"Ruby" entries

Where are JavaScript and the web going?

The Fluent conference co-chairs look ahead.

JavaScript and HTML5 just keep moving. One day it’s form validation, the next animation. Then it becomes full-on model view controller stacks getting data from sensors on devices and communicating with back-end servers that are themselves largely JavaScript.

Peter Cooper and I have tried to capture some of this power in the upcoming Fluent conference, so that attendees can find their ways to the tools that work for them. We also have an online preview coming this Thursday, April 4th.

Peter and I paused for a moment to talk about what we’re doing and where we see JavaScript and the Web heading. Though we work together on the conference, our perspectives aren’t quite the same, something I think works out for the better.

Read more…

Getting started with data-related explorations of everyday things

Using Ruby and R to improve your data skills.

Sau Sheong Chang describes the intriguing projects in his upcoming book, "Exploring Everyday Things with R and Ruby" and how other people can develop their own experiments.

Four short links: 5 September 2011

Four short links: 5 September 2011

Bitcoin Banks, Journo Ethics, Android and iOS, and Clever Algorithms

  1. Dan Kaminsky on Bitcoin (Slideshare) — short version: banks are an emergent property as it scales.
  2. Unethical Ventures (All Things D) — astonishing slam on the new venture fund that Michael Arrington (founder of TechCrunch) will be running while still writing for TechCrunch. This could have been a lot cleaner, of course, by Arrington simply resigning from TechCrunch, becoming a VC and perhaps starting a new blog where his agenda is much clearer, from which he could huff and puff away as he does with much entertaining gusto at real and (mostly) imagined slights. There is certainly precedent for VCs blogging, including Fred Wilson, Brad Feld and Ben Horowitz. And, despite my criticisms about ethics, it is clear that Arrington is a talented writer whose unique voice would be even stronger if it was truly seen as separate from what has become a news organization. But because of his obvious need to be the center of attention — requiring the ermine kingmaker mantle and foisting his patented I’m-here-to-tell-it-like-it-is attitude on us all — that appears to be impossible.
  3. An iOS Developer Takes on Android — a very easy to follow comparison of the two platforms from a developer who worked on both and who is carefully not partisan. I hadn’t realized before what an advantage OpenGL confers to the iOS devices. It’s not just for 3D games any more (he says, catching up with 2008).
  4. Clever Algorithms — book of 45 nature-inspired algorithms, code in Ruby.
Four short links: 4 April 2011

Four short links: 4 April 2011

Library Game, Mac Security, Natural Programming, Selecting Metrics

  1. Find The Future — New York Public Library big game, by Jane McGonigal. (via Imran Ali)
  2. Enable Certificate Checking on Mac OS X — how to get your browser to catch attempts to trick you with revoked certificates (more of a worry since security problems at certificate authorities came to light). (via Peter Biddle)
  3. Clever AlgorithmsNature-Inspired Programming Recipes from AI, examples in Ruby. I hadn’t realized there were Artificial Immune Systems. Cool! (via Avi Bryant)
  4. Rethinking Evaluation Metrics in Light of Flickr Commons — conference paper from Museums and the Web. As you move from “we are publishing, you are reading” to a read-write web, you must change your metrics. Rather than import comments and tags directly into the Library’s catalog, we verify the information then use it to expand the records of photos that had little description when acquired by the Library. […] The symbolic 2,500th record, a photo from the Bain collection of Captain Charles Polack, is illustrative of the updates taking place based on community input. The new information in the record of this photo now includes his full name, death date, employer, and the occasion for taking the photo, the 100th Atlantic crossing as ocean liner captain. An additional note added to the record points the Library visitor to the Flickr conversation and more of the story with references to gold shipments during WWI. Qualitative measurements, like level of engagement, are a challenge to gauge and convey. While resources expended are sometimes viewed as a cost, in this case they indicate benefit. If you don’t measure the right thing, you’ll view success as a failure. (via Seb Chan)

Developer Year in Review: Programming Languages

Java's wild ride, multicore drives functional, and a look at how the usual programming suspects stacked up in 2010.

This year brought confusion and chaos in the Java space, continued growth for functional languages due to the attack of multicore, and the usual popularity for all of the dynamic languages we know and love.

Four short links: 22 December 2010

Four short links: 22 December 2010

Etherpad, Scala, Journalism, and Mazes from Ruby

  1. ietherpad — continuation of the etherpad startup. Offers pro accounts, and promise an iPad app to come. (via Steve O’Grady on Twitter)
  2. Scala Collections Quickref — quick reference card for the Scala collections classes. (via Ian Kallen on Twitter)
  3. Raw Data and the Rise of Little BrotherTurns out, despite the great push for citizen journalism, citizens are not, on average, great at “journalism.” But they are excellent conduits for raw material — those documents, videos, or photos.
  4. Theseus 1.0 — impressive source maze builder in Ruby contributed to the public domain. (via Hacker News)

You ain't gonna need what?

One of the defining characteristics of the Rails movement has been its willingness to throw out the rules by which software developers and consultants have typically worked. Those rules typically produce big, overblown projects laden with features that no one ever uses–but which sounded good during the project specification phase. Build the simplest thing that could possibly work, and…

RailsConf Europe Early Registration

The schedule for RailsConf Europe just went up last week. It's shaping up to be another great conference. A few sessions and tutorials that particularly catch my eye are David Heinemeier Hansson's keynote on Wednesday morning, "Meta-programming Ruby for Fun & Profit" by Neal Ford, "Offline Rails Applications with Google Gears and Adobe AIR" by Till Vollmer, "From Rails Security…