Posted by Rick DeNatale Thu, 20 Sep 2007 15:36:00 GMT
On ruby-talk, Sammy Larbi recently asked if it would make sense to add a length method to Range, something like this:
class Range
def length
self.end - self.begin
end
end This led to an interesting discussion about the varieties of ranges, and ultimately led me to this article about duck types.
Read more...Posted by Rick DeNatale Thu, 20 Sep 2007 13:20:00 GMT
Obie Fernandez just went off about Java vs. Ruby/Rails.
No time to comment, read it for yourself.
Posted by Rick DeNatale Tue, 04 Sep 2007 15:28:00 GMT
I’ve noticed that some rubyists like to use indentation to delineate method visibility.
The first time I noticed this was when Marcel Molina Jr. used it during the charity testing workshop at the Ruby Hoedown.. I just encountered it again in at least one piece of sample code from Rob Orsini’s “Rails Cookbook.”
During the testing workshop, Chad Fowler expressed displeasure with this style, and I’ve got to agree.
Read more...Posted by Rick DeNatale Sun, 02 Sep 2007 21:35:00 GMT
I’m catching up on my RSS feeds this afternoon, and I just ran across the
latest from John Lam. Which exposed an interesting coincidence.
Oh yes, Merlin is the original code-name for our team, which was originally IronPython but has now expanded to include the Dynamic Language Runtime and IronRuby.
- John Lam
The codename for IBM’s original VisualAge project was “Camelot.” Various subcomponents and follow-ons were dubbed with various names from Arthurian legend. For example, there were components with names like “Lancelot” and “Guinivere.”
Sometime after the initial success of VisualAge, it was decided that IBM would actually produce a separate Smalltalk language and IDE packaging, a product which was originally named “IBM Smalltalk” at launch.
But during development IBM Smalltalk had Arthur’s wizard as its namesake. As usual there
were tee shirts, and this article starts with a picture I just took of my copy of the IBM
Merlin Tee, which my wife still uses as an exercise tee.
And in case you can’t read them, the words in the
crystal ball read “think BIG/TALK small” a combined reference to IBM, Smalltalk, and I suppose, Teddy Roosevelt.
Now old Merlin might look more like a Swami than the wizard of Camelot, but here’s the proof
from the front of the shirt:
So to paraphrase my old buddy Kent Beck, I knew that Microsoft was trying to implement Ruby, but I didn’t know it would be called Merlin!
Posted by Rick DeNatale Mon, 20 Aug 2007 20:34:00 GMT
One of the things I learned at the Ruby Hoedown, is that a sizeable number of the Ruby community who
attend such conferences are into a psychological game called Werewolf.
At the hoedown various presenters, among them Marcel Molina, Jr. and Chad Fowler, repeatedly asked for a venue in which to play the game. After the contest, a group of experienced and newbie werewolves (count me amongst the latter), went to the Velvet Cloak Inn in Raleigh and spent Saturday evening trying to either hide our own lycanthropy or flush out the lycanthropes, among us.
For those planning to attend a Ruby conference for the first time, be warned, there are werewolves among us, and playing with them can be a fun experience.
Posted by Rick DeNatale Mon, 20 Aug 2007 18:25:00 GMT
Besides being a master werewolf, Marcel Molina Jr. gives great presentations!
In his keynote presentation on the second day of the Ruby Hoedown, Marcel talked about “What Makes Code Beautiful”, click on the link for the confreaks video of this session.
The talk started with an exploration of the classical Philosophy of Beauty, from Plato to Descartes. Marcel summarized this by proposing that beauty lies in the balance between three aspects which, at times, either strengthen or oppose each other:
Read more...Posted by Rick DeNatale Mon, 20 Aug 2007 14:13:00 GMT
I notice that master werewolves
Coby Randquist and Carl Youngblood
have gotten all of the
videos from the
inaugural Ruby Hoedown (at least
in rough cut form) on their confreaks website.
I’m stoked about this, and the site in general. Like the way infoq web publishes presentations, confreaks shows synchronized live action video and the “slides”, however I like the confreaks site better.
As for content, there was lots of good stuff at the hoedown which is now available for viewing on-line. Check it out.
Posted by Rick DeNatale Tue, 14 Aug 2007 15:03:00 GMT
The first Ruby Hoedown, sponsored by the Raleigh Ruby brigade, has finally come and gone. I had a great two days, saw some old friends, and made lots of new ones.
Here are my initial thoughts after more than a bit too litle sleep after a night trying to root out werewolves.
Read more...Posted by Rick DeNatale Tue, 07 Aug 2007 19:24:00 GMT
Not long ago while working on an existing Rails application, (i.e. code I hadn’t written). I was mystified when a logical expression seemed to be returning an odd result. The expression had been written with not, and, and or, and was the right hand side of an assignment statement. ventually I changed to using !, &&, and || which fixed the problem. I never completely understood what was going on, until I encountered this blog entry by Jay Fields.
One of the big differences between Ruby and Smalltalk is the use of operator precedence. In Smalltalk, the grammar is very simple, unary message selectors bind tighter than binary selectors, which bind tighter than keyword selectors. The assignment operator binds more loosely than any of these. This is often a stumbling block for newcomers to Smalltalk when they find that in Smalltalk 3 + 5 * 2 evaluates to 16.
Ruby in comparison has quite a rich and flexible syntax. Usually, it’s quite intutitive, but, depending on where you come from there can be some surprises.
I understood the relative precendences of, say && vs. and in Ruby, but the fact that and had weaker precedence than = escaped me, until Jay’s article turned the light on for me.
As they say, you learn something new everyday, or at least you hope you do. I don’t expect that I’ll forget this little corner of Ruby in future
Posted by Rick DeNatale Fri, 03 Aug 2007 00:11:00 GMT
This looks interesting.
I wish I had a nickel for every time I’ve typed something like:
grep whatever -R . | grep -v .svnI'm an old Smalltalker to whom Ruby looks like an old friend. To get a perspective on my perspective and credentials, have a look at my mini-memoirs
If you like my blog, you might consider recommending me on Working With Rails.
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