I'm always hearing people say that they want to have local docs like the ones at the Ruby Rdoc page. I've also wanted this and looked all over for a way to download these docs and haven't found them. Everyone says "Use Rdoc" but nothing more. I've only used rdoc on my own project and just didn't get what they were suggesting.
With Rdoc, it takes a few minutes to generate them, but you can make your own local copy of any Ruby docs. I think 90% of the Ruby/Rails world knows this already, but those of weren't in the secret, try this.
cd into your local directory that holds your Ruby/Rails code. This could be your own project code, /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-1.15.3 (to generate your Active Record docs), or /usr/local/lib/ruby/1.8 (to build your own core Ruby docs). Since Ruby is interpreted, you've got all the system code right there on your own box.
Create a directory in your home folder called rdoc (or whatever you'll remember).
type rdoc -o ~/rdoc/activerecord or rdoc -o ~/rdoc/ruby or so on. Rdoc wants to create that last directory itself, so don't help it out by having it in place already.
When you're done, you'll have a nice, very fast, local copy of the docs. More importantly, you've created docs that match exactly what's installed on your machine.
It does take a few minutes to generate your own copy of the Ruby core docs, but the rest run fairly quickly.
Jason Rudolph read my last entry and wasted no time sending a few Java podcasts my way.
Hey Jared,
You asked about some good Java podcasts.
("Someone send me a Java equivalent or two so I can post it too!")
The Java Posse just plain rocks. I highly recommend it.
Software Engineering Radio has some good episodes too, but it can be hit or miss. It tends to be mostly Java-centric, but they occasionally branch out. I recently enjoyed Episode #52: Obie Fernandez on DSL Development in Ruby.
Thanks for posting about the Rails podcast. I'm downloading some episodes right now!
Cheers,
Jason
Any more coming?
Jared
This quote "Isolation Kills Innovation" is on the Pragmatic Programmer's community page. And it's true. When we spend all of our time heads down doing any type of work, we lose our sense of perspective, we lose the new ideas. We tend to get stuck in ruts. The old saying "Can't see the forest for the trees" can be applied here.
So what if interaction is harder to come by? What if your company doesn't let you go to conferences? Maybe you don't have active user groups in your area. What are your options? As a consultant who generally works on project at home, this is real concern for me. Last week at RailsConf I realized how much I'd been missing that interaction. (I do have a great local Ruby user's group, but I'm talking about every day interactions.)
Sitting in sessions all day long about Ruby and Rails, sharing a room with Glenn Vanderburg and talking about Ruby and Rails each evening... basically immersing in the Rails experience was awesome. Hearing how people are solving problems really gets my creative juices flowing.
One of the topics I heard about was The Rails Podcast. And wow... I pulled down a few selected entries and listened to them driving around town, filling my "down time". And I've got to say, it's great. I just went back and downloaded the entire catalog!
Listening to Zed talk about how he's using Mongrel and Nginx gives me ideas on how I can do the same. If you're a Rails developers, I'd strongly encourage you to check out this site.
(Someone send me a Java equivalent or two so I can post it too!)
But whatever your language, get out of the house, literally or with blogs, podcasts, and articles. But get those new ideas in your head, mix them in, and see what ideas float to the surface.
Isolation does kill innovation. Don't stagnate.
