Kansas City Ruby Users Group

Rails is smarter than you (or, at least me)

2005-01-20T20:23:00.000-06:00

I'm going back through the Rails tutorial that I mentioned last post, only using PostgreSQL 8.0.0 instead of MySQL this time, and discovered something very, very nice about Rails.

The tutorial (for those of you who haven't gone through it—and if you haven't, you should; it won't take long, and I can wait—has you create a database table for storing items on a todo list. There's a column called "done" of type integer; 1 means "done" and 0 means "not done". My first time through the tutorial I followed these directions, but this time I made the "done" column of type boolean because, well, it makes more sense and PostgreSQL has that data type.

Before, Rails presented the edit field for the "done" value as a text field. This time, with a boolean behind it, Rails presented it as a select list from which "True" or "False" can be chosen. In other words, Rails is smart enough not only to detect the table columns for itself, it's smart enough to realize that the possible values are constrained and change the default UI to something more appropriate.

Now, one could argue that for a boolean not null column, the UI element should really be a checkbox, but that would be nitpicking.

On the Rails!

2005-01-19T19:44:00.000-06:00

I just completed my first Rails webapp, using the tutorial Making a todo list. I highly recommend this tutorial to anyone getting started with Rails—it's very well written. I wish the author had left his name somewhere in it so that I could pay proper respect, but this is gonna have to do.

Unfortunately, I can't show you my new Rails app, because links to localhost won't work. :-) It's running on my laptop, so I'll bring it to the next KCRUG meeting. Maybe by then I'll have more Rails to show off.

What Languages Fix

2005-01-17T09:09:00.000-06:00

An aside: from Paul Graham, a list of programming languages defined not by what they are or what they do, but by what problem with other programming languages it's supposed to fix.

Instiki

2005-01-14T23:59:00.000-06:00

I don't know how I've managed to not find out about Instiki before tonight. (That's not quite true. I do know. I'm woefully behind the curve when it comes to Ruby.)

For those of you even slower than me, Instiki is a wiki that runs on your local machine. (I don't suppose it's limited to just local users, but I don't know if it's designed to scale.) When launched, it goes to the background, listening on port 2500. Access is through a web browser (as you'd expect).

I've been thinking that it would be nice to have something like this for a while. This should be handy for keeping notes for myself and such.

Random Ruby links

2004-12-30T10:51:00.000-06:00

Some stuff that has popped up in the last couple of days, that I thought might be of interest:

RPA Package Advisor

If you don't know what Ruby packages exist to solve some problem you're having—or, worse, you can't decide which package of several bets meets your needs—the Package Advisor can help.

This is a sort of review of packages, giving you the "best of" for common problem spaces. We try to include the major packages for each space, with a short overview of the pros and cons of each. For some problem areas, there is a single package that is considered "the standard" for Ruby, and only that single contender is discussed.

It's a Wiki page, so those of you who know Ruby better than I do are encouraged to add to it.

Method Check: defined?

A description of defined?, which apparently has the distinction of being neither operator nor method.

First Pickaxe, Now Rails

2004-12-10T20:24:00.000-06:00

Dave Thomas let slip yesterday that his next Ruby book will be about Rails.

Now "with juicy bits"

2004-12-10T13:42:00.000-06:00

Thanks to Jarkko Laine (and apologies to loading the image from your website—either ecto or Blogger is preventing me from uploading it myself):

What's next? "Ruby—it's not just for breakfast anymore"?

Ruby Katas

2004-12-08T12:38:00.000-06:00

Speaking of Jim Weirich, he's taken up the challenge put forward by Dave Thomas and written some Ruby katas (programming exercises).

Deferring calculations in Ruby

2004-12-08T11:44:00.000-06:00

It started with Patrick Logan: How would you implement spreadsheets as top-level programming objects? He's not talking about dropping a grid into your source file, but allowing deferred calculations. What he wants is the equivalent of something like this:


    a = 10
    b = a * 2
    a = 15
    puts b
    >> 30

"Easy enough," I hear you say, "if you use a lambda (method object) for the value of b." Ah, but there are at least two wrinkles there. First, you need to write the value of b as a lambda, which requires more typing. Second, when you go to use b, how you use it depends on whether it's a constant or a lambda. The only easy way around the second wrinkle is to make all values lambdas, which brings us back to the first wrinkle. Patrick solves both of these problems by defining a Spreadsheet class that contains Cells that contain Formulas—all of which are smart enough to do the tedious stuff for you.

Fortunately (for those of us who aren't as fluent in Ruby as we'd like), Jim Weirich has provided a Ruby implementation.

Ruby web frameworks

2004-11-07T20:09:00.000-06:00

I've blogged about Rails. Seems like everyone is, these days.

There's also Borges (which website is startlingly bereft of information), and Wee, and IOWA, which is not new, but I am so I didn't know about it. And probably others I don't know about yet.

Links in a vacuum aren't very useful. Hopefully, I'll make time to try some of these out. In the meantime, please feel free to comment.

Recap of the October meeting

2004-11-07T19:57:00.000-06:00

The October meeting actually took place in November. Jason talked a little bit about Qt bindings for Ruby. Shashank talked a little bit about RubyConf. I talked a little bit about Croquet, which led to me and Shashank trying to explain Smalltalk to Jason. Shashank demoed (sort of) the proposed new runtime for Ruby (YAVM?). Jason left with a simplistic explanation of what Rails is; Shashank left with instructions for how to convert Postscript files to PDFs; and I left with the feeling that, while Java pays the mortgage, I'd have a lot more fun writing Ruby.

Room for improvement?

2004-10-27T21:44:00.000-05:00

Charles Miller reports that Ruby and REXML is 50 times slower than Java and dom4j at parsing XML into a DOM tree, and suggests that maybe Ruby isn't ready for production environments.

Dion Almaer wonders if, since the dataset was 25MB in size, the problem isn't so much with Ruby as with DOM.

Martin Fowler on closures in Ruby

2004-10-26T13:14:00.000-05:00

I just ran across a blog post from Martin Fowler on closures, primarily in the context of Ruby. I realize that the three of you who actually read this blog occasionally know what closures are, but on the off chance someone new comes along, it's an informative if somewhat simplistic read.

October meeting pushed back

2004-10-26T13:00:00.000-05:00

The October KCRUG meeting has rescheduled.

2004-11-03 7:00 PM
Ruby Tuesday
9707 Quivira Rd
Overland Park, KS

If past experience is an indicator, look for three or four people lurking at a table in a corner with at least one laptop.

Rubilicious

2004-10-19T23:19:00.000-05:00

Rubilicious. To go with Cocol.icio.us and Groovylicious, of course. (That last one doesn't actually have a name, but I was on a roll.)

Rails

2004-10-06T17:40:00.000-05:00

This one has to be seen to be believed. Fortunately, this is easy, assuming you can play QuickTime movies (and have a high-resolution screen; 1024x768 wasn't enough to see all the action).

Rails is a web application framework written in Ruby. The thing that's different about it is

Rails shuns configuration files and annotations in favor of reflection and run-time extensions. This means the end of XML files telling a story that has already been told in code. It means no compilation phase: Make a change, see it work.

I develop web applications in Java for a living, and the extent of how much was accomplished during that 10-minute video floored me. I suspect that the day job will remain Java for the forseeable future, but the stuff I do for the fun of it is about to get a whole lot more fun.

Thanks to Dion Almaer for the link.

An Introduction to RubyCocoa

2004-10-05T19:24:00.000-05:00

MacDevCenter has posted the first part of an article entitled "An Introduction to RubyCocoa":

RubyCocoa is a framework that provides a bridge between the Ruby programming language and the Cocoa framework of the Mac OS X operating system. This framework allows you to create Mac OS X native, Cocoa-based applications using Ruby.

Since, as far as I know, I'm the only person around here running Mac OS X, this isn't going to be much of a "hands-on" article for the rest of you. Maybe there's a nugget or two of interesting in there anyway.

New version of Pickaxe book is available

2004-10-05T15:42:00.000-05:00

The second edition of Programming Ruby (aka the Pickaxe book) is now shipping. Shashank says he received a copy at RubyConf 2004.

Everybody (so it seems) talks about the Pickaxe book like it's the one to own, but I have a guilty confession of sorts. I'm new to Ruby, so I turn to the online copy of the first edition a lot—and I'm not very impressed with how it's arranged. It seems like every time I go to look something up, I have to try two or three different chapters before I find what I'm looking for.

Maybe it's because it's an HTML version; there's no index, and the table of contents is more a list of chapters than a detailed outline of the book. Maybe it's because this book isn't intended for beginners like me. Maybe it's because the way I think has been molded by exposure to too many O'Reilly books on Perl. :-) Whatever the reason, I think I'm going to need to leaf through a dead-tree version of the Pickaxe book to justify buying one.

Why Cedric loves Ruby

2004-10-01T15:07:00.000-05:00

From Cedric's weblog: "Why I love Ruby".

The interesting thing (for me) was how it started with a single line of Ruby code, showed how many lines of Java code are needed to do the same thing—then the comments turned out half golfing in Ruby and half 99 Bottles of Beer.

There's a followup entry titled "It's not about one-liners".

RubyConf 2004

2004-09-29T15:15:00.000-05:00

RubyConf 2004 is this weekend. I was hoping to attend this year, but schedule and finances didn't permit. However, last I hear our very own Shashank Date is planning to be there. Maybe he can blog the events for us -- assuming I remember to add him as an author on this blog....

Groovy 1.0-beta-7 released

2004-09-29T15:10:00.000-05:00

I know it's not Ruby, but in case there's anyone reading this blog who isn't on the groovy-users mailing list and who actually cares about Groovy, version 1.0-beta-7 was released today:


Reply-To: user@groovy.codehaus.org

To: dev@groovy.codehaus.org, user@groovy.codehaus.org

From: jastrachan@mac.com

Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2004 18:23:47 +0100

Subject: [groovy-user] Groovy 1.0-beta-7 released!



Its taken a lot longer than we would have liked to get there but  

finally the 1.0-beta-7 release is out. Many thanks to all the  

contributors & committers.



You can download it from the usual places...

http://groovy.codehaus.org/Download



Here's the changelog...

http://jira.codehaus.org/secure/IssueNavigator.jspa?reset=true&pid=10242&fixfor=11254



Enjoy!



James

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http://radio.weblogs.com/0112098/

Welcome to the KCRUG Blog

2004-09-22T13:57:00.000-05:00

Time to get our blog on. :-)