Table or Booth?

SOA, May You REST in Pieces.

Save your valuable time and don't watch this attempt to pump blood into a cadaver: http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Reincarnation-SOA-Anne-Thomas-Manes.  This presentation was so staggeringly ineffective and useless that I felt moved to write yet another SOA epitaph.

RIAs - The New Web UI

SproutCore is slick; has a RoR + Apple pedigree & leverages Javascript very nicely.  MobileMe integrates it.  Apple contributes heavily to the project.  Silverlight, AIR, and Google Gears compete.  Silverlight and GG require browser plug-ins.  Only GGs is open-source.  Here's a good overview: http://rapidappsgroup.com/content/desktop-web-applications-using-sproutcore/

RailsConf 2008

I'm at RailsConf.

Portland, Oregon is, well, Portland (overcast and wet). Got in late last night and walked over to Stanford's. The service was friendly, even at 10:30 PM.  Everything about the burger was above average.  And it came with hot, crispy, slightly salty fries.  It was all devoured with sips of a local wheat bear that I forget the name of.

So far, having been away from Ruby and Rails for over a year, it feels like going back to a place you used to live. Some things are still the same. In other ways, I hardly recognize the place.  New techniques like elastic computing (and plenty of competing commercial hosting options), new tools such as git, tarantula, and hobo, etc.  Good stuff.

I'll pretend I blog and let you know how it all goes.

The Rails Edge, 2006 - Day 1

In this post and the two that follow, I highlight interesting talks at The Rails Edge, 2006.  I do it for Google searching posterity and for my admittedly selfish desire to reinforce key concepts presented. 

Rails Load Path Resolution Tip

Nothing ground breaking in this post.  I write it only because the existing documentation for this behavior is weak or nonexistent. 

Have you ever seen the following message while testing your Rails app?

NameError: uninitialized constant ... blah, blah

Why Ruby?

Several people I know have asked me this recently.  Without just pointing straight to Bruce Tate, here's what I've come up with.

<short_answer>
* Ruby is an order of magnitude more powerful and less bloated than Java
* Ruby has Rails and an explosion of new libraries being built with or for Ruby
* Ruby will make you look good to your customers by developing more efficiently, making you more money
* Ruby is hot
</short_answer>