Juixe Techknow

Techies don’t get much sun as it is and to avoid direct exposure with sunlight many of technology conferences are scheduled around May and June. Most tech conferences cluster around the early summer months but there are other great technology and programming conferences held around the year and the country. Below is a tentative schedule of important software and programming related conferences. And don’t worry, if you missed or can’t make it out to your favorite conference this year, they are usually scheduled at about the same time each year.

• EclipseCon 2009 / March 23-26, 2009 / Santa Clara, CA
• Mix 2009 / March 18-20, 2009 / Las Vegas, NV
• Rails Conf 2009 / May 04-07, 2009 / Las Vegas, NV
• Microsoft Tech Ed 2009 / May 11-15, 2009 / Las Angeles, CA
• TiECon 2009 / May 15-16, 2009 / Santa Clara, CA
• GR8 Conf / May 18-19, 2009 / Copenhagen, Denmark
• Google I/O / May 27-28, 2009 / San Francisco, CA
• CommunityOne West / June 1-3, 2009 / San Francisco, CA
• JavaOne 2009 / June 2-5, 2009 / San Francisco, CA
• Apple World Developers Conference 2009 / June 8-12, 2009 / San Francisco, CA
• 140 Characters Conference / Jun 16-17, 2009 / New York, NY
• OSCON 2009 / July 20-24, 2009 / San Jose, CA
• Adobe MAX 2009 / October 4-7, 2009 / Los Angeles, CA
• Ruby Conf 2009 / November 19-20, 2009 / San Francisco, CA
• MySQL Conference & Expo / April 12-15, 2010 / Santa Clara, CA

Here is a recap of the top Ruby-related links for the month of April 2009. Links for The Rubyist are provided by A Rubyist Railstastic Adventure, a tumblelog.

Ruby – Earlier in the month the hot topic in the Ruby community involved Twitter and their use of Scala for some back-end processes. Just suggesting that Ruby, and in particular Rails does not scale starts the debate all over again. This time Dave Thomas chipped in with a defense for Twitter’s right to choose the right tool for the right job. Other highlights are the NetBeans’ support of Ruby 1.9 and MountainWest RubyConf 2009 videos.

• The great Twitter Ruby vs Scala war debate
• Twitter: blaming Ruby for their mistakes?
• PragDave: Twitter Should Move Away from Ruby
• Twitter jilts Ruby for Scala
• Twitter, Ruby on Rails, Scala and people who don’t RTFA
• Rubx: Twitter’s Ruby shell
• Diamondback Ruby – static typing extensions
• The problem with compiling Ruby
• ruby gc tuning
• Ruby Performance Roundup: GC Tuning, MagLev, MacRuby
• Ruby Proxies for Scale and Monitoring
• Ruby tips from me, your idol
• The Book of Ruby
• NetBeans Ruby 1.9 Support
• MountainWest RubyConf 2009
• Ruby is the Future
• The Evils of the For Loop
• Sinful QuickChecking in Ruby
• MacRuby
• OS X Application Development with HotCocoa
• Ruby Growl Notifications

Rails – A favorite post this month regarding Rails was an article from Chad Fowler and a list he compiled of 20 Ruby on Rails development no-no’s. Chad gather much of the material for the article from fellow Rubyists via Twitter. Also of interest was the Ruby on Rails template for creating Twitter applications.

• 20 Rails Development No-No’s
• Integrating Flickr into your rails website
• Rails Template: Create a Twitter Application in Seconds
• Ruby on Rails application in 10 minutes is a myth
• Rails 2.3.2 upgrade gotchas
• Ruby on Rails To Do List Tutorial
• Rails Server Setup + App Deployment Using Moonshine
• Ruby on Rails != Its Core Team
• Heroku Launches Cloud Hosting for Ruby Apps
• Use Monit with Rails, not God
• Saving bandwidth with Rails
• RailsConf Speaker Interview: Mike Subelsky
• How to draw Mandelbrot’s fractal with Rails and Open Flash Chart?
• Stacked bar chart with Rails and Open Flash Chart

JRuby – Google recently released Java support for Google App Engine, this means that there has been a lot of activity around JRuby on Rails on App Engine.

• Running Sinatra apps on Google AppEngine (Java)
• JRuby on Rails on Google App Engine
• JRuby scaling up to multiple CPUs
• JRuby on Google AppEngine: First Impressions
• BiteScript 0.0.1 – A Ruby DSL for JVM Bytecode
• Apache + JRuby + Rails + GlassFish = Easy Deployment!
• Setting up Typo on JRuby
• JRuby Moves to Git
• JRuby VoIP app on JBoss 5 reloaded
• JRuby – Quick and Dirty

GoGaRuCouchDeBate – Scalability is not the only stigma in the Ruby community. The other hot button has been the brash attitude and behavior of certain key members in the community. This all came to boiling point, yet again, at Golden Gate RubyConf when Matt Aimonetti gave a presentation entitled CouchDB: Perform Like a Pornstar. The subject matter of the presentation was overshadows by the images of scantily clad women, then the allegations of male chauvinism amongst the rank and file in the Ruby and Rails community. The way recent Ruby conference have been shaping up, I think RailsConf 2009 in Las Vegas will have strippers giving presentations on cache girth and performance.

• On Engendering Strong Reactions
• GoGaRuCo Fist Shaking
• Another conference season, another dumb sexist
• Finding Balance within The No Asshole Rule
• A Painful Decision
• Perform Like A Frag Star
• Why Rails is Still a Ghetto
• Smut on Rails
• Rails Immaturity Model
• Not the Post
• Pr0n on the Couch
• Gender and Sex at GoGaRuCo
• The ghetto of the mind
• A Selection Of Thoughts From Actual Women
• I am not a Pr0n Star: avoiding unavoidable associations
• Alpha male programmers aren’t keeping women out
• Rails *is* (still) a Ghetto
• Dear Fellow Rubyists

From time to time I just blast tweets about software development, project planning, team dynamics, or whatever else comes to mind. Here is a synopsis of recent tweets and rants. If you want to follow the conversation follow me at techknow and I’ll be sure to follow back.

Programming

• The way recent Ruby conference have been shaping up, I think RailsConf 2009 will have strippers giving presentations on cache girth and performance.
• What is it that you enjoy about programming? Is it the language, the libraries, the framework, the tools, or the community?
• What is your favorite code editor? On Windows I use Eclipse and NetBeans. On OS X I use Aptana and Komodo Edit.
• There are many self proclaimed programming laws, my law states: Any hack that can name a law after himself should be arrested under that law.
• I just heard a new variation to the infamous developer excuse ‘It works on my computer.’ Just heard, ‘I’ve never tried it on that computer.’
• I think software bugs like wild animals can smell fear!
• Herding bugs and bytecode!
• I would like to use a Eclipse plugin that is a Twitter client.
• JavaScript + jQuery UI + Google Gears + Twitter API = Yet Another Twitter Client! Juixe Tweetbox
• I don’t have a golden hammer, I have a golden jackhammer and when that is not enough I bring out the golden bulldozer!
• Alas, hacks make the world turn.
• Hacking away at a hack. I that like a compound hack?
• Is Scala the new Ruby? Is Scala the new Scheme?
• Some people like texting, others sexting, I like hexting.

Continue reading

Math is composed of a small set of rules or postulates that together can be used to express formulas that try to explain the universe. Not unlike the Three Laws of Robotics, here are the Three Laws of Twitters. These laws are fundamental, much like mathematical axioms.

• The First Twitter Axiom: If you explicitly ask others to retweet your tweet, then your tweet is probably not worth the retweet.
• The Second Twitter Axiom: It’s not the number of followers that matters, it is how you use it.
• The Third Twitter Axiom: Don’t take the Twitter question to literal. In addition to asking what you are doing, ask how you are going to change the world?

Here is a bonus fourth rule…

The Fourth Twitter Axiom: If it takes you three or more tweets to say it, it should be a blog post.

These laws were created out of a conversation between techknow, adriandz, SeanLazer. Follow us to join the conversation.

Twitter Clients
Writing a Twitter client has become the new Hello, World! There are Twitter libraries in just about every major language such as PHP, Ruby, ActionScript, Python, Java, and more. The Twitter API is simple enough that you don’t need much, you can go a long way with the command line and curl.

As Twitter popularity grows so does the number of Twitter applications. On the iPhone I have tried three of them and on the desktop one. But with all the growth and creativity surrounding Twitter the desktop are essentially all clones of the official Twitter web interface.

To amend for the huge gap in what Twitter client do and what I think they can do in terms of missing features I have thrown my developer hat into the ring. There is a virtual arms race as startups rush to develop Twitter desktop clients. To add fuel to the fire, a few days ago a new Twitter desktop client was announced.

Tweetbox
Tweetbox, released under pre-beta, is my hello, world twitter client. Tweetbox is written mostly in JavaScript and jQuery with a PHP back end that acts as a Proxy to Twitter. Tweetbox also uses Google Gears for added functionality and desktop interactivity. As of the current release of Tweetbox, version 0.1, the key features is the ability to have multiple Twitter accounts. I currently have a huge laundry list of features to complete, including UI plastic surgery, adding support for timelines, retweets, and replies.

I do hope that in the near future Tweetbox will hit the sweet spot for some users. An ultimate goal is to allow extension points to allow for plugins.

The anatomy of a Twitter status update, at just 144 characters, makes it so easy to manipulate, store, process, and parse. The at replies feature in Twitter makes it a two-way communication medium. The hashtags adds context to the million of tweets running through the system. And the millions of users are finding new and dynamic ways to interact with the system. Twitter is like a web version of the walkie-talkie, some might say that it is the web version of a party line. All of the simplicity, momentum, and openness makes Twitter an interesting platform to play with and develop new social protocols.

There are a growing number of applications that are built on top of the Twitter platform. The first incarnation of Twitter apps piggybacked on your Twitter credentials, including your username and password. These applications include Twitpics, StockTwits, and Twittervision. This is an insecure method authentication and Twitter has announced their plans to move to OAuth

Personally, I think there is a more organic and interesting way to interact with users on Twitter that is just gaining traction and that is via the at replies. Innovative and non-intrusive applications are using the at replies and hashtags as a social protocol. For example if you at reply wefollow with three hashtags it will index you on their Twitter directory under those tags as categories. At reply Mahalo Answers with your questions and they will reply back with an answer. You can also have your tweets read out loud on an audio stream when you at reply a message to No Agenda Stream. Send an at reply Ruby programming language expression to rubx will reply back to you the output value of that expression after the run it through a Ruby parser. All of this is done automatically and programmaticly.

If you want to get started writing your first Twitter application, here is a tutorial that will help you get started with the Twitter Ruby Gem.