Go!

I meant to get going with RoR right after Madison Ruby way back in August. I attended the conference intending that it would jumpstart my Ruby studies. Then, life got in the way. However, I’m back on track (or should I say back on the Rails now).

FIrst, the conference. It was great and unlike any other tech conference I’ve ever attended. Some observations:

Non-technical

• Engagement with others was encouraged and even facilitated through an ice-breaker. This is unlike any other technical conference I’ve been to where you just sit through seminars and go have lunch on your own.
• The people were great. I felt like I could walk up to anyone and start a conversation.
• It was well done. Any problems were dealt with quickly and effectively. Nice job Big Tiger.

Technical

• I wanted to figure out what development environments people use, No common answer here. The first folks I talked to used TextMate, but complained it was slow and it hadn’t been updated in a while. The next person I talked to used RubyMine. Finally, there were a lot of vim folks (vi still scares me). 
• I watched how people worked and quickly discovered that it’s the opposite of what I’m used to in the Java and .NET world. I hardly noticed any mice; it was all typing, scripts and keyboard shortcuts. I also noticed how fast and efficiently people worked.
• There is a lot to learn. Beside RoR, I realized that I’d have to get up to snuff on an editor and git/github. I also need to dive back in the world of UNIX. Heroku too. Wow, That’s a lot.

Anyway, here is my strategy

1. I’m using Michael Hartl’s excellent tutorial to learn the basics. I’m on chapter 5 now and having a ball.
2. Next, I’ll decide on an editor and dive into learning that.
3. Finally, I’ll work on a project that has been in my head for a while. I wrote a microbrewery finder for Wisconsin a while back for the iPhone. The problem is that all of the brewery information is hardcoded in the app (yeah, bad idea, I know). This is a problem because this information changes all the time. So, I want to rewrite the iPhone app to get it’s brewery information dynamically from a file on the Internet. I’ll then write a RoR app that my editor (OK, my wife) can use to update the information without having to hack on the XML directly (Ruby will do that behind the scenes). She’ll have a nice web form to use.

I’ll leave it at that for now. I’ll post again after I complete the tutorial. Wish me luck!

 

Time for something new

Since 2002, my full time gig has been working on a .NET, windows forms based project. I’ve enjoyed the work, the people I’ve worked with and the challenges. However, 9 years is a long time (an eternity in an IT career) to be working on the same thing. I’ve done some little projects on my own (http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/wisconsin-microbrewery-guide/id323729954?mt=8), but 40+ hours of almost every week for the past 9 years has been spent on the same thing. It’s time for a change.

I’ve always enjoyed web development. We all remember big events like the Challenger disaster or the birth of a child. One of those big events for me was hitting the Publish button, switching over to IE and seeing my site on the web for the first time. Holy crap,that was cool! So, I wanted to go back to web programming, but what technology to use?

I started working again in Java (with Google’s App Engine platform), but had a hard time getting back into it. It was fun and App Engine is pretty cool, but Ruby/Rails kept calling to me. Bloggers kept mentioning how quick and efficient it is to get a site up and going, how clean and intuitive the Ruby language is, and how companies like Groupon and Twitter have embraced it.

Hello Ruby. Hello Rails.