“Good design means never having to say “Click Here”.
Rework: the Business Book from 37signals
Their first book, Getting Real, was about building web-based software. Their new book continues the less-is-more theme and teaches how to build and run a business. Bucking conventional “wisdom”, Rework has great potential for the freelancer/small business owner.
iPad Application Design
For those interested in User Experience (and shouldn’t we all be?), this article goes into some great metaphors and patterns for designing for the iPad. A must read for anyone interested in desktop or iPad development!
Bring Back the Metal Bashers
Is it time to increase focus on software quality yet? If not now, when?
HTML5 for the Rest of Us
The HTML5 spec is tough to read. It’s 900 pages of goodness… if you write browsers for a living. However, the vast majority of developers who actually use HTML don’t write browsers. This is the spec reference for the rest of us. (Heard through Jeremy Keith on the Boagworld Podcast)
Nesta - a CMS for Ruby Developers
Nesta appears to be a great CMS for Ruby developers looking for a quick & simple way to publish content. You can create pages as files in Textile or Markdown; if you need something more dynamic, you can mix in Haml templates. Nesta is currently used to power the PeepCode Blog and will soon be powering the Cleveland Ruby Brigade website.
My Top CodeMash Sessions
For those attending #codemash next week, here are some interesting sessions you might want to check out. And by “interesting”, I mean a) speakers I have seen in the past and know are top quality or b) topics I know a bit about and find interesting.
Thursday
9:45 Source Control for People Who Don’t Like Source Control with Jim Weirich
11:00 Starting Up Fast - Lessons from the Rails Rumble with me, Josh Walsh and the Rails Rumble panel
11:00 Amaze Your Friends with jQuery by Adam McCrea
1:45 Photoshop for Engineers: Going from PSD to HTML (Joe Nuxoll)
1:45 Seeing Constraints, Kanban Explained (Jon Stahl)
3:35 An Introduction to Cucumber (Leon Gersing)
3:35 Refactoring the Programmer (Joe O’Brien)
Friday
9:30 Oh Crap! I Forgot (or Never Learned) C! (Chris Adamson)
10:45 RESTful Interfaces to Third-Party Websites with Python (Kevin Dahlhausen)
10:45 WTF 2.0: A guide to building social applications (Anthony Broad-Crawford)
3:30 Clojure: Concurent Functional Programming for the JVM (Howard M. Lewis Ship)
The Ruby Draft Specification
Having a formal specification of what makes a language “Ruby” is a good idea. It gives us a lexicon which makes things easier to discuss (for e.g. metaclass vs. eigenclass, plus the operators <=> and « have a dozen different names). It also goes a long way towards proving that Ruby is a mature language that anyone can adopt; and I think it would make people more comfortable.
That being said, in the intro to the draft specification (available at http://ruby-std.netlab.jp/) they announce the draft is based on Ruby 1.8.7, not Ruby 1.9. The reason they give is:
Ruby 1.9 is moving fast and its features change frequently. Once we draft the specification based on Ruby 1.9, the specification and Ruby 1.9 would get quickly out of sync.
There’s a problem in that statement. Languages change. They morph and flex to meet the needs of the developers they serve. Any spec based on a language should have a flexible enough process to be able to change with the language. Ruby 1.9 would be the perfect test case for this project. Since it does change it would allow the spec team to find ways to handle those changes. Beyond that, the 1.9 release shows the direction Ruby is taking as a language. Therefore, it is much closer to what 2.0 will look like than 1.8.7. Changing the spec to match 2.0 would be much easier if they started from where 1.9 is today and ignored 1.8.
The spec exists to help the language and the community using it. If you start out with an approach that doesn’t handle quick changes then your spec will likely lose its utility. We embrace change in all other parts of the development process, why not here too?
Rumble Panel at CodeMash
Back in May, Rails Rumble founder Nick Plante moderated a panel at Railsconf to answer questions about developing web applications in 48 hours for the Rails Rumble competition. I am very excited to announce that this panel has been accepted to CodeMash 2010. This time the panel will be moderated by former panelist Joe Fiorini and 2008 grand prize winner Josh Walsh. Panelists include Josh Owens (grand prize winner 2007, finalist 2009), Jonathan Penn (grand prize winner 2008, finalist 2009), Jim Weirich (participant 2008), Josh Schramm (participant 2009), and Matt Yoho (participant 2009). As with the Railsconf panel, questions will be released on Google moderator before the start of the conference (stay tuned for that announcement). At that time we will need your help to provide questions for the panelists to answer.
About CodeMash
CodeMash is an annual conference held in Sandusky, Ohio at the Kalahari indoor waterpark and resort. It is a unique event that educates developers on current practices, methodologies, and technology trends in a variety of platforms and development languages such as Java, .Net, Ruby, Python and PHP. Check out this year’s list of sessions and register to attend!
A well known experiment started in the late 1960s showed a strong correllation between will power as a child and success later in life. The question is still open as to what this correllation really means. In this talk I will explain the details of the study and explore a possible answer. Is success predetermined by personality traits or can we learn the skills that will lead us to success? What do marshmallows, Weight Watchers, and Dave Ramsey have in common? Watch to find out!
JOE FIORINI HERE FOR… My Billy Mays Halloween costume. Scary resemblance, isn’t it?
Practice Makes Perfect
My post about practicing for programmers. It’s not just for musicians and athletes anymore!
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