XP Cincy Looks at Ruby

So, what happened when the Cincinnati XP Users group started looking at Ruby? Here's a quick report on the evening (with pictures!). See XpCincyAndRuby for background information.

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!

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XP-Cinci -- November 2003 Meeting

I haven’t mentioned the Cincinnati XP Users Group, and need to correct that oversight now. XP-Cinci has been meeting every month for a year! We learn XP by practicing it on a real project at the meeting. Our project is a web-based event scheduling system for Cincinnati’s Children's Hospital (we hold our meetings at the hospital). One of the hospital IT staff members acts as our customer and we usually have enough folks there to have 5 to 6 pairs of Java programmers and a pair using Ruby (guess where I am).

The project is moving slowly. It is very difficult to come in once a month and work a few hours on a project, and then leave it for another month. We spend a good portion of the meeting remembering what we did last month, and just as we get up to speed, the meeting is almost over. It’s a good thing that the goal of the group is more to learn XP practices than to actually finish this project.

Tonight we concentrated on continuous integration. As soon as we had a new JUnit test working, we were to get the integration token and commit to our CVS repository.

If you are in the Cincinnati area and want to join us, feel free. We meet on the first Tuesday of the month. You can find more information here.

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XP Cincy Looks at Ruby

XP and Ruby

Mystery Guest

After the Meeting

XP-Cinci -- November 2003 Meeting