We develop, test, and create fine software products, and design creative solutions to your problems.
The development of software is an intrinsically creative process. We are dedicated to improving our mastery of the art.
.. it is a really special feeling when you give someone a book and it changes the way they think and act. So I'm really pleased to have just finished reading a book that I know I'll be handing out ...
-Jeffery Fredrick
...Much like the Mac, this book “just works”, because it takes the best from lessons learned from team leaders and team players and takes the mystery out of the project management processes as appl...
-Robert Pritchett
...It would be really nice if, as an industry, we could stop being such a bunch of screwed-up clowns and start living up to our potential. Ship It! is one of the things that could help, if only tho...
-Mike Gunderloy
Agile RX and Ruby RX Philly: Earlybird Expires! (Jul 7)
The Ruby RX and Agile RX collocated shows are coming to Philadelphia and Washington DC (technically, to Reston), and the first round of early bird discounts are this week.
There's a stellar speaker and session lineup on both the Agile and Ruby sides of the house. We've got Chad Fowler, David Bock, Neal Ford, Johanna Rothman, David Hussman, Esther Derby, Russ Olsen, and more!
The early bird discount ends on July 13th. Register by then and save $100 per person. Bring more than 5 coworkers and save even more!
Find out more about the Philly show here and you can read up on the DC/Reston show on this page.
RubyRX and AgileRX! (Mar 24)
I'm just starting to organize speakers and topics, but wanted to give everyone as much advance notice as possible. RubyRX and AgileRX are going to be a joint conference in both Philadelphia and DC this year!
We'll be in Philadelphia on July 30-31 and DC on September 3-4.
Block off the dates now! I'll post again when I have more information. There's no web page or registration page yet.
Also, I apologize for my sparse blogging in recent months... I should be coming out of that now and will post an explanation in the next few days.
RubyRX: First Event on the Books! (Feb 23)
Thursday night, and all day Friday and Saturday, were the first RubyRX event, and we had a great time. Topics ranged from Erlang to Active Record to Sinatra. Speakers ranged from Chad Fowler to Stuart Halloway to Neal Ford.
You can see a sampling of photos on Flickr on my RubyRX flickr set. I especially like Chad Fowler's "new" look.
I used my favorite phone streaming video app, qik.com, to record the lightning talks. You can find Part One and Part Two on their website.
I originally had three tracks scheduled and had to drop to two. A number of attendees weren't happy about that, and told me. However, on Friday, as the sessions unfolded, everyone came back and told me that two sessions was awesome. Every session had one Ruby flavored talk and one non-Ruby talk. (The non-Ruby talks were either another language, like Clojure or Erlang, or a soft skill.) On Saturday people kept coming up to me and telling me how much they loved the conference, how great it was, and they were definitely coming to the next ones. That feedback really makes all the work worthwhile.
The surprise hit of the conference was the functional language talks. Some people raved about Clojure (and complained about Erlang), while others raved about Erlang (and complained about Clojure!), nearly everyone was interested in learning about one of the functional languages on display. Kevin Smith and Stuart Halloway did a great job.
We've already reserved space for the next RubyRX. It'll be in Washington, DC on September 4th and 5th. I've already started collecting speakers for what promises to be an even better event!
Ruby Conference in North Carolina! Ruby RX (Dec 31)
We turned the website on for Ruby RX yesterday. It's a regional Ruby conference in North Carolina. We may still tinker with the speaker list a little (one person might bow out and be replaced). If all goes well we'll take this conference to several other cities next year, much like the Java/Agile No Fluff Just Stuff touring conference.
Ruby is a dynamic, open source language with a focus on simplicity. Since it's release in 1995, Ruby is now among most popular programing languages. The Ruby on Rails web framework has created a major shift in the web development space. If you haven't experienced the simplicity of ROR's Convention Over Confituration model, it is time to learn what all the buzz is about.
RubyRX will cover a lot more than just Ruby and Rails. Other languages will be covered including: Clojure, Erlang, Scala, and more. You will also have an opportunity to learn about tools, frameworks, and best practices including: Git, Sinatra, and testing techniques.
This event is an opportunity to learn from some of the best authors and developers in the industry and network with your Ruby user community. Whether you are brand new to Ruby or a long time community member, RubyRX offers a chance to master essential skills and gain exposure to the latest best practices.
Ruby Conf Videos (Dec 15)
I spent a little time tonight watching some of the Ruby Conf 2008 videos. I especially liked Dave Thomas' keynote on forking Ruby. The parallel Ruby suggestions were very intriguing and looked very practical. Also, Nathaniel Talbot's Fear of Programming was great.
Ruby and the Hadron Collider (Oct 7)
Hat tip to Jeff Brown for this one. It lasts a while, but gives a great overview of Ruby, it's integration with other languages, and why LHC matters so much to Ruby.
Ruby in the Enterprise: eRubyCon (Jul 1)
For those of you who are wondering if Ruby is enterprise worthy, then eRubyCon is for you. The speaker list is a "Who's who" of Ruby development and a stellar slate for any conference.
If you're into Ruby or Rails, I strongly encourage you to check out this event.
which has an example of the RubyOSA bridge that exposes the Apple events that an application makes available. That is to say, I can get access to tons of applications (including iTunes and TextMate) from a Ruby app.
RubyOSA is easy to use. Here's a quick example that shows the list of your TextMate documents.
But the question you'll immediately have is what methods are availabe for iTunes or TextMate? For that you'll see the bundled rdoc-osa.
rdoc-osa will generate an HTML document (rdoc style) of the interfaces for any particular application. To create the TextMate documentation, just type:
Update: Thanks to reader Botond Orban for pointing out that the documentation command is rdoc-osa, not doc-osa. I'm not sure what I was thinking when I typed that! -jrrCategory: Ruby
Ruby Hoedown Videos are All Posted (Aug 28)
Enjoy! From Chad and Marcel's charity workshop on Rails testing to Ezra on Merb to me on C/Ruby/Rails integration, it's all free under the Creative Commons. :)
Alan Hoffler, communication guru likes to say that watching yourself on video is a humbling thing... and he's right. Watching me talk and throw candy for the first five minutes of the talk, I feel obligated to tell everyone that the entire time, my new MacBook Pro was rebooting... and hanging. Watch the blank overhead screen in the background. I suspect it was running a disk check during the boot. But that was the last good boot I got out of the machine! After the talk, it locked up tight and never came back. It's been replaced with a rock solid MacBook Pro, but I feel very fortunate to have been able to finish that talk.
I could've pulled my slides out of Subversion, and the code was there as well, but it would've been interesting to see if I could've done things like install the InlineC gems live in front of the audience. :)
That sort of thing doesn't happen often, but it does make things a bit more interesting. Enjoy the talk, but also enjoy watching me 'sing and dance' while trying to decide if my Mac would actually boot or not.
