XP and Ruby

As I mentioned in XpCincyAndRuby, the Cincinnati XP Users Group is all set to take a look at Ruby this month.

Mark Windholtz got us started with introductions (we had some newcomers to the group!) and laid out the plan for the evening.

We thought we would start off with something a bit fun, and something that would allow us to get into Ruby fairly quickly. I had adapted the "Paper, Rock, Scissors" RubyQuiz of the week before into something that could be run over DRb. The goal was to run Paper/Rock/Scissors players on our laptops, coordinating with a central game server (using DRb and Rinda).

The result was quite fun. As you can see, at least one of the programs was quite explicit about the state of its own playing ability (click to enlarge the pictures).

Mystery Guest

We did have one guest who was obviously a bit camera shy. Must have something to do with the project he is currently working on. It seems Chris has reached some good milestones recently and had time to come over and check out the Rails crowd. Welcome Chris! And don't worry, we won't tell any of your Java friends (wink, wink).

After the Meeting

Afterwards, we all headed to Unos and enjoyed some appetizers and drinks. This is where all the important discussions happen.

Next month we will be diving into Rails itself. If you are in the Cincinnati area, feel free to stop by and join us. We meet the first Tuesday of every Month.

Cheers!

TagSurf (tagsurf.com)

I’m not sure how to describe this. It is kinda like a web forum with tags applied to each message. What makes it really interesting is that if you use a URL for a tag, then the posting is "about" that web page. So, if you wish to talk about this posting (yes, the one you are reading right now), then create a message with the link onestepback.org/index.cgi/Tech/Web/MoreWebApps.rdoc as a tag. Or, even easier, click the "tagsurf-it" link in the article banner above and be taken immediately to TagSurf with the tags prefilled and ready to go. (I’ve also added a TagSurf link below marked for feedback). Give it a try.

Yes, you will have to sign up for TagSurf, but it is free. It is also very alpha, so be warned. But it is definitely cool. Read about how TagSurf came to be at Russell Beattie's Blog.

Google Maps: (maps.google.com/)

Try it, you’ll like it!

Nuff said.

Ta-Da Lists: (tadalists.com)

I’ve mentioned Ta-Da lists before, but I started using it as a temporary holding area for some ideas for an article on "10 Things Java Programmers Should Know About Ruby". I just dumped suggestions on to the list with minimal editting. Then I made the list public so that folks could see what had already been suggested.

The list wasn’t up two days before it was noticed by some Python guy who picked up on the "Fixes what’s wrong in Python" link (ack … exactly the message I was not trying to send, and it wasn’t even aimed at Python). Then a Smalltalk guy (hi Avi!) blogs about it. I’ve gotten more attention on this article (which I haven’t written yet) than most articles I actually do write.

Part of the problem was that there was no place in the Ta-Da list to explain its purpose. It was just a raw list of items without any context. Given the title, I can see why some folks assumed it was the finished product.

So I bemoaned the problem of no list description in Ta-Da. And then today, as I was editing another list, I noticed that the Ta-Da lists now do have a description field. Wow! Did I miss that? I would have sworn it wasn’t there before. Perhaps did the Ta-Da folk read my mind and knew exactly what I wanted. Anyways, I’m impressed. Thanks guys.

So, anyways, my apologies to the Python crowd. The "10 Things …" list was never targeted at Python and was an unedited compilation of feedback I had received. As Ian (the Python guy) points out a comment …

For Python and Ruby to try to take users from each other is a losing game — we’re both small players, and there’s much better and bigger pools of developers we should be trying to attract.

Ok, that’s enough for this rather rambling post.

Code Red

Code Ruby (or Python).