour-2009-continues.html Mon, 16 Nov 2009 08:15:00 -0800 /2009/11/flying-robot-world-tour-2009-continues.html As usual, no blog posts = a lot of other activity here at Flying Robot HQ. Among other personal stuff, my brother Damen Evans and I have been getting ready for the last public demos of @flyingrobot for 2009. And we are going out with style! Later this week, we roll up to San Francisco to present at the prestigious RubyConf! Then, next week @flyingrobot and I will fly off to Madrid, Spain, to do our first European appearance at the awesome-looking Conferencia Rails. /2009/10/postgresql-on-ubuntu-on-ec2-backing-it.html Sat, 10 Oct 2009 11:19:00 -0700 /2009/10/postgresql-on-ubuntu-on-ec2-backing-it.html This post continues what I started with “PostgreSQL on Ubuntu on EC2: The Installation Guide”. Once you have your PostgreSQL database server instance running, you will need to backup two different things: your database data, and the instance itself. The database data will be backed up using Elastic Block Storage (EBS) snapshots. Once we have the instance running the backups correctly, we will then create an Amazon Machine Image (AMI) that will allow you to launch a new instance to replace the database server in case it goes down. /2009/09/happy-200-posts-my-10-personal.html Sun, 13 Sep 2009 15:42:00 -0700 /2009/09/happy-200-posts-my-10-personal.html I was shocked to discover this morning that this is to be my 200th blog post. Wow! It has been a good run so far since I restarted the Dead Programmer Society in 2006, and I really appreciate the awesome feedback and support that I have received from the community. To commemorate this personal event, here is a list of my top 10 favorite posts, in no particular order: /2009/08/postgresql-on-ubuntu-on-ec2.html Sat, 15 Aug 2009 01:27:00 -0700 /2009/08/postgresql-on-ubuntu-on-ec2.html For some time, I have had clients hosting a couple different applications on Amazon EC2 using Ubuntu. One of these apps uses PostgreSQL, and has been running without event for quite a while. Yesterday, I got to catch up for lost time, by spending the entire day wrestling with data recovery issues related to a failed apt-get upgrade on an important database server. Luckily, the awesome Eric Hammond was around on IRC, came to my rescue, and coached my thru my self-inflicted pain. /2009/07/futureruby-revolution-will-not-be-on.html Sat, 25 Jul 2009 09:37:00 -0700 /2009/07/futureruby-revolution-will-not-be-on.html FutureRuby Day 2 began in a seemingly calm and reflective way. Coffees were sipped, and hangovers nursed. As the self-inflicted wounds from the Pravda-Vodka-Kalashnikov faded, Pete Forde, our leader and spiritual adviser, began a short sermon. His message was simple: Vegas is a horrible place to hold RailsConf. And we should live in a manner that follows the “Four Agreements”. Seriously, yes, he said both of these things. Pete told us of the source of his sudden enlightenment: Portland’s Jupiter Hotel. /2009/07/i-have-seen-futureruby-and-it-is.html Thu, 16 Jul 2009 17:05:00 -0700 /2009/07/i-have-seen-futureruby-and-it-is.html It was with tremendous excitement that my brother Damen and I had arrived in Toronto for FutureRuby. Not only were we getting to attend the reprise of what had been by all accounts the “Best. Conference. Ever.”, but we were going to be speaking about Project Flying Robot. There had been many interesting interactions with various security personnel on the journey, thanks to the many small homemade electronic devices that make up our tiny squadron. /2009/07/getting-ready-for-takeoff-at-futureruby.html Sun, 05 Jul 2009 09:55:00 -0700 /2009/07/getting-ready-for-takeoff-at-futureruby.html I just realized it has been an entire month since my last post. Sorry! In case you were wondering, the always overambitious plans for Project Flying Robot have taken up more time than expected. And parts. Especially parts. Lucky for us, the benefit of a hard deadline approaches: FutureRuby is coming up next week. My brother Damen Evans and I are going to be showing off our latest works in Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) based on Ruby Arduino Development (RAD). /2009/05/project-flying-robot-supporting.html Wed, 03 Jun 2009 21:12:00 -0700 /2009/05/project-flying-robot-supporting.html As Maker Faire approached, my brother Damen and I were very busy working on something cool: support for the now-shipping Blimpduino kit! Thanks to the tireless efforts of Chris Anderson and Jordi Muñoz, the long awaited Blimpduino kit is now shipping at Makershed. As readers of this blog know, we have drawn a lot of inspiration from the Blimpduino. Now, we actually have 2 of them, and you can get your own. /2009/05/fear-and-loathing-at-railsconf-2009.html Sun, 17 May 2009 15:17:00 -0700 /2009/05/fear-and-loathing-at-railsconf-2009.html We were around Barstow on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold… wait, that was someone else’s story. OK, restart. We were around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the excitement began to take hold… we were on our way to RailsConf 2009! No screaming bats, just loud pumping techno music to power the PT Cruiser. My designer, who was not old enough to be pouring beer on his chest, nor interested in facilitating the tanning process, said “What the hell are you yelling about? /2009/04/heroku-has-launched.html Wed, 29 Apr 2009 09:28:00 -0700 /2009/04/heroku-has-launched.html Well, just a very short time after I started using Heroku, they went commercial. Yes, after their very successful beta period, where apparently 24,999 web sites other than mine were already hosting, Heroku is now offering a paid version of their service. I had a sneak peak at the pricing a few days ahead of time, but I was not able to talk. And despite my intentions of blogging this right away, the other demands on my time have kept me occupied till just now. /2009/04/project-flying-robot-getting-rad-with.html Sat, 18 Apr 2009 15:08:00 -0700 /2009/04/project-flying-robot-getting-rad-with.html I have been wanting to upgrade the hardware used in our Dorkboards for flying_robot, from the ATMega168, to the newer better faster ATMega328. More memory, and a faster UART for serial communications with the XBee modems in the same pinout = easy win. Thanks to a quick shipping turnaround from @adafruit I got them in before the weekend, so I could play a little bit today. The first step was to upgrade my hard-working Arduino Diecimila to a 328. /2009/04/heroku-why-havent-i-been-using-you-till.html Tue, 14 Apr 2009 11:23:00 -0700 /2009/04/heroku-why-havent-i-been-using-you-till.html Last night, I finally got around to deploying something on Heroku, an interesting service founded by my formerly LA-based Ruby programming chums Adam Wiggins, James Lindenbaum, and Orion Henry. I had played with their previous incarnation of the service, now known as “Heroku Garden” but only recently have I gotten to know a little bit more about the incredible offering they have evolved into. Basically, the Heroku crew have addressed the question “how can I deploy my Ruby on Rails, Sinatra, or other Rack-based web application into a dynamic cloud of servers with ridiculous ease? /2009/04/larubyconf-2009-jim-weirich-grand.html Wed, 08 Apr 2009 10:12:00 -0700 /2009/04/larubyconf-2009-jim-weirich-grand.html As the 2009 Los Angeles Ruby Conference (LARubyConf) drew to a close, our keynote speaker Jim Weirich took the podium. I have seen Jim speak several times, and he is both intelligent, as well as down to earth, which is a rare combination indeed. The subject of his keynote would be anything but down to earth. In fact, it would have to be one of the most ambitious talks I have ever seen at a Ruby conference. /2009/04/larubyconf-2009-blake-mizerany-sinatra.html Tue, 07 Apr 2009 12:19:00 -0700 /2009/04/larubyconf-2009-blake-mizerany-sinatra.html I was very happy when the next presenter at the Los Angeles Ruby Conference 2009 (LARubyConf) was Blake Mizerany, creator of the very cool Ruby micro-framework Sinatra. As long-time readers of this blog know, I am very into Sinatra. There has been an incredible amount of work going into Sinatra lately, so I was very interested to catch up on what the team has been up to. What is Sinatra? /2009/04/larubyconf-2009-danny-blitz-herding.html Sun, 05 Apr 2009 20:51:00 -0700 /2009/04/larubyconf-2009-danny-blitz-herding.html I had no idea what I was about to experience at Los Angeles Ruby Conference 2009 (LARubyConf) when Danny Blitz took the podium as the next presenter. I had seen him hanging out with his distinctive pompadour, tattoos, and leather jacket. He is a big guy, and hard to miss. But he had been pretty quiet till then, which was about to change radically. Herding Cats is a term commonly used when describing the management of software teams. /2009/04/larubyconf-2009-jeremy-evans-sequel.html Sun, 05 Apr 2009 20:22:00 -0700 /2009/04/larubyconf-2009-jeremy-evans-sequel.html The next session at the 2009 Los Angeles Ruby Conference (LARubyConf) was Jeremy Evans presenting Sequel, which is a very powerful database toolkit for Ruby. Ruby originally had adapters for each database. The problem was that each was very database specific. This was a problem due to both SQL differences, as well as API differences. no behavior 1997 - ruby-postgres was first created. 2000 - DBI 2004 - Active Record /2009/04/larubyconf-2009-aaron-patterson-journey.html Sun, 05 Apr 2009 08:49:00 -0700 /2009/04/larubyconf-2009-aaron-patterson-journey.html The second presentation of the day at Los Angeles Ruby Conference 2009 (LARubyConf) was Aaron Patterson, XML maniac. I had a run at hardcore XML/XSL a few years back, and it has been a while since I walked the razor’s edge of the angle bracket. But Aaron is not just an aficionado, he is genuinely obsessed. Given that he is the maintainer of the Nokogiri and Mechanize gems, this makes me happy. /2009/04/larubyconf-2009-dan-yoder-resource.html Sun, 05 Apr 2009 08:35:00 -0700 /2009/04/larubyconf-2009-dan-yoder-resource.html Lead-off man Dan Yoder started off the day’s proceedings at the Los Angeles Ruby Conference (LARubyConf) 2009, with a presentation on Ruby Waves called “Resource Oriented Architectures and Why It Matters”. Despite not getting the same attention that some Ruby frameworks have, the Waves team has been tirelessly working on it. According to Dan, the foundation of Waves has gotten pretty solid. Waves adds a lot of support for things over and above just handling http requests. /2009/04/larubyconf-2009-was-big-success.html Sun, 05 Apr 2009 07:48:00 -0700 /2009/04/larubyconf-2009-was-big-success.html Yesterday was the first ever Los Angeles Ruby Conference. Despite being located a bit out of the way, down in Tustin, the venue was actually completely amazing. Called the Marconi Automotive Museum, the place was like “Robin Master’s garage” quipped one attendee, being that it was FULL of Ferrari’s and other highly valuable and hot sports cars. Thanks to the tireless efforts of Coby Randquist and JR Fent, along with a host of others, this first conference was a tremendous success. /2009/03/twitter-1-2-3-rule.html Tue, 31 Mar 2009 12:28:00 -0700 /2009/03/twitter-1-2-3-rule.html I just had a small realization: there is a perfect ratio for Twitter use. Wait, before you laugh and hit the back button, hear me out on the following idea. There is an emergent trend in optimal Twitter use: If you have X followers, You should have 2X people that YOU follow And have made 3X updates Get it? Twitter 1-2-3. Nice simple rule… Here is what is means if these ratios are out of whack: /2009/03/lets-celebrate-female-side-of-tech.html Tue, 24 Mar 2009 09:59:00 -0700 /2009/03/lets-celebrate-female-side-of-tech.html It is Ada Lovelace Day today, and to support the women in technology, bloggers all over the world are celebrating the female side of tech. What do I mean? You may not know it from the throngs of hairy guys at tech events, but not only are there women in tech, they have done a lot to make YOUR life easier. Let’s review a couple current ladies of technology that have been rocking my world. /2009/03/project-flying-robot-i-believe-i-can.html Sat, 21 Mar 2009 13:47:00 -0700 /2009/03/project-flying-robot-i-believe-i-can.html At long last, after many obstacles to be surmounted, yesterday we achieved liftoff. The blimp prototype “Rogue 1” of our flying_robot project to create a platform for Ruby Arduino Development powered Unmanned Aerial Vehicles has achieved an important milestone. After our third complete rewiring of the main circuit board, two burned out Pololu micro serial motor controllers, some time reviewing the schematics of the Blimpduino project, and too many revisions to the basic software to list here, we had finally gotten everything ready for what would hopefully be a successful flight test. /2009/03/come-fly-with-us-at-los-angeles.html Tue, 17 Mar 2009 15:52:00 -0700 /2009/03/come-fly-with-us-at-los-angeles.html Yes, the rumors are true, our talk for LARubyConf was accepted. If you want to see the first ever public live demonstration of flying_robot, the real thing, actually flying around and such, come check it out live and direct at the first Los Angeles Ruby Conference on April 4. I do yet not know exactly what our demo will include, but from what we have been doing so far in the lab, you won’t want to miss this one. /2009/03/project-flying-robot-better-to-burn-out.html Sun, 15 Mar 2009 17:57:00 -0700 /2009/03/project-flying-robot-better-to-burn-out.html We had made incredible strides forward in our construction of “Rogue 1” our autonomous blimp that we are building as the first implementation of flying_robot, our Arduino-framework for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles based on top of Ruby Arduino Development (RAD). We are also heavily influenced by the cool Blimpduino project. We were finally ready for a live test… or so we thought. We inflated our envelope, and my brother attached the gondola that he has been carefully constructing. /2009/03/project-flying-robot-by-your-command.html Tue, 10 Mar 2009 13:52:00 -0700 /2009/03/project-flying-robot-by-your-command.html Our flying_robot project for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles has been underway for a few weeks now. Much soldering, and playing around with cool Arduino tricks has been taking place. You can read more here, here, here, and here if you need to catch up. One aspect that I have mentioned several times, but not gotten into much detail about, is our protocol for communicating with the UAV from the ground station. It is amazing to me, but there is still no dominant digital protocol for controlling UAV’s. /2009/03/playing-with-hoops-or-every-step-you.html Fri, 06 Mar 2009 11:35:00 -0800 /2009/03/playing-with-hoops-or-every-step-you.html I do not often pay full attention to Giles Bowkett. That is the flip side of being the provocateur that he is, some people will occasionally tune out. However, when anyone plays the Steve Krug card, I am compelled to take a look. Yesterday, Giles posted a dead-on point about user registration, called “I Don’t Care About Your Hoops”. When you compare the success of simplicity, as in the Google and Apple examples, to what we all tend to fall into, I hope you are as embarrassed as I was. /2009/02/project-flying-robot-flying-dorkboard.html Sat, 28 Feb 2009 08:53:00 -0800 /2009/02/project-flying-robot-flying-dorkboard.html As we proceeded along with our flying_robot project, one thing became abundantly clear: weight matters. The Arduino Diecimilla that we had been using up to this point, although a fine package for beginners, was just not going to make it when it came time to weigh in. Yes, there is the Arduino Nano, but it is not a cheap device. Also, it has a few options that were not important to us, like the integrated USB, since we planned on only using XBee based communication with the blimp. /2009/02/railsconf-2009-program-is-looking-juicy.html Fri, 27 Feb 2009 15:07:00 -0800 /2009/02/railsconf-2009-program-is-looking-juicy.html I just noticed that there are already a whole bunch of the approved presentations for RailsConf 2009 on up the web site here. It is looking really good already, go check it out. If you are into Ruby on Rails, you really should be going… I am! /2009/02/project-flying-robot-compass-two-motors.html Thu, 26 Feb 2009 11:01:00 -0800 /2009/02/project-flying-robot-compass-two-motors.html Last weekend was a fantastic hardware/software jam session with my brother Damen, working on our autonomous Ruby Arduino Development (RAD) powered blimp. Lots of little pieces had been coming in the mail, my brother had been soldering, and I had been programming away. Both of us were eager to start putting it all together. The first item of business was getting our bearings. We had acquired from Sparkfun a very cool HMC6352 digital compass module. /2009/02/prepare-for-railsconf-2009-jam-session.html Wed, 25 Feb 2009 17:28:00 -0800 /2009/02/prepare-for-railsconf-2009-jam-session.html I will be running the music BOF at RailsConf 2009 in Las Vegas. What does that mean? We’re gonna get down. All styles will be represented, so if you have an instrument or a voice, bring it. We have a Google group started here. /2009/02/so-long-and-thanks-for-all-ssh.html Wed, 25 Feb 2009 09:38:00 -0800 /2009/02/so-long-and-thanks-for-all-ssh.html I read Jamis Buck’s posting late last night, about how he was retiring from involvement with Capistrano, Net:SSH and a few other closely related projects. First of all, the community owes him a lot for doing so much work on these crucial parts of the Ruby on Rails ecosystem. Seems like he has fallen victim to his own project’s popularity. So many people using your code, and they start to expect things, and then demand them. /2009/02/frankie-gets-some-fixes.html Sun, 22 Feb 2009 15:32:00 -0800 /2009/02/frankie-gets-some-fixes.html It has been very overdue to get Frankie updated to work with the latest versions of Sinatra and Facebooker. But where I have been lagging, mjfreshyfresh has stepped up, and submitted a patch that gives compatibility with Sinatra 0.9.x and Facebooker 1.0.2. Thanks, my main man! The Frankie gem has been updated to version 0.3, and it is available at your convenience. Note that you really do appear to need the 1. /2009/02/project-flying-robot-getting-all-xbee.html Sun, 22 Feb 2009 10:38:00 -0800 /2009/02/project-flying-robot-getting-all-xbee.html We have been making some amazing progress on our flying_robot project. This post is actually from almost a week ago, but I have not had time to catch up blogging with what we have been getting accomplished. As I had mentioned in my first posting, one of the reasons that we did not simply copy the Blimpduino, is that we do not want to use a standard R/C controller for manual control. /2009/02/should-we-call-it-mails-or-rurb-yahuda.html Fri, 20 Feb 2009 00:08:00 -0800 /2009/02/should-we-call-it-mails-or-rurb-yahuda.html We just had a fun time at the latest LA Ruby Meetup, once again at UCLA. This time, we had presentations by James Foster from Gemstone, and Yehuda Katz from Engine Yard. James Foster was showing MagLev, which is a Ruby VM based on top of the Gemstone Smalltalk VM. Not much to see here, just some Ruby code benchmarks running at about 4-5X faster than Ruby 1.8.6. That is, of course, not a very fair comparison, but no question that this is another Ruby VM to watch. /2009/02/project-flying-robot-adventure-begins.html Wed, 18 Feb 2009 08:22:00 -0800 /2009/02/project-flying-robot-adventure-begins.html I love robots. OK, there, I’ve gone and gotten that out into the open. Like many programmers, I have long dreamed of dominating the world with my robot legions. Or failing that, at least getting my RoboSapien to walk around in a little circle by itself. Recently, my brother Damen Evans and I decided that we needed to realize our ambitions, and began work on a flying robot. Yes, that is what I said. /2009/02/json-p-makes-progress-cross-domains.html Tue, 10 Feb 2009 09:37:00 -0800 /2009/02/json-p-makes-progress-cross-domains.html As yet another part of the be-all, end-all media upload processing solution, my client wanted to provide a nice progress bar for tracking the status of file uploads. Let me note, that providing user feedback as to the state of an extended upload turns out to be a very important UI feature. Luckily, the problem of a nice way to track file upload progress had already been solved several times. /2009/02/introducing-net-grommit.html Sat, 07 Feb 2009 08:37:00 -0800 /2009/02/introducing-net-grommit.html I have just begun a new blog called Net Grommit. It is a place that I can go off and explore my experiences with technology and being a 21st century parent. I will get into anything from video games, kids programming, tech toys, education, and whatever else appeals to me. As a father of two boys, and an obsessive technologist, I have plenty of personal experience to talk about, and I really look forward to the participation of some other people, as well. /2009/01/los-angeles-ruby-larubyconf-2009.html Sat, 31 Jan 2009 09:27:00 -0800 /2009/01/los-angeles-ruby-larubyconf-2009.html It is with great excitement that I want to tell all of you about the first annual Los Angeles Ruby Conference. Thanks to the fine efforts of a bunch of LA’s hardworking Rubyists, and the generous financial support of AT&T Interactive, we are preparing to bring the noise to Los Angeles on April 4, 2009. Too many of these wannabe cities have been smoking us with their regional conferences, but no more! /2009/01/getting-async-with-sinatra-and.html Wed, 28 Jan 2009 10:31:00 -0800 /2009/01/getting-async-with-sinatra-and.html Everyone wants it all. In the case of upload processing, this means we want both the convenience of Sinatra coding, plus the performance that a nice process/threading model gives us. Go off and do some work I just assigned you, and don’t make me wait around to see you do it. If you are using Passenger, it already is buffering your uploads, and not calling your Sinatra application until the upload is complete. /2009/01/verdict-is-in.html Wed, 28 Jan 2009 08:21:00 -0800 /2009/01/verdict-is-in.html For the last week or so, I have been serving on a jury in Department 45 of the Stanley Mosk Courthouse in downtown Los Angeles. Now that the trial is over, I am able to talk/blog/pontificate about my experience. This was my first time actually serving on a jury, despite having come close a couple of times in the past. The case itself was a canonical example of how ridiculous big companies can be when fighting over money. /2009/01/in-my-hood.html Sun, 25 Jan 2009 09:26:00 -0800 /2009/01/in-my-hood.html I was taking my morning constitutional with my youngest son, when I noticed my neighbor who programs at JPL had added a new placard to the artistic decor attached to his fence. And who says there is no software development in Los Angeles? /2009/01/get-grep-on-textmate.html Fri, 23 Jan 2009 08:58:00 -0800 /2009/01/get-grep-on-textmate.html I really wanted to be all cool and retro by going back to EMACS, but my usual workload has kept me from figuring out the right environment for my Mac. In the meantime, programming pal and fun blogger Daniel Fischer turned me on to just one more reason to stay lazy. TextMate is really quite a cool editor. However, one problem that annoys, especially when working on larger projects, is TextMate’s “Find In Project”. /2009/01/sinatra-and-passenger-back-on-rack.html Wed, 21 Jan 2009 08:16:00 -0800 /2009/01/sinatra-and-passenger-back-on-rack.html There is a new release of the Sinatra gem, version 0.9.1. This happens to work out well, since the newest Passenger 2.0.6 has a strong dependency on Rack 0.9, and the previous Sinatra 0.3 simply did not work at all due to dependency on Rack 0.4. The last few days have had some of us apoplectic over Ruby gem version hell. And lots of interesting and even important things require all three. /2008/11/rubyconf-2008-day-1-testing-heresies.html Thu, 13 Nov 2008 09:07:00 -0800 /2008/11/rubyconf-2008-day-1-testing-heresies.html The sessions for RubyConf 2008 day one were nearly over, when I attending this highly entertaining and informative one. I had missed the chance to see a previous presentation by Francis Hwang, and being as test-obsessed as I am, I was not going to make the same mistake twice. Many people are confused over mocks, stubs, and other fakes. Here are the real definitions. Gerard Meszaros - Test Doubles - dummies - passed around but never used /2008/11/rubyconf-2008-rush-shell-that-will.html Tue, 11 Nov 2008 06:54:00 -0800 /2008/11/rubyconf-2008-rush-shell-that-will.html I had previously blogged a bit about Rush, the Ruby shell. Well, now Rush must now be its own force to be reckoned with, because this presentation was NOT by Adam Wiggins, the creator of Rush, but was instead by Nicholas Schlueter, the creator of RushMate. If you’ve not heard of it, RushMate allows you to use Rush from within TextMate, which translates to being able to write custom commands much more easily. /2008/11/rubyconf-2008-rubinius-evan-phoenix.html Mon, 10 Nov 2008 21:21:00 -0800 /2008/11/rubyconf-2008-rubinius-evan-phoenix.html The Ruby VM wonkiness continued at RubyConf 2008 - Day 1. Next up we heard the “State of Rubinius” address on the status of the anointed heir to the Ruby federation. Evan Phoenix is a fun guy, and it proved to be a both informative and enjoyable session. Evan says Rubinius is “meta-circular-ish”, and slow, but getting faster. They have a new VM that is written in C++, which is a sharp tool, and as such, it is possible to poke your eye out. /2008/11/rubyconf-2008-future-of-rubyvm-koichi.html Mon, 10 Nov 2008 10:13:00 -0800 /2008/11/rubyconf-2008-future-of-rubyvm-koichi.html The first session I attended at RubyConf 2008 was called “Future of RubyVM”, and it began my ascent into “VM Wonkiness” as I started to call it. Koichi-san is responsible for leading the team of Ruby 1.9 implementers, and is the authoritative source of info on its status. I was hoping to learn a few things, as well as to run into new acquaintance Nobuyoshi Nakada, one of the core team members. /2008/11/rubyconf-2008-day-1.html Mon, 10 Nov 2008 09:58:00 -0800 /2008/11/rubyconf-2008-day-1.html The crowd of over 400 was happily awaiting the kickoff in Orlando of RubyConf 2008. After brief introductions from Rich Kilmer and David Black, Matz took the stage for his opening keynote. Opening Keynote - Matz Reasons Behind Ruby 8 years ago was the 1st International Ruby Conference, and there were only 33 people there. Obviously since then, the community has grown. Matz said he was not going to talk about technical stuff. /2008/11/my-vote-was-easy.html Tue, 04 Nov 2008 13:50:00 -0800 /2008/11/my-vote-was-easy.html Despite a massive line of people waiting for the polls to open this morning, when I went to vote just now I discovered… no line whatsoever. What a letdown! I wanted to do some sacrificing like hard struggling adherents to the cause of freedom the world over have done, just to get to the polling place, let alone cast their vote. But no, everything had to go quickly and smoothly. /2008/11/i-think-im-comatose.html Tue, 04 Nov 2008 10:50:00 -0800 /2008/11/i-think-im-comatose.html This last weekend, I upgraded a pretty complex application to the latest Ruby on Rails, and consequently had to upgrade a bunch of the plugins. In the case of Comatose 2.0, this was well timed, as there is a new release. If you have never heard of Comatose, it is a very cool mini-CMS that you add to your Rails app as a plugin. For cases where you have an applcation, and you want to put the ‘static’ pages under the control of the users, while still integrating with your application, Comatose is the best option I have discovered. /2008/10/oh-horror.html Fri, 31 Oct 2008 09:24:00 -0700 /2008/10/oh-horror.html I was forwarded a link to the original, left on the cutting room floor ending of the Roger Corman classic horror film “Little Shop of Horrors” and not only was it a timely tidbit for Halloween, but it was also strangely appropriate for the election. Enjoy your candy… /2008/10/great-git-migration.html Sun, 26 Oct 2008 10:15:00 -0700 /2008/10/great-git-migration.html I have been using git for a while, not quite as long as the really cool kids, but long enough to have become a git snob. As such, having to work on existing projects that were using that nasty old subversion was just like, a drag, man. I kept saying, “I’m going to migrate everything over to git.” Somehow, I just never seemed to find the time. Another little problem was the underwhelming level of support for git on Windows. /2008/10/cool-like-cucumber.html Sat, 25 Oct 2008 16:15:00 -0700 /2008/10/cool-like-cucumber.html Ever since I discovered Fitnesse a few years back, I have been increasingly obsessed with the idea of executable specifications and testable requirements. As far as I am concerned, Behavior Driven Development (BDD) is a very appealing way to get the “people who need the software” and the “people who build the software” to understand each other. For about 2 years, give or take, many Ruby on Rails developers have been switching to RSpec, or at least paying lip-service (giving rspec? /2008/09/going-to-rubyconf-2008.html Wed, 10 Sep 2008 16:54:00 -0700 /2008/09/going-to-rubyconf-2008.html Yes, it has been quite a while since I last posted. I have been busy with several interesting code things I will be talking about soon, along with my family’s annual trip to Spain (lots of good times, but no posting about that). Busy, yes. but not TOO busy to make my plans to go to RubyConf 2008. November in Florida, I can just imagine it now… hard core Ruby coding, jam sessions in the hotel, and maybe even some post-election riots. /2008/06/railsconf-2008-day-2.html Sun, 08 Jun 2008 21:14:00 -0700 /2008/06/railsconf-2008-day-2.html Day 2 of RailsConf 2008 began with a keynote from Jeremy Kemper, uber-committer and now main man behind Ruby on Rails. According to the brief introduction by DHH, Jeremy did around one third of the Rails 1.0 release himself, cares deeply about the “whole thing”, and has been busy helping get RoR running on Ruby 1.9 and other platforms. That must explain why Jeremy kept yawning incessantly during his presentation… he is the reason DHH is able to get more sleep! /2008/06/railsconf-2008-day-1.html Wed, 04 Jun 2008 13:49:00 -0700 /2008/06/railsconf-2008-day-1.html As RailsConf 2008 - Day 1 began, there was no avoiding a sense of just how large the community was growing. With over 2000 attendees, the physical presence was bigger than ever. But, unlike the first two conferences, the growth of the community had triggered inexorable changes. Unbeknownst to most attendees at RailsConf 2008, a rebel alliance had formed itself. The caboo.se crew, longtime Ruby on Rails committers, had decided to stick it to the MAN. /2008/06/going-public-from-los-angeles-to.html Wed, 04 Jun 2008 11:31:00 -0700 /2008/06/going-public-from-los-angeles-to.html With the high cost (and carbon!) of transportation, as well as the burden of the increased time it takes to fight your way through the congestion, we all need to change the way that we navigate thru our daily lives. I had decided to take public transportation to get from my house in Los Angeles, to RailsConf 2008 in Portland, OR. When I first mentioned my plans, several friends and family members were incredulous. /2008/05/converting-us-to-electric-vehicles.html Tue, 27 May 2008 18:40:00 -0700 /2008/05/converting-us-to-electric-vehicles.html A non-scientific, but clearly well thought-out back-of-envelope calculation by MIT CS professor Philip Greenspun is food for thought: the cost of replacing the entire fleet of U.S. passenger cars with electric ones would be zero. Here are some of his numbers: * total spent per year: $1 trillion * percentage of oil consumed by passenger cars: 40 * total spent per year on oil for passenger cars: $400 billion [refining into gasoline, distributing, and retailing add even more to this] /2008/05/zero-is-special.html Tue, 27 May 2008 10:00:00 -0700 /2008/05/zero-is-special.html I just read a fascinating academic paper co-authored by Dan Ariely, author of new book Predicably Irrational, a book I have heard about, but have not yet read. The paper presents results from a series of experiments into the nature of free pricing. Here is a juicy tidbit from the abstract: When faced with a choice of selecting one of several available products (or possibly buying nothing), according to standard theoretical perspectives, people will choose the option with the highest cost–benefit difference. /2008/05/railsconf-2008-better-be-good.html Tue, 27 May 2008 08:23:00 -0700 /2008/05/railsconf-2008-better-be-good.html RailsConf 2008 is later this week, as if you all did not know that. Interestingly, this year it has not sold out like it did for 1.0 and 2.0. Increased capacity by O’Reilly? Or perhaps something else at work here… If you are not aware for the cost of transport, you have been living on another planet. Just the massive increase in time required to make the pilgrimage has been substantial. /2008/05/phoenix-has-landed.html Sun, 25 May 2008 16:58:00 -0700 /2008/05/phoenix-has-landed.html Earthlings, we have successfully landed another probe on the red planet. Congratulations to the team at JPL, University of Arizona, and everyone else who made this one happen! Man, I just love space exploration… /2008/05/got-eye-on-you.html Thu, 22 May 2008 07:40:00 -0700 /2008/05/got-eye-on-you.html Read this piece from Rolling Stone magazine on 24-7 surveillance coming soon to a neighborhood near you. Then be afraid. Very afraid. /2008/05/in-search-of-search.html Mon, 19 May 2008 15:09:00 -0700 /2008/05/in-search-of-search.html My client was having troubles. The site was crashing, seemingly at random. QA was baffled, management concerned. After hunting thru logs, the culprit was found: the ferret search service. Despite having configured acts_as_ferret to use the DRb server option, the “whole thing” would fall apart on a regular basis whenever the ferret daemon would crash… which was pretty often. The ruby on rails plugin acts_as_ferret would revert to a local mode of operation, which would only make matters worse when competing mongrels would corrupt the index files on disk. /2008/05/aint-no-stopping-us-now.html Tue, 13 May 2008 21:05:00 -0700 /2008/05/aint-no-stopping-us-now.html According to a recent eWeek article, there will be four times more Ruby programmers within five years. Before all the haters start making cracks about it going from one thousand to four thousand professional Rubyists, here is a juicy bit from Mark Driver, Gartner analyst: “There are under one million professional Ruby developers now and we’re projecting there will be four million plus by 2013.” And oh yeah, what about that whole “Ruby is for hobbyists” misinformation campaign? /2008/05/modern-web-design.html Fri, 02 May 2008 14:29:00 -0700 /2008/05/modern-web-design.html This one pie chart says it all… From ChangeTheThought.com /2008/04/goldilocks-and-three-icons.html Wed, 23 Apr 2008 18:50:00 -0700 /2008/04/goldilocks-and-three-icons.html Once upon a time, there were three icons. A Poppa Application icon, a Momma Folder icon and a Baby Document icon. Life was good, and people were easily able to tell the difference between them, although very few visitors were known to go to that part of the forest. But then along came the Trashcan icon… and the dark times began. If you dragged a folder to the trash it went away back into the void. /2008/04/april-is-for-aol.html Wed, 23 Apr 2008 08:38:00 -0700 /2008/04/april-is-for-aol.html Last night was the always fun Los Angeles web application developer Meetup, this time at AOL in Beverly Hills. After navigating a veritable maze of cubes, we found ourselves in a fairly large screening room chock full of AV equipment, accompanied by a large pile of pizza boxes. A few moments later, the throng of LA-based developers shuffled in, ready for the latest and greatest. The prerequisites fulfilled, we got down to some serious techno-babble. /2008/04/archimedes-codex.html Thu, 17 Apr 2008 07:51:00 -0700 /2008/04/archimedes-codex.html Archimedes was a very cool dude. When you think of inventor/intellectuals these days, we have been trained to imagine a fairly wimpy, bookish kind of person. Not so for Archie, he was also a bad-ass who defended his beloved city of Syracuse to the death at the hands of Roman invaders. Archimedes invented what for the day, were some freaky advanced technologies. Well, new information has been discovered about him, thanks to the painstaking work by Will Noel at the Walters Art Museum of New York. /2008/04/frankie-goes-to-facebook.html Tue, 08 Apr 2008 22:04:00 -0700 /2008/04/frankie-goes-to-facebook.html UPDATED 4/12/2008: Now compatible with Sinatra 0.2.0 So you want to create a small Facebook application… seems like it should be a small thing, right? But creating an entire Ruby on Rails application just for a tiny little Facebook application is, at the very least, a bit wasteful. In the case of a overly popular Facebook app you could end up with, as Marc Andreessen put it, a “self-inflicted denial of service attack”, unless you have both a pretty serious infrastructure to support it, as well as lots of cash to keep that data center running. /2008/03/excuse-me-while-i-kiss-sky.html Thu, 13 Mar 2008 17:42:00 -0700 /2008/03/excuse-me-while-i-kiss-sky.html The demo that Microsoft showed at TED of Robert Scoble crying, ahem, I mean their future Microsoft Worldwide Telescope or whatever, looks really neat. In the meantime, those provocateurs over at Google have just put live Google Sky, a fully browser based version of their Google Earth software that started this whole “star wars” virtual astronomy competition thing in the first place. I suppose since so many people cannot see the stars anymore, that we need virtual astronomy more than ever. /2008/03/us-navy-goes-open-source.html Thu, 13 Mar 2008 12:30:00 -0700 /2008/03/us-navy-goes-open-source.html That unwitting center of global innovation known as the United States Navy has made a bold announcement: from now on, they are only going to accept open source. I just read about this on CNET, where they were linking to a recent story in Federal Computer Week. When I read this, I just about fell out of my seat. According to Vice Adm. Mark Edwards, deputy chief of naval operations for communications: /2008/03/telepathy-machine-demo.html Thu, 13 Mar 2008 11:00:00 -0700 /2008/03/telepathy-machine-demo.html I just saw an amazing demo of communication without speaking. No, not instant messaging, or sign language. Instead, scientists at Ambient Corporation have succeeded in tapping into the nervous system that control speech, and translate that into digitized speech. Michael Callahan showed off their demo at the Texas Instruments developer conference. Wow, this is a long way from my TI-99/4! Applications for secret agents, people who suffer from ALS, and people who cannot shut up when on the subway will be forthcoming. /2008/03/merb-on-virge.html Wed, 05 Mar 2008 15:17:00 -0800 /2008/03/merb-on-virge.html Merb, the mighty challenger to the current Rails domination of the Ruby web framework conversation, races towards “getting very close to being stable api wise”. That sounds like a 1.0 release to me! Ezra says that the 0.9.1 developer release is ready to take thru its paces. One area where Merb really differs from Ruby on Rails is how Merb is based off of RubyGems. The refactored Merb architecture takes the Merb modularity to a massive 16 gems. /2008/03/thanks-for-paying-attention.html Sat, 01 Mar 2008 16:51:00 -0800 /2008/03/thanks-for-paying-attention.html This last week has brought some very nice and favorable attention to the Dead Programmer Society. The ever-popular “I’d Rather be A Jazz Programmer” post popped up again, this time in the stodgy old school publication Computerworld. They ran an article on the “Rock Star Programmer” meme, and decided that my little post was part of the “Kill Rock Stars” contrarian perspective they were looking for. Thanks for making me look so good, guys! /2008/02/rush-shell.html Wed, 20 Feb 2008 14:20:00 -0800 /2008/02/rush-shell.html I just read the latest posting from Adam Wiggins, very cool dude, hard-core Rubyist, and friend. He has a new project called Rush, the Ruby shell. Adam is one of the guys behind Heroku, which is a pretty amazing pure web browser-based IDE/deployment/hosting solution for Ruby on Rails, if you haven’t seen that yet. Anyhow, like many of us, Adam seems like he just wants to use Ruby for everything. And when I say everything, I mean EVERYTHING. /2008/02/everybody-into-pool.html Wed, 20 Feb 2008 11:18:00 -0800 /2008/02/everybody-into-pool.html A few weeks back, I indulged my current obsession with grid computing, and Amazon’s EC2 and S3 services in particular, with a lengthy post. I mentioned how friend Ari Lerner and I had built a really neat solution, and were going to put all of our processing farm goodness into a nice neat gemified package. Well, mostly thanks to Ari, we now have a new Ruby gem called ProcessorPool that uses EC2 and S3 to do all the hard work for you. /2008/02/getting-to-usable.html Tue, 19 Feb 2008 07:52:00 -0800 /2008/02/getting-to-usable.html I read a great posting last night from Matt Rogers, founder of startup Aroxo, on a strategy for usability testing. Suddenly, I was flashing back a few years to the early salad days of web usability… When I first read Steve Krug’s tiny masterwork “Don’t Make Me Think”, I was very excited; at last, a nice practical approach! After the pedantic and overly academic work of guys like Jakob Neilson, Krug’s book hit me like Dr. /2008/02/you-got-your-ds-in-my-robot.html Tue, 05 Feb 2008 07:35:00 -0800 /2008/02/you-got-your-ds-in-my-robot.html The French press may be reeling in financial scandal, but the cool kids there are still concentrating on what is really important: drinking wine and controlling an open source robot with a heavily modded Nintendo DS. The Pekee Mobile Robot and a whole bunch of DS hacking. That in itself just sounds like hours of fun. But then can you just imagine real-world robotic battles in your living room, fought remote controlled by DS. /2008/02/rubynet-we-hardly-knew-ye.html Tue, 05 Feb 2008 06:05:00 -0800 /2008/02/rubynet-we-hardly-knew-ye.html It comes as not entirely surprising that the Wayne Kelly of the Ruby.NET project from down under has finally given up the ship. Microsoft had already grabbed the spotlight with IronRuby and the DLR. Despite some early gains, it seemed that development momentum had peaked, until Ruby.NET finally made its way up onto Google Code and a “real” open source project. How, how will John Lam and team proceed without Ruby. /2008/02/recaptcha-on-rails.html Fri, 01 Feb 2008 14:54:00 -0800 /2008/02/recaptcha-on-rails.html UPDATED Oct. 15, 2009 with most current info I hate implementing captchas. You know, those annoying things that your users think are deciphering hieroglyphics. I have hated them because I do not want to install a whole massive assemblage of software like ImageMagick/RMagick just to provide some basic protection from spam and bots. To avoid this, I had hacked together a simple implementation using some free public captcha. However, a client recently turned on SSL on their signup page, and my free public captcha gave a nasty error cause of the domain name in the SSL certificate not matching the domain of their site. /2008/01/railsconf-2008-registration-is-open.html Tue, 29 Jan 2008 11:13:00 -0800 /2008/01/railsconf-2008-registration-is-open.html Get ready, get set, go!! The annual frenzy of registration for RailsConf 2008 has begun. Yes, I have already received my registration confirmation. No, I have not received my speaker confirmation…yet? Oh well, looks like RejectConf again! See you all there… ahem, not all of you, unless you register right now! /2008/01/patent-apocalypse-begins.html Tue, 29 Jan 2008 08:27:00 -0800 /2008/01/patent-apocalypse-begins.html Software patents… as, Obi-Wan warned, “You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. We must be cautious.” Well, the dark side has struck back, people. A massive salvo has been launched, this time aimed directly at the open source community in the form of Trend Micro vs. Barracuda Networks. I was thinking about a cute little pictograph that would describe the public awareness and attitudes about software patents. /2008/01/i-want-my-api.html Mon, 28 Jan 2008 22:47:00 -0800 /2008/01/i-want-my-api.html I just ran into a really great resource for open source API documentation. Called gotAPI, it links in a delightfully searchable way all of the APIs we love, but turn out to not actually know. Well, we know them, just not well enough to have their numbers setup for speed dial on our cell phones. Or our code able to call them directly without looking up a reference first. Here is a small sample of ones I will actually use regularly: /2008/01/beware-of-merb.html Mon, 14 Jan 2008 14:56:00 -0800 /2008/01/beware-of-merb.html Apparently the Merb team was not yet satisfied with just having created a better Rails than Rails itself. Now, they are going after even more conceptual high ground, and creating an even more flexible web development paradigm that incorporates many of the great ideas percolating around the mongrel community. According to Yahuda Katz, the next version of Merb will completely revise the existing Merb framework, in order to provide for many more ways to utilize it. /2008/01/on-grid-with-ec2.html Sat, 12 Jan 2008 10:08:00 -0800 /2008/01/on-grid-with-ec2.html Lately, I have had a chance to get seriously into Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) service. I doubt any reader of this blog is unfamiliar with the existence of EC2, but many of you have probably not even gotten to the tire kicking stage, like I had been until recently. Even after attending several sessions about Amazon’s EC2 at RailsConf 2007, I still had only a very general idea about the service. /2008/01/making-s3-folders-in-ruby.html Fri, 11 Jan 2008 17:26:00 -0800 /2008/01/making-s3-folders-in-ruby.html Amazon’s S3 storage service is a really cool way to store and serve up massive quantities of data. Interestingly, it is more like a database than like a file system. Despite the convenience of referring to an object like “/path/to/thing.jpg” S3 really does not have any separate objects for “/path” or “/path/to”. In fact, neither “/path” nor “/path/to” even exist. This is why, when you store an S3 object, the name it is given is called “key” instead of “filename”. /2008/01/and-here-comes-money.html Fri, 11 Jan 2008 09:59:00 -0800 /2008/01/and-here-comes-money.html I read with great excitement that Engine Yard, my favorite of the Ruby-centric hosting companies, was taking in a round of $3.5 million from Benchmark Capital. I am a big fan of Ezra, and the rest of the crew, and the whole waiting list thing for getting a new slice setup has been a big inhibitor of their growth. Funny, however, the press coverage has called EY a “Ruby on Rails hosting company”. /2008/01/money-in-ghetto.html Thu, 03 Jan 2008 10:30:00 -0800 /2008/01/money-in-ghetto.html I keep thinking about Zed Shaw’s vitriolic (and newly updated) posting, and one particular aspect about it that seems to bother me. One way of looking at a ghetto is that is keeps people in. Another, is that is keeps outsiders away. In either case, it is an economy, like most any other. And like any economy, there are winners and losers. What exactly is Zed complaining about? That the overall level of technical competence is very low, even among many self-proclaimed developers? /2008/01/zed-is-mad.html Tue, 01 Jan 2008 15:44:00 -0800 /2008/01/zed-is-mad.html Zed Shaw has always been a rather curmudgeonly figure. I find him smart and hilarious, but of course many are rather insulted by his “tell it like he $%#@! well sees it” style. To me, Zed is like the Hunter S. Thompson of our community. The more your believe your own BS, the more he pisses you off. Like Hunter S., Zed is a put up or shut up kind of person. /2007/12/rubinius-maximus.html Wed, 05 Dec 2007 18:01:00 -0800 /2007/12/rubinius-maximus.html I got a little excited when I read of the team assembled right now working on Rubinius up at Engine Yard in San Francisco. After following the Ruby VM coopitition for while, and then seeing the Rubinius crew in full effect at RubyConf 2007, I am more convinced than ever that we are going to see some SERIOUS code coming out of these guys…. and assembling them all in one place is the best way to do it. /2007/11/eyes-have-it.html Wed, 21 Nov 2007 08:06:00 -0800 /2007/11/eyes-have-it.html Software usability has really benefited from the latest and greatest digital technology for eye tracking. If you are not familiar with eye tracking, it is exactly what it sounds like: a camera watching where the user’s eyes are focused, and matching that to the screen to identify what the user is REALLY looking at, for how long, and in what order. Here is a really great summary called “Scientific Web Design: 23 Actionable Lessons from Eye-Tracking Studies” that collects information from several different studies, and packages it up into something pretty, dare I say it, usable. /2007/11/werewolf-vs-vampyre.html Mon, 19 Nov 2007 05:52:00 -0800 /2007/11/werewolf-vs-vampyre.html I had read with mild amusement the minor dustup over the craze of Werewolf players at RubyConf 2007. If you don’t know what it is, you can read about it here. Some people just really enjoy playing social games. Let’s call them the Werewolves… you know who you are, even if the rest of us do not. Other people, however, view RubyConf as a place to get together with the other commiters on their beloved project, stay up all night, and crank out a new release before their presentation the next day. /2007/11/rubyconf-2007-day-3.html Sun, 18 Nov 2007 21:45:00 -0800 /2007/11/rubyconf-2007-day-3.html As day 3 of RubyConf 2007 began, the breakfast buffet had to remind us of its presence. This time, it was the main sound system that was taken out by the ultra-powerful toasters. When Dr. Nic was asked if he wanted to get started anyhow, he had to give two of his charmingly nasal “No” rhymes with “Pow” before MC David Black caught his meaning. This gave some of us a moment to try to catch up on the flurry of RubyConf blogging. /2007/11/rubyconf-2007-day-2-ruby-vm-smackdown.html Tue, 06 Nov 2007 13:38:00 -0800 /2007/11/rubyconf-2007-day-2-ruby-vm-smackdown.html As the sun rose over the hills of North Carolina, the quiet betrayed a seething fire blazing in the hearts of three development teams. “Three teams enter, one team leaves!” Yes, I am talking about the main event, people, the one, the only, Ruby VM Smackdown! The room was jam packed, the anticipation was high. As good fortune would have it, I was sitting right next to the head of the team who was my personal favorite to win the day. /2007/11/rubyconf-2007-day-1-advanced-ruby-class.html Mon, 05 Nov 2007 10:57:00 -0800 /2007/11/rubyconf-2007-day-1-advanced-ruby-class.html Jim Weirich is a very smart guy. So smart that his presentation was not about complicated classes, but about Ruby itself and how to take advantage of it to simplify things. Jim’s background in computing is long and varied, something like a history lesson in programming languages. Here is the abbreviated list: FORTRAN > C > Modula 2 > C++ > Eiffel > Java and in parallel to this: LISP > FORTH > TCL > Perl /2007/11/rubyconf-2007-day-1-what-makes-code.html Mon, 05 Nov 2007 00:19:00 -0800 /2007/11/rubyconf-2007-day-1-what-makes-code.html I remember Marcel Molina from the first RailsConf, when the Rails core team was introduced to the audience. What had impressed me at the time, besides his cool glasses, was the fact that Marcel comes from a literature background. That makes his take on programming in Ruby very interesting, because he approaches it from an aesthetic perspective, not just a functional one. To Marcel, code must achieve both, for it to be considered beautiful. /2007/11/rubyconf-2007-day-1.html Sun, 04 Nov 2007 23:33:00 -0800 /2007/11/rubyconf-2007-day-1.html Where RailsConf is growing to become a spectacle, RubyConf still has that special, small feeling of sharing. It is like the difference seeing a really great band perform at a small club before they get “discovered”, and then seeing them again in an arena. Still the same band, but a much different experience. Being here at RubyConf 2007 brings back the joy of hacking Ruby code for its own sake, not just creating the latest and greatest social web application. /2007/10/sinatra-ruby-web-framework-and-why-it.html Wed, 24 Oct 2007 09:16:00 -0700 /2007/10/sinatra-ruby-web-framework-and-why-it.html As followers of this blog know, I am very interested in the Ruby language itself, not just web development. But it is undeniable that Ruby has become popular largely due to web development powered by Ruby on Rails. However amazing Rails is, however, it is not the final web framework to be developed in Ruby. When Ari Lerner first told me of the Sinatra project, I was interested to see where he was going with it. /2007/10/more-developer-fun-in-los-angeles.html Wed, 24 Oct 2007 08:17:00 -0700 /2007/10/more-developer-fun-in-los-angeles.html Last night was the always entertaining Los Angeles Application Developer Meetup. L.A. is not known for the same massive quantity of developers as the bay area, for example, but having joined forces with the LA Ruby on Rails Meetup crew some time back, the monthly event is still growing. This month’s was held at the impressive new digs of YellowPages.com, who have been busy building out a huge Ruby on Rails based local search replacement for their venerable 100K+ lines of Java code. /2007/10/revolution-will-not-be-on-television.html Sun, 21 Oct 2007 08:57:00 -0700 /2007/10/revolution-will-not-be-on-television.html The medium of video is better than ever, thanks to YouTube. Video content is a lot improved by splitting video into smaller pieces, making the videos searchable, and most importantly, allowing for self-publishing. Helping for niche content authors to get their message out, has as a natural effect, a large proportion of idiocratic nonsense, but there are gems buried in the muck. Nothing to me is more emblematic of this, than the brilliant videos put together by Michael Wesch of Kansas State University. /2007/10/is-your-database-getting-tired.html Fri, 19 Oct 2007 07:52:00 -0700 /2007/10/is-your-database-getting-tired.html Is your database getting old and tired? Mike Stonebraker thinks so. Stonebraker is a database guru and long-time researcher, and when I say database guru I mean one of the founders of Ingres, and former CTO of Informix, not just some guy who knows how to debug a stored procedure. Here is a juicy quote from a recent article published by MIT of which he is one of the authors: /2007/10/carpe-emporium.html Wed, 10 Oct 2007 16:17:00 -0700 /2007/10/carpe-emporium.html I was wading thru my daily ration of VC blogs just now, when something caught my eye. Or I perhaps I should say, I was “submerged, weightless, suspended in the tepid depths of the thing… in a state of perfect sensory deprivation, when all at once an extraordinary thing happened: I noticed something!" (Thank you Mr. Wolfe) There is the midst of Fred (A VC)’s 30 thoughts at 30,000 feet, it was: /2007/10/pretty-pretty-pretty-pretty-good.html Tue, 09 Oct 2007 11:07:00 -0700 /2007/10/pretty-pretty-pretty-pretty-good.html Yet more wisdom about user experience and interface design from the Signal Vs. Noise blog, this time debunking the mistaken idea that a good user interface has anything to do with just drawing a pretty picture, and handing it over to someone to implement. One phrase in particular really caught my attention, “our designers apply their talents to the native materials of the web.” Now, I am not trying to pick on Photoshop people here, but how can you design an interface that is interactive, without using interactive tools to do so? /2007/10/proper-use-of-color.html Fri, 05 Oct 2007 11:04:00 -0700 /2007/10/proper-use-of-color.html Really cool article here from of all places NASA (go figure) courtesy of the Signal Vs. Noise blog. Entitled “DESIGNING A COLOR GRAPHICS PAGE”, it really breaks down a process of utilizing color to maximize user understanding of information. Color for its own sake is better kept to the domain of art. Functional design, like that of software user interfaces, need to be much better thought out, reaching for both utility and aesthetic qualities. /2007/09/stop-bug-based-development.html Mon, 24 Sep 2007 11:27:00 -0700 /2007/09/stop-bug-based-development.html I enjoyed reading Phil Haack’s little “you’re either with us or against us” diatribe from earlier today, where he rails against non-test-driven development. I only differ in that I prefer to call it Bug-Based Development (BBD). So are you one of those fifth-column types who is providing aid and comfort to the enemy? Draw a line in the sand… never make your troops take casualties retaking the same ground twice… no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. /2007/09/weighing-in-on-upcoming-ruby-vm.html Mon, 24 Sep 2007 10:43:00 -0700 /2007/09/weighing-in-on-upcoming-ruby-vm.html Earlier today, I read with great interest the potentially inflammatory post where Ola Bini proclaims the Ruby VM wars already over, and basically divides the Ruby VM empire into two halves, with the center controlled by Rome, err, I mean Rubinius primitives. I had already come to this conclusion a while ago. Not because I am smarter than anyone, FAR from it. Probably because I am more superficial, and easily impressed by meaningless characteristics, like how cool is the name Rubinius? /2007/09/rubyconf-2007-ruby-vm-smackdown.html Fri, 07 Sep 2007 09:43:00 -0700 /2007/09/rubyconf-2007-ruby-vm-smackdown.html I just registered for RubyConf 2007, which will be held Nov. 2-4 in Charlotte, NC. If you want a more intimate, more hard-core Rubyist experience, than what RailsConf is turning into, RubyConf looks to be it. There not being that many tickets available, you better register right now if you want to go. I registered without even looking at the agenda first… just filled out the registration form, and hoped it’s was not too late. /2007/08/visualize-this.html Wed, 08 Aug 2007 18:11:00 -0700 /2007/08/visualize-this.html Did you ever want to present information in a visual format, but didn’t know which one was most appropriate? Don’t know a Petri net from a concept fan? Or perhaps you just need even more visual stimulus from your information? Well, welcome to a feast of visualization splendor. Just have a glance at the Periodic Table of Visualization Methods… your eyes will never go hungry again. Thanks to Visual Literacy for creating this great info, and to Jeff Atwood of Coding Horror for blogging about it. /2007/08/lord-raise-me-up.html Tue, 07 Aug 2007 07:23:00 -0700 /2007/08/lord-raise-me-up.html As usual, human ingenuity has raised science to a new height. In this case, a very small height, but let us not quibble about a few details. UK researchers have discovered a way to circumvent the Casimir force, which is what causes very small things to clump together. By using a clever type of lens, the researchers were able to reverse the Casimir force in their experiment. Despite the fun headlines, this does not mean repulsors for the masses. /2007/07/fun-at-yahoo-in-los-angeles.html Thu, 26 Jul 2007 22:39:00 -0700 /2007/07/fun-at-yahoo-in-los-angeles.html Last Tuesday night was July’s Los Angeles Web Application Developer Meetup. This event is starting to get really good. Not only were there lots of people who came out, but our hosts Yahoo! actually bought us beer too. Hint to future hosts of the meetup… be cool like Yahoo! and provide BOTH a projection screen and beer. There were two especially fun presentations, at least to me. Jim Bumgardner of Yahoo showed off some of his really interesting web gadgetry. /2007/07/drunk-in-space.html Thu, 26 Jul 2007 14:31:00 -0700 /2007/07/drunk-in-space.html Apparently, the altitude in orbit is not high enough for more than one of NASA’s finest. According to an independent panel, on at least two occasions astronauts were allowed to fly after flight surgeons or other astronauts warned that they were drunk, so drunk that they posed a flight safety risk. You cannot have a machinist fabricating spacecraft parts who is unable to urinate in a little cup, but a DUI is space is not a problem that NASA is concerned with? /2007/07/ironruby-lives.html Mon, 23 Jul 2007 08:02:00 -0700 /2007/07/ironruby-lives.html John Lam and company have finally gotten something together to release to the world at large for their IronRuby project. I have not had a chance to play with it yet, but as a hard-core Rubyist I will, of course, have to do so. A few interesting observations from how they have chosen to go about developing this project. One is that they are distributing the source code, albeit as part of the Microsoft Permissive License. /2007/07/eventually-machines-will-win.html Sat, 21 Jul 2007 09:14:00 -0700 /2007/07/eventually-machines-will-win.html I have never been a big checkers fan. Good thing, cause I would have had to give up the game after the recent “solution” of the game by a team of Canadian computer scientists. Every possible move of every possible game has been mapped, and a checkers playing program can take each of these into account before deciding on its next move. No human player has such ability. Actually, as it turns out, the best possible outcome in a game of checkers, given two players who each make perfect moves, is a draw. /2007/07/ruby-is-more-of-free-love-kind-of.html Fri, 13 Jul 2007 08:16:00 -0700 /2007/07/ruby-is-more-of-free-love-kind-of.html I have been really, really busy lately, which is why I have not had a chance to post anything. I finally caught up on some reading and listening, and John Lam, father of the IronRuby project at Microsoft, has a fun interview on the DotNetRocks podcast. Irrespective of how I may currently feel about the direction over at Microsoft or rock, it is an interesting interview. My favorite line has to be where John is describing the cultural differences between the users of Python vs. /2007/06/cruisecontrolrb-and-rcov-are-so-good.html Sun, 24 Jun 2007 09:00:00 -0700 /2007/06/cruisecontrolrb-and-rcov-are-so-good.html I spent a bit of time this morning getting CruiseControl.rb and RCov working together for a new client’s fairly LARGE Ruby on Rails (70+ models, 40+ controllers) project. If you are not familiar with CruiseControl.rb, it is the Ruby based continuous integration tool from ThoughtWorks. RCov, on the other hand, is a very well known code coverage tool for Ruby. The implementation was incredibly simple, but finding the information on how to get the two working together required a perusal of the CruiseControl. /2007/06/little-bit-of-merb-in-los-angeles.html Thu, 14 Jun 2007 13:10:00 -0700 /2007/06/little-bit-of-merb-in-los-angeles.html Last night, I gave a short presentation on Ezra Z’s cool Ruby web development framework Merb at the Los Angeles Web Developer Meetup. Microsoft was kind enough to provide space at their new downtown offices, and even buy pizza. Can you say “(munch munch) Silver (crunch) light (munch) launch (gulp) budget”? When I started my presentation, I asked the room how many people were using Ruby on Rails. Almost everyone in the place raised their hand. /2007/06/without-air-no-one-can-hear-you-scream.html Thu, 14 Jun 2007 12:59:00 -0700 /2007/06/without-air-no-one-can-hear-you-scream.html I was shocked to read about the ongoing problems with the life support computers onboard the International Space Station. Every time I hear of problems up there, I feel a serious rant coming on. I grew up on science fiction books. In fact, I would have to say that the vast majority of my childhood was spent far away from this planet. Suffice to say, I am a serious supporter of space exploration. /2007/06/microsoft-vs-galaxy.html Fri, 01 Jun 2007 21:01:00 -0700 /2007/06/microsoft-vs-galaxy.html “The more you tighten your grip…the more star systems will slip through your fingers…” - Princess Leia /2007/06/power-rangers-should-test-first.html Fri, 01 Jun 2007 15:53:00 -0700 /2007/06/power-rangers-should-test-first.html Last night, I got home a bit late. My 8 year old son was still up, watching the Power Rangers. “Sit down and watch with me, Dad,” he said. “I’m surprised you still like the Power Rangers,” I said, as I sat beside him on the sofa. “I mostly just like the vehicles,” he told me. The Power Rangers were in trouble in this episode. The bad guys had taken remote control of the Rangers' giant robots, and the Power Rangers were helpless without their usual firepower. /2007/05/rubymicrosoft.html Wed, 30 May 2007 15:00:00 -0700 /2007/05/rubymicrosoft.html Martin Fowler just posted on his bliki a little piece entitled RubyMicrosoft. As I read it, I felt a strange chill run down my spine. Perhaps a few words of explanation are needed… At RailsConf recently I stood at the Thoughtworks booth for a moment chatting up Fowler, and embarrassing myself by asking for a photo with him (he doesn’t pose for photos with people). Luckily, I was rescued by the arrival of Oli Bini, and an ensuing short discussion about JRuby. /2007/05/i-would-rather-be-jazz-programmer.html Wed, 30 May 2007 12:02:00 -0700 /2007/05/i-would-rather-be-jazz-programmer.html I have reading a bit lately about “rockstar” programmers. Recruiter ads are proclaiming “Rockstar programmer needed”. Various websites named rockstaror alternately rockstars are springing up everywhere. I would rather be a “jazz musician” programmer, myself. Nothing against rock, don’t get me wrong. Glam, punk, metal, I can go there. I frequently do. It’s the “star” part, that has been starting to bother me. Here are some differences, as I see them: /2007/05/railsconf-2007-day-3.html Wed, 23 May 2007 07:02:00 -0700 /2007/05/railsconf-2007-day-3.html By the time we got to RailsConf Day 3, only the most hard core remained. In other words, almost everyone. And we were glad to have stuck around, because some of the best content of the entire conference was yet to come. David Black, introduced two integral members of the Ruby on Rails team, Jamis Buck and Michael “Koz” Koziarski, the co-authors of the seminal “Rails Way” blog. The Rails Way /2007/05/railsconf-2007-day-2.html Tue, 22 May 2007 10:30:00 -0700 /2007/05/railsconf-2007-day-2.html After the incredible energy of RailsConf Day 1, Day 2 seemed to slow down the pace a little bit. That was good for me, as I could spend some time catching up with friends both old and new, and not just attending sessions like an information junky. First would come the morning keynote speeches from Cyndi Mitchell of ThoughtWorks, and headliner Tim Bray of Sun Microsystems, with a short interlude from Charles Nutter. /2007/05/railsconf-2007-day-1.html Sun, 20 May 2007 18:28:00 -0700 /2007/05/railsconf-2007-day-1.html I was primed and ready for RailsConf 2007 Day 1. The excitement was in the air, and the crowd was primed. We awaited a day absolutely packed with mind candy. Starting with Chad Fowler, David Heinemeier Hansson, Robert Martin, Adam Keys, Avi Bryant, and Ze Frank. Wow, what a lineup! As Chad Fowler took the stage, his ukulele in hand, we eagerly awaited his opening remarks. Chad really did a great thing, by not just giving us the “feel-good rah-rah Rails is taking over the world” intro speech that most people probably expected. /2007/05/railsconf-2007-sessions-day-0.html Sat, 19 May 2007 07:55:00 -0700 /2007/05/railsconf-2007-sessions-day-0.html Well, I had just got back to my room after day 0 of RailsConf 2007, which was the tutorial sessions before the main conference began. After a fun evening of pizza and beer with the Pragmatic Programmers, I thought I would try to get down some thoughts about the day’s events. Yesterday, I attended “Scaling Rails From The Ground Up” followed by “Harnessing Capistrano”. It is very hard to have tutorial sessions at a conference. /2007/05/packing-for-railsconf-2007.html Wed, 16 May 2007 16:15:00 -0700 /2007/05/packing-for-railsconf-2007.html I am packing my stuff for RailsConf 2007, and I am pretty excited. Last year’s conference was the best event I had been to in years! The growth in the momentum and enthusiasm in the Rails community has only accelerated in the last year, and I am giddy at the prospect of more fun brain candy! I will be blogging from the conference, but not moment to moment like some quicker multitaskers. /2007/05/robotic-revolution.html Tue, 15 May 2007 10:54:00 -0700 /2007/05/robotic-revolution.html The upcoming RailsConf 2007 is not the only revolutionary conference that is going on this week. At that epicenter of robotics and artificial intelligence research Boston, MA is the RoboBusiness Conference and Expo featuring everybody who is anybody in the biz such as iRobot. CNET has a pretty good interview with Rodney Brooks, the CTO of iRobot. Despite the popularity of the Roomba, the robotics revolution has hardly begun. Brooks makes the interesting observation that not only will we see more autonomous robots wandering around like the Roomba, but even more embedded robotics like the self-parking feature on the Lexus. /2007/05/why-i-havent-posted-anything-lately.html Thu, 10 May 2007 07:26:00 -0700 /2007/05/why-i-havent-posted-anything-lately.html I have been enjoying some real world fun with my wife and son on the north shore of Hawaii the last few days, and so I have not had time or inclination to post anything. But I am back in action now, and there will be lots of high-tech fun at RailsConf next week. Oh, but island life is beautiful. I already miss it… /2007/05/become-initiate-of-bayesian-conspiracy.html Tue, 01 May 2007 16:32:00 -0700 /2007/05/become-initiate-of-bayesian-conspiracy.html Jeff Atwood at the Coding Horror blog links to a great introduction to Bayes' Theorem. If indeed as has been claimed “Google uses Bayesian filtering the way Microsoft uses the if statement," we should all be well versed in the work of the mysterious Reverend Bayes… I have been playing around intermittently with an interesting application of Bayesian classification for a couple of years. Perhaps this will inspire me to actually finish it up enough to put it up on the web. /2007/04/getting-your-attachmentfu-back-out-of.html Thu, 26 Apr 2007 13:25:00 -0700 /2007/04/getting-your-attachmentfu-back-out-of.html I have been busy the last few nights incorporating the brilliant Rails plugin called attachment_fu from Rick Olson aka technoweenie. If you do not know about attachment_fu, it is a complete solution to the problem of uploading image files attachments to include with your models. First, I had to get past the initial hurdle of getting ImageScience and FreeImage correctly installed and working on my Mac. Despite the claims that Locomotive should have already had these in the bundle, I had to go thru a small process to get the prerequisites going. /2007/04/growing-code.html Wed, 25 Apr 2007 13:40:00 -0700 /2007/04/growing-code.html Kevin Barnes over at Code Craft has a cool posting comparing software development to gardening. I agree with him that it is a fantastic analogy! It really rings true to me in a couple of fun ways: Gardening cannot be done once and for ever. It takes constant work to keep it both healthy and tidy. There is a big difference in both purpose and aesthetics within different gardens. /2007/04/silverlight-and-ruby.html Mon, 16 Apr 2007 16:04:00 -0700 /2007/04/silverlight-and-ruby.html Today, Microsoft announced their Silverlight technology platform. I will not bore you, kind reader, with yet another recap of what has already been written by so many others already. However, there are a couple of curious details that have piqued my interest. John Lam, of RubyCLR fame, made an interesting comment on his blog earlier today about Silverlight: This was a major reason why I moved my family to the other side of the continent… /2007/04/my-new-macbook-pro-rocks-for-rails.html Tue, 10 Apr 2007 00:17:00 -0700 /2007/04/my-new-macbook-pro-rocks-for-rails.html The last week or so I have been very busy playing with and setting up my new MacBook Pro. This is, in fact, my first post from it. After spending some time with it, I have to say that I am still extremely pleased! I have my Ruby on Rails environment all setup and working spendidly. I have my primary dev toolset CocoaMySQL, Locomotive, TextMate, and SVNx and now everything is pretty dialed in. /2007/03/e-is-for-editor-envy.html Wed, 28 Mar 2007 16:35:00 -0700 /2007/03/e-is-for-editor-envy.html I love it when I find out about a cool new tool. In this case, it is E, a Windows clone of the ubiquitous Mac text editor TextMate. Looks like this project has been around for awhile, but I just heard of it thanks to a blog entry about creating a Mac-like environment under Windows. Installing E is not a small task, although it is not a difficult one. This is due to the fact that E relies heavily on Cygwin to support “bundles” which is how TextMate creates their oh-so-useful macro and template collections. /2007/03/rubynet-interview-from-down-under.html Mon, 26 Mar 2007 15:49:00 -0700 /2007/03/rubynet-interview-from-down-under.html An interview with Dr. Wayne Kelly has been put up on Channel 9, Microsoft’s video interview site. Dr. Kelly is head of the Ruby.NET compiler project at the Queensland University of Technology in Australia. As always, I am eager to see progress on the .NET side of the Ruby language wars. I drank my coffee, and put on my phones for the 15 minute interview. After watching the video, I must say I am a little underwhelmed. /2007/03/i-have-seen-future.html Wed, 21 Mar 2007 15:09:00 -0700 /2007/03/i-have-seen-future.html The amazing artistic visions of computer science researcher Andrei State combine both grace and utility. I am reminded of how I felt first seeing the original Apple Knowledge Navigator video…a peek just around the corner into the future. Check out Andrei’s technical section of the really neat ARTA GRAFICA website. Thank you to my friend Dan Rasmus and his cool “Future of Information Work” blog for turning me on to this… /2007/03/i-speak-for-code.html Wed, 14 Mar 2007 15:14:00 -0700 /2007/03/i-speak-for-code.html Recently I was in a client meeting with a bunch of managers to discuss some very complex changes that were being proposed for an existing system. I was invited to the meeting so I could “speak for the code”, which to them meant that I could validate the ideas of the group based on my knowledge of the code base. After the meeting ended, I kept mulling over that phrase “speaking for the code”. /2007/03/cruisecontrolrb-continuous-integration.html Tue, 13 Mar 2007 14:09:00 -0700 /2007/03/cruisecontrolrb-continuous-integration.html At last, Ruby has a real Continuous Integration system, not just some crazy hacked-together solution. Nothing against crazy, hacked-together solutions, but your CI system is not the place for such madness. From those wonderful folks at Thoughtworks, we now have CruiseControl.rb, to join the CruiseControl and CruiseControl.NET offerings for Java and .NET projects respectively. I have been a constant user of CruiseControl.NET for all of the MS-platform projects for the last couple of years, and having a powerful, flexible system has been great. /2007/03/aptana-radrails-much-web-development.html Mon, 12 Mar 2007 21:00:00 -0700 /2007/03/aptana-radrails-much-web-development.html It was a couple of weeks ago when the RadRails team acknowledged that the ship had started to wander off course. Without any revenues, and with too few project contributors, the project was looking adrift. Could this be the end? Do not fear, gentle reader. Last week, the announcement came at EclipseCon that the RadRails project is now part of the Aptana project. Up until this announcement, I had never heard of Aptana. /2007/03/jruby-has-won-rails-race-vs-net.html Mon, 05 Mar 2007 21:34:00 -0800 /2007/03/jruby-has-won-rails-race-vs-net.html So now it is official. The latest build from the JRuby team is now running Ruby on Rails in the JRuby runtime. Great work from that team! The Sunsters up top must be gloating right now. And Microsoft is still MIA. Despite some hopeful signs of life, the silence is deafening from Ray Ozzie and the .NET camp (is that a band?). MS had better have some damn strong announcement at MIX vis-à-vis Ruby. /2007/03/now-computerworld-jumps-in-on-rails.html Thu, 01 Mar 2007 14:59:00 -0800 /2007/03/now-computerworld-jumps-in-on-rails.html According to Computerworld today, Ruby on Rails is the number one of the “five most important technologies that you need to know about in 2007.” Oh yeah! As I wrote a couple of days ago, now even the oldest of the old school enterprise publications are showing the love for Ruby and for Rails. That in itself is quite exciting. Another interesting point to note, is learned by looking over the list of the other four hot technologies. /2007/02/even-eweek-is-falling-for-ruby.html Mon, 26 Feb 2007 14:47:00 -0800 /2007/02/even-eweek-is-falling-for-ruby.html Even that stanch old “enterprisey” publication eWeek has been giving some love to Ruby and Ruby on Rails. Today’s most recent article is entitled “Ruby, Ruby, When Will You Be Mine?". Was this supposed to run on Valentine’s Day? I’m definitely feeling the love in the title. Anyhow, the author is all over the JRuby project. Messrs. Nutter et. al. have been building up the energy at the same time as the code base. /2007/02/railsconf-2007-is-sold-out.html Sat, 24 Feb 2007 09:21:00 -0800 /2007/02/railsconf-2007-is-sold-out.html My dear friends, if you don’t have your ticket for RailsConf 2007, you have missed the boat. All 1200 passes have now been sold out! I suspect that most conferences have a short peak of sales right when the passes first go on sale, then sell the bulk of their registrations in the last few days before the start of the conference, if conferences are anything like concerts. Since most conference don’t have the draw of a big musical headliner, conferences sell discounted registrations for a short period of time, to encourage early registrations and guarantee that the conference sells the minimum number of attendees to break-even. /2007/02/wigglebot-cometh.html Fri, 23 Feb 2007 17:22:00 -0800 /2007/02/wigglebot-cometh.html I saw this very interesting robot today. Not only can it crawl, shimmy, roll, and walk, but it does so by combining a small group of autonomous, modular, self-reconfiguring bots that operate together as a unit. Very cool! Transformers, indeed. Have I mentioned that I want a set of Lego Mindstorms NXT for my birthday? I would love to mess around with ruby-nxt or the Microsoft Robotics Studio. /2007/02/gazing-into-orm.html Fri, 23 Feb 2007 08:24:00 -0800 /2007/02/gazing-into-orm.html Jeremy Miller has an interesting post today regarding Object Relation Mapping (ORM). Droves of developers are now flocking to ORMs via Ruby on Rails, Castle, or one of the other many projects in this space, so it is good to have people like Jeremy exploring from a real implementation perspective. Anyhow, his post really is concerned with applications that use an existing database, have a large amount of logical processing. Simply applying an ORM without considering the logical implications of the data, not only fails to take advantage of the power of ORMs, but falls into a bit of a quagmire, with potentially a very non-DRY result. /2007/02/format-ruby-code-on-your-blog-postings.html Mon, 19 Feb 2007 16:41:00 -0800 /2007/02/format-ruby-code-on-your-blog-postings.html I had noticed that almost all of the cool people post nicely formatted, color coded, beautiful looking Ruby code whenever they post. Well, some of the cool people use a style of formatting that defies description…but I digress. Anyhow, I looked at my poor pitiful postings, and felt like a second, or even third class citizen. Everybody’s code is looking better than mine! What can be done?! Extreme makeover, Ruby CSS edition. /2007/02/ruby-blocks-closures-and-continuations.html Wed, 14 Feb 2007 12:00:00 -0800 /2007/02/ruby-blocks-closures-and-continuations.html Recently, while blogging about the Ruby.NET project, it was pointed out to me that I was incorrect about Ruby.NET not supporting closures. Brendan noted that in fact continuations are what is not yet supported. I quickly realized that I was not entirely clear about the differences between a closure and a continuation, except that they both used code blocks. I decided that it must be time that I figured it out. /2007/02/rubynet-and-rexml-not-yet.html Wed, 14 Feb 2007 11:15:00 -0800 /2007/02/rubynet-and-rexml-not-yet.html I finally had a chance to play around with the latest download of the Gardens Point Ruby.NET compiler. At first, I was excited, as my little DSL test application was able to run perfectly. Blocks, instance_eval, singleton classes all worked fine for me. Very cool! Then I decided to experiment with the REXML ruby parser. I did so despite the fact that the compiler authors have stated in their project goals that “We do not however plan to implement the other Ruby libraries that commonly ship with the Ruby distribution, such as CGI and DBM (except for those implemented 100% in Ruby)”. /2007/02/just-say-no-to-vista.html Mon, 12 Feb 2007 09:49:00 -0800 /2007/02/just-say-no-to-vista.html Security expert Bruce Schneier says not to use Windows Vista, due to the flaws of the Digital Rights Management (DRM) incorporated into the OS. No, really. One of, if not THE, top security expert says not to use Microsoft’s newest OS. To quote Mr. Schneier: Windows Vista includes an array of “features” that you don’t want. These features will make your computer less reliable and less secure. They’ll make your computer less stable and run slower. /2007/02/rubynet-lives.html Fri, 09 Feb 2007 10:26:00 -0800 /2007/02/rubynet-lives.html It has been radio silence for quite a while from the Ruby.NET project. Well, the eagle had landed. There is a new beta release. Here is what they have to say for themselves: We are pleased to announce the release of a new Beta (version 0.6) of the Gardens Point Ruby.NET compiler. Implementation is not yet complete but we have now implemented the vast majority of Ruby’s builtin classes and modules. /2007/02/switching-back-to-mac-side-of-force.html Thu, 08 Feb 2007 19:10:00 -0800 /2007/02/switching-back-to-mac-side-of-force.html Once upon a time, I did really cool things at Apple Computer… It was during the reign of Jobs the First, and all was well with the world. Except for the installed base of Macs, and trying to sell businesses on buying Macs. Shareholder were incensed, board members impatient. Even after the coup, and various poorly executed attempts to rectify the situation by the imposters Scully and Gassee could not change, and the kingdom was greatly endangered. /2007/02/iteration-at-jet-speed.html Thu, 08 Feb 2007 19:08:00 -0800 /2007/02/iteration-at-jet-speed.html Jeff Atwood’s blog has some excellent points about agile software development, based on a cool article by Roger Sessions from MSDN. Sessions notes the concept of the iconoclastic Col. John Boyd that speed of iteration beats quality of iteration. Boyd decided that the primary determinant to winning dogfights was not observing, orienting, planning, or acting better. The primary determinant to winning dogfights was observing, orienting, planning, and acting faster. /2007/02/time-for-little-story.html Wed, 07 Feb 2007 17:40:00 -0800 /2007/02/time-for-little-story.html Brian Marick has a great example of how to break a software feature up into user stories. Note how looking at smaller units of granularity make it so much easier to understand, then just trying to identify an entire feature all at once. Also note how much value even the simplest pictures add to the stories. However, a picture is not enough. I personally love to see video of the whiteboard conversations for documenting the user stories. /2007/02/railsconf-2007-will-have-good-beer.html Tue, 06 Feb 2007 21:07:00 -0800 /2007/02/railsconf-2007-will-have-good-beer.html Portland has good beer. There, now I’ve said it. One of the key benefits of holding the RailsConf 2007 conference in Portland has to be easily obtaining really good beer. The McMenamins on Broadway is the closest place to the convention center to go where “Classics such as raspberry-tinged Ruby, medium-bodied Hammerhead and dark, strong Terminator Stout are always available.” In between the fun of learning all about Rails 2.0, Capistrano 2. /2007/02/i-will-be-at-railsconf-2007.html Fri, 02 Feb 2007 14:36:00 -0800 /2007/02/i-will-be-at-railsconf-2007.html I just checked my email, and saw that registration has just opened for RailsConf 2007. I went to last year’s conference, and it was the most interesting and exciting event in the software industry I had been to in years! If you are interested in going, I suggest that you register immediately. Last year’s event sold out in a couple days. When they added 100 additional spots last year, those sold out in hours! /2007/02/telecommuting-as-energy-saver.html Thu, 01 Feb 2007 17:33:00 -0800 /2007/02/telecommuting-as-energy-saver.html The Christian Science Monitor has an opinion piece called Telecommuting as energy saver which is nicely done. Here are a few juicy excerpts: This new work freedom, properly handled, has the power to transform business, government, and home life. Telecommuters – those who work at home or on the road with no office at all – now number between 28 million and 32 million, according to some estimates… Cutting out that round-trip commute to the office – which averages about 23 miles – can save nearly $1,000 a year in gasoline and avoid putting more than 6,000 pounds of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere… /2007/01/people-are-communicating-beings.html Wed, 31 Jan 2007 10:30:00 -0800 /2007/01/people-are-communicating-beings.html I ran into this older article from Alistair Cockburn the other day called Characterizing people as non-linear, first-order components in software development. What Dr. Cockburn is talking about, is that very agile of ideas that people are the central focus for any software development effort. Developing software is not just a sausage factory of requirement documents, source code documents, and unit test plan documents. The people are what is important, not the documents. /2007/01/programming-language-family-tree.html Wed, 31 Jan 2007 10:03:00 -0800 /2007/01/programming-language-family-tree.html My colleague Michael Hocter just sent me a great link to a diagram showing the history of the evolutions of the major programming languages. I just love this kind of visual representation of information! Note how C# has taken ideas from Java…then Java goes and draws inspiration from C#. Also note how C# 2.0 takes its inspiration from Ruby. The two programming languages that drew from the most other languages (five) were Oak, which turned into Java, and Ruby. /2007/01/what-to-do-when-flu-comes-for-you.html Tue, 30 Jan 2007 18:22:00 -0800 /2007/01/what-to-do-when-flu-comes-for-you.html My dear friend and former colleague Dan Rasmus has some really important points to make regarding IT operations and emergency preparedness in his blog entry Work Interrupted - Rapid Response in a Crisis. Thank about how many warnings we have already had about potential pandemics. If it hits, it will be too late to make emergency plans…we will need to be carrying out those plans, not talking about what they should be! /2007/01/beating-dead-horse.html Tue, 30 Jan 2007 16:16:00 -0800 /2007/01/beating-dead-horse.html Last week, there was a very funny post from the extreme programming mailing list, published here. This is quite emblematic of what dead programmers see every day, as we are often ordered to ride dead horses… We need to add a couple to the list: - Offshore the dead horse so we can ride it 24 hours a day - Mandate all riding be done on site, so we can keep an eye on our dead horse /2007/01/folly-of-accountabalism.html Mon, 29 Jan 2007 14:41:00 -0800 /2007/01/folly-of-accountabalism.html The Harvard Business Review has published their list of 20 breakthrough ideas for 2007. There are several ideas on this list with particular appeal to me. One that stands out is David Weinberger’s “Folly of Accountabalism” which insists that “Accountability has gone horribly wrong. It has become ‘accountabalism,’ the practice of eating sacrificial victims in an attempt to magically ward off evil.” Dr. Weinberger is referring to the emphasis on corporate management and compliance that has come to dominate modern American business. /2007/01/fabbers-gone-wild.html Thu, 25 Jan 2007 17:51:00 -0800 /2007/01/fabbers-gone-wild.html Why stop at fabbing a chocolate bar when you can just fab your own whole factory? According to Behrokh Khoshnevis, a USC Engineering researcher, “The goal is to be able to completely construct a one-story, 2000-square foot home on site, in one day and without using human hands.” Seems like a scene from Manna to me, doesn’t it? /2007/01/one-man-army.html Thu, 25 Jan 2007 12:23:00 -0800 /2007/01/one-man-army.html The continued rise of the individual as a viable economic unit is being covered by several bloggers, starting with Paul Kedrosky and continuing with Tim O’Reily. The trend in human societies has been toward increasing decentralization. We see this in terms of computers (70’s = mainframes, 80’s = PCs, 90’s = Internet, 2000’s = Wireless Internet), as well as in terms of business (70’s = corporate HQ, 80’s = independent business units, 90’s = spin-off independent companies, 2000’s = supply chain integration). /2007/01/speaking-same-language.html Tue, 23 Jan 2007 09:40:00 -0800 /2007/01/speaking-same-language.html The art of successful software development is matching the delivered software to the needs of the users. Achieving this requires that the developers and the users speak the same language regarding the problem to be solved. James Shore has a new chapter called Ubiquitous Language in his upcoming agile development book that summarizes this idea nicely. Martin Fowler’s seminal article on Language Workbenches also has really influenced my thinking. I guess the difference to me is that where Ubiquitous Language is about getting the developers to understand what the users are talking about, Language Workbenches are about building software systems using tools to translate the domain specific language into runnable code. /2007/01/anti-team.html Sun, 21 Jan 2007 16:43:00 -0800 /2007/01/anti-team.html Jeremy Miller and Ayende have each captured some hysterical and yet poignant slices of life from the depths of the seventh pit of hell…or your typical IT project team, as most of us more commonly know it. If you are guilty, you know who you are. If you are innocent, then you haven’t been working very long in this game… /2007/01/when-we-were-fab.html Fri, 19 Jan 2007 20:35:00 -0800 /2007/01/when-we-were-fab.html A fabber is a machine that can make three-dimensional objects just like a printer can print in two-dimensions on a a piece of paper. Only recently had this technology escaped the realm of science fiction into the still unreal world of government and large-budget research labs…which is ironic given that the purpose of fabbers is to produce highly specialized items at very low cost. Well, thanks to an open-source hardware/software project called Fab@Home, the technology is reaching out to the home enthusiast. /2007/01/optimus-mini-three-is-prime.html Thu, 18 Jan 2007 09:38:00 -0800 /2007/01/optimus-mini-three-is-prime.html Time again for another incredibly cool looking device… the Optimus Mini Three Keyboard. The description on their site says “Optimus mini is an auxiliary keyboard with three keys, each complete with an OLED screen displaying the current function.” They call it a keyboard, but I think that is quite the understatement. It is really like an external display surface that you can press. Drivers for Win32, MacOS and Linux are available. /2006/11/ruby-domain-specific-languages-basics_27.html Fri, 12 Jan 2007 16:00:00 -0800 /2006/11/ruby-domain-specific-languages-basics_27.html In the previous three entries in this series of postings, I have been exploring the basics of creating domain specific languages using Ruby. Since I cannot disclose details of my big financial service client’s DSL, I am using this made up example to illustrate the techniques that are useful when building your own Ruby DSL. So far we have created a “PetShop” domain that allows us to interact with the Pets. /2007/01/rewrite-of-no-return.html Thu, 11 Jan 2007 10:02:00 -0800 /2007/01/rewrite-of-no-return.html I am really into Kevin Barnes' article “To Rewrite Or Not To Rewrite”. He is on the right track about the challenges and tactics for a rewrite of any complexity. Chad Fowler is also exploring the big rewrite, and has fun things to say in a whole series of postings. Rewriting a system too soon can be a waste of resources. One of the points of SOA is to allows services to be rewritten as needed, not just because a cool new technology can come out, but because there is value to be gained from doing so. /2006/12/man-who-sold-world.html Tue, 19 Dec 2006 17:53:00 -0800 /2006/12/man-who-sold-world.html Was Thomas Edison the world’s first patent troll, or at least the most famous? Fortune’s Business Innovation Insider displays a list of the “nine things Edison never actually invented.” In case you were wondering, yes, Edison did sue rivals to enforce his patents. Just for fun, compare the lives of Edison and his great rival Nikola Tesla. Edison was everything that Tesla was not. In particular, financially successful. However Tesla really was a great inventor. /2006/12/patently-absurd.html Tue, 19 Dec 2006 12:54:00 -0800 /2006/12/patently-absurd.html Paul Kedrosky comments on the latest travesty in the abusive system that we use here in the US for “protecting” intellectual property related to computer software. As someone who gets paid by creating IP, I am supposed to support the US patent system, right? But I cannot help but think, what if the attitude of the early innovators in software had been like that of the current industry? How would have kids like me grown up hacking the Apple ][ using the published source code of its ROM? /2006/12/merb-is-word.html Thu, 14 Dec 2006 10:29:00 -0800 /2006/12/merb-is-word.html I have been playing around with Merb, which is a very cool project from Ezra Zygmuntowicz. Merb combines the Mongrel web server with a lightweight Ruby web framework. It has way less stuff in it than Rails, but is somewhat more than Camping. Where this all started, was that I was looking for some way to use Mongrel to create a new REST web service for a client. This service has no UI, and basically just needs to front end a Ruby DSL that I have been working on. /2006/12/resistance-to-change.html Mon, 11 Dec 2006 11:29:00 -0800 /2006/12/resistance-to-change.html Obie Fernandez comments on Seth Godin’s observation that he would be a lousy pilot. Maybe this explains why I do not have a pilot’s license… Obie notes that “innovators catch the most grief from management”. But why would this be the case, when management is so eager to capitalize on said innovations? Perhaps a look at anthropology can help. A few years ago I watched a fantastic program on the Discovery Channel called “Walking With Cavemen. /2006/12/that-ruby-is-so-hot-right-now.html Fri, 08 Dec 2006 10:35:00 -0800 /2006/12/that-ruby-is-so-hot-right-now.html I was just reading the latest stats from the TIOBE Programming Community Index. What is this index? They say themselves that it “gives an indication of the popularity of programming languages.” Yes, I know what Mark Twain had to say about stats, but I still love reading them! Anyhow, the latest and greatest December 2006 stats are fascinating as usual. Ruby is still surging in popularity, in fact it has had the biggest rise in popularity over the last year of any language in the top 20. /2006/12/rubysspi-gets-thru-firewall.html Fri, 01 Dec 2006 11:00:00 -0800 /2006/12/rubysspi-gets-thru-firewall.html One of the biggest problem that Guerilla Rubyists have had getting our favorite language into the big companies that pay our bills, has been the corporate firewall. Using corporate Windows machines, behind corporate firewalls that use NTLM authentication to the corporate domain, has meant “no Ruby programmatic access to resources on the other side of the firewall.” In other words, no RubyGems! Having to try to download every Gem (and every Gem that the Gem you want to install depends on) for a local install it at the very least a big pain in the behind. /2006/11/new-hebruby-release.html Sat, 25 Nov 2006 13:20:00 -0800 /2006/11/new-hebruby-release.html I have just released a new update of Hebruby, the Ruby hebrew date conversion library. It is now available as a proper Ruby gem, and has much improved documentation. If your Rails application needs to convert from julian date to a hebrew date, or from a hebrew date to a julian date, or display a date in hebrew (either in hebrew or transliterated into english) this gem is for you. /2006/11/ruby-domain-specific-languages-basics_19.html Sun, 19 Nov 2006 15:00:00 -0800 /2006/11/ruby-domain-specific-languages-basics_19.html This is another installment in a series about creating domain specific languages with Ruby. In part 1 and part 2 of this series, I created a simple Ruby DSL to describe the relationship between Pets and Persons. Now I will extend the DSL, and use some cool Ruby metaprogramming tricks to demonstrate the power and benefits of using Ruby to create an internal DSL. First, I want to simplify the syntax for declaring things in our DSL. /2006/11/dark-side-of-metrics.html Mon, 13 Nov 2006 20:41:00 -0800 /2006/11/dark-side-of-metrics.html I have usually been in favor of measurement of any possible aspect of the software development process. Proper techniques of gathering and analyzing metrics have been espoused since Capers Jones created the study of software measurement. I was first introduced to many of these concepts in the writings of Steve McConnell, particularly when his book Rapid Development first came out. If a thing cannot be measured, it cannot be easily studied or improved. /2006/11/ruby-domain-specific-languages-basics_08.html Wed, 08 Nov 2006 12:29:00 -0800 /2006/11/ruby-domain-specific-languages-basics_08.html Previously, I was exploring the basics of DSL creation using Ruby. This post continues sharing my lessons learned while developing a prototype of a domain specific language in the mortgage industry. Since I cannot share the actual code itself belonging to my client, I will continue to extract the useful concepts into these simple examples. Last time we created a simple Animal DSL class. The important part of that class is this bit that makes sure our DSL like syntax works for the declarative methods: /2006/11/planning-game-vs-crying-game.html Wed, 08 Nov 2006 10:14:00 -0800 /2006/11/planning-game-vs-crying-game.html James Shore just posted a very cool chapterette from his upcoming book on agile development called “The Planning Game”. The concept simply enough is that customers and developers work together to plan what features are going to be implemented, and in what order. Customers know what features have the most value to the business, so they get to choose the order in which features are developed. Developers know about the costs, so they get to say how long something is going to take. /2006/11/ruby-domain-specific-languages-basics.html Sat, 04 Nov 2006 16:36:00 -0800 /2006/11/ruby-domain-specific-languages-basics.html I have been working on a prototype of a Ruby domain specific language for one of my clients, a very large financial services company. I have learned a whole bunch of really interesting lessons, which I will share over a short series of posts as I make more progress. The first thing I tried to do was create a basic bit of DSL tastiness like this: class Dog < Animal number\_of\_legs 4 end class Bird < Animal number\_of\_legs 2 end class Snail < Animal number\_of\_legs 0 end My first implementation of the Animal class looked like this: /2006/11/gmail-for-mobile-rocks.html Thu, 02 Nov 2006 09:41:00 -0800 /2006/11/gmail-for-mobile-rocks.html I just installed the brand new Gmail for Mobile on my Motorola RAZR. In just a matter of a couple moments, I was looking at my Gmail inbox! Gmail for Mobile is a Java-applet that runs on your Java enabled phone. Keeping the network traffic down this way is a lot better option that a WAP-based email solution, which is what I had tried and abandoned previously. Not having a QWERTY keyboard is a big limitation for smartphones especially where something heavily textual like email is concerned. /2006/10/ruby-can-now-take-over-world.html Mon, 23 Oct 2006 20:34:00 -0700 /2006/10/ruby-can-now-take-over-world.html I am still overwhelmed with excitement about the big news that John Lam, creator of RubyCLR has accepted a full time job with Microsoft. John’s blog has the details here. MS had already jumped into dynamic languages with the acquisition of IronPython. Now it only a matter of time until “Ruby#” or whatever MS will call it (since there is already a Ruby.NET project, which is heading in yet another direction). /2006/10/toward-test-driven-culture.html Mon, 23 Oct 2006 14:43:00 -0700 /2006/10/toward-test-driven-culture.html We all have to move to a test-driven culture. We cannot think about testing as an afterthought, or as a necessary evil. Testing has to be baked into the culture of software development the same way that testing is baked into Ruby on Rails. It is there right from the beginning, and makes you feel guilty when you DON’T do it. The DNA of software development has to evolve to grow systems with neurons that make it so that a lack of testing feels like sticking your hand into a wall socket; you notice right away when it happens, and you take immediate action to make it stop. /2006/10/coolest-new-device-ive-seen-for-while.html Sun, 22 Oct 2006 10:19:00 -0700 /2006/10/coolest-new-device-ive-seen-for-while.html I just saw a really neat new gadget called “The Device Patented Process Indicating Apparatus " for the first time. Check it out at http://www.processindicator.com/ It is a USB device that can be connected to take whatever data feed you desire, and use the “inscrutable dials”, Ethereal Glowing Tube (EGT), and incandescent lamp on “The Device” to indicate whatever status you want. “The build is broken”, “sales are up”, or “there is a soccer game today” are only some of the neat automation possibilities that come to my mind without much effort. /2006/10/architect-is-not-honorary-title.html Thu, 12 Oct 2006 10:13:00 -0700 /2006/10/architect-is-not-honorary-title.html The job title “architect” seems to mean something different inside every organization. At far too many companies, it is almost an honorary title, being reserved as a promotion for long-term company loyalists who “know the business”, instead of actually meaning anything related to the overarching technical design required for the successful release of quality software. Knowing the business is great. In fact, knowing the business is essential. I hope that business experts abound within your organization. /2006/10/programming-zombies-will-crush-you.html Wed, 11 Oct 2006 14:04:00 -0700 /2006/10/programming-zombies-will-crush-you.html This post on the “Creating Passionate Users” blog really sums up what makes a Dead Programmer, well….dead! http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2006/10/knocking_the_ex.html A colleague of mine once quipped, “Why is it that at some point in most people’s career, they suddenly decide that they now know everything and don’t have anything else to learn?”. That is around the point that they are past the point of no return converging on the “micro-manage every detail” side of the “Zombie Function” graph. /2006/10/too-skilled-for-programming.html Wed, 11 Oct 2006 12:01:00 -0700 /2006/10/too-skilled-for-programming.html This classic bit of wisdom from David Dossot explains many things about management philosophy that frequently make little sense to developers. If you ever wondered how some people ended up in management, the answer is here: http://perso.wanadoo.fr/lothar/datastore/TooSkilledForProgramming.pdf In a world where taller people tend to more successful, I guess it makes sense. But logic has nothing to do with it! And things that lack logic offend the sensibilities of any self-respecting Dead Programmer… /2006/10/time-to-reboot-dead-programmer-society.html Wed, 11 Oct 2006 11:53:00 -0700 /2006/10/time-to-reboot-dead-programmer-society.html It has been too long, WAY too long, since my last entry. That means it is now time to reboot this blog in a new, better location. So what is this so-called “Dead Programmer Society”, you may wonder? This site is dedicated to the Dead Programmers who dwell inside the corporate world. Not really so much dead, but slumbering. Wake up, wake up… and carpe codex! /about/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 /about/ Ron Evans aka @deadprogram is an award-winning software developer and expert in robotics/IoT/computer vision who is very active in the free and open source community. He has helped many clients such as AT&T, Intel, and Northvolt solve some of their most difficult technical and business problems. Ron is a very active speaker, keynoting and presenting at industry conferences around the world such as MakerFaire, OSCON, GopherCon, FOSDEM, and the MIT Technology Review.