More on Ruby Implementations
621839
"Rubinius is a project to watch", so says Charles Nutter in his post Rite, Rubinius, and Everything &mdash; I think he's right.  Evan is hard at work making things work better in rubinius.  He's now got continuations working (I think this makes him the first alternative implementation of Ruby to do so), and says he should have serializable continuations soon (see his post on it here).  W00t!
704271
Greg Beaver talks about a big push that he's making towards PEAR2 by working hard on an integral piece of the puzzle - the Pyrus installer.   I'm churning out code to turn its installer, Pyrus, from vaporware into actual code. Along these lines, there has been significant progress.  The code has been developed on PHP 5.2, but will most likely target PHP 5.3 with the introduction of namespaces.  Pyrus completely revamps the way things are done.   Greg mentions some of the functionality the installer will use including XMLReader/XMLWriter, namespaces and bits of functionality from the Standard PHP Library (SPL). He's released what he's developed so far via a PEAR channel with no other dependencies.
443243
Planning and carrying off a hackers conference is an interesting process.  We learned a lot last year as we ran the 2007 MountainWest RubyConf, hopefully we&#8217;re able to put some of that experience to good use as we come up on the 2008 MountainWest RubyConf.read more
73881
Ruby on Rails on Rails on Rails on Rails We'll hand it to IBM's researchers. They think big - really big. Like holy-crap-what-have-you-done big.â¦
244397
Piers Cawley has the latest from the Perl 6 mailing lists. The Parrot folks create some TODOs, hash out math semantics, and discuss cross-compiling. The Perl 6 language folks argue about ranges, roles, pipelines, and PRE and POST hooks.
752277
Alexey Zakhlestin mentions some new YAML functionality he's worked up - emitter functionality:   One more good news for you, YAML-users. I've implemented emitter functionality in php-binding of syck library. It is quite straight-forward, no fancy stuff for now, but it should work.   Supported datatypes include associative arrays, strings, integers, floats, booleans and nulls. He includes an example of the code in action (dumping out the information for an associative array). You can get this latest update from the subversion source on his site.
86944
DevShed continues their tutorial series looking at working with PHP and databases today with more excerpted material from the O'Reilly book "Programming PHP, Second Edition" (by Kevin Tatroe, Rasmus Lerdorf, and Peter MacIntyre).   Picking up from where we left off last week, we'll be discussing shortcuts, query responses, metadata, and more.   They start off looking at shortcuts, those handy things the PEAR DB package offers to make life simpler (like getRow and getAssoc) before moving on to how to get the details about the response itself (like affectedRows and tableInfo). Next up is working with the metadata (using getListOf) and, finally, a sample application to tie them all together.
524181
Reinhold Weber has posted his lists of some of the similarities and differences between Ruby and PHP:   If you are a PHP developer chances are you have heard some of the buzz on Ruby on Rails, an open source web framework for rapid application development. [...] These are similarities and differences of Ruby compared to PHP. If you know PHP, this should give you a good and quick insight in what Ruby is all about and how it compares to PHP.   Some of the similarities include the dynamic typing, class scoping, heredoc abilities and current object references. Differences include syntax differences, method calling, naming conditions and Ruby's lack of interface/abstract classes.
324115
Well, this is some news I've been wanting to share for a while, but I've had to wait until everything was ready.  During the summer, I spoke at RubyConf*MI, one of the first regional Ruby Conferences (I think San Diego held the only one earlier than the Michigan folks).  At the time, they filmed all the presentations.
137977
(InfoWorld) - David Heinemeier Hansson was a 23-year-old student at Copenhagen Business School when he began work on Ruby on Rails a little over four years ago. His goal was to write a simple Web application framework that would free developers from the misery of repetitive coding that he sees as inherent in widely used platforms like Java and .Net. By most accounts he succeeded. His open-source framework earned him the Google-O'Reilly Best Hacker award in 2005 and is now being backed by the likes of IBM and Sun and a small army of Web hosting and consulting companies. He says the platform is being downloaded about 10,000 times a week from the main Rails repository, only one of many sources. Its rise hasn't been without hiccups. Some users have complained that Ruby on Rails doesn't scale well for the most demanding applications, although the Rails development community has developed plug-ins to fix the problems. There have also been calls for standardization to prevent splintering in the Ruby language. But the buzz around the platform continues to grow. Heinemeier Hansson, who now lives in Chicago and works for collaboration tools company 37signals, will be in Berlin in two weeks for Europe's second Ruby on Rails user conference. He spoke with IDG News Service about what to expect at the show and what the future holds for Ruby on Rails. IDGNS: What can we expect at the conference in Berlin in September? DHH: This will be the second Ruby on Rails conference in Europe. The shows in Europe tend to be a bit smaller than in the U.S. Last year in London we had about 400 people; this year I'm expecting double that number in Berlin. There will be a number of new tools announced. CodeGear, the Borland company, is going to announce its Ruby on Rails IDE. It's been in beta for some time, and they're going to use the show to launch that. Sun is always very involved with the whole JRuby initiative, they've made a good number of strides, and they'll probably be talking about the latest in Rails running on JRuby. And I know IBM has been maintaining their DB2 adapter for Rails. IDGNS: Will we hear about any updates to Rails itself? DHH: The next big release is Rails 2.0, I'm going to discuss that in some form in my keynote speech. Currently the goal is to consolidate and sharpen what we already have. The big push we've been making is for RESTful services. In many ways it was an option before, a choice, and there was a little bit of insecurity for some developers about whether something like WS* SOAP would be the way the wind would blow in terms of Web services. We've decided now that we're going to pursue this from the assumption that people want to be RESTful. We're also going to pull out a fair number of elements, features that aren't a good fit for what people want to do most of the time. So a number of elements will move out and be plug-ins. If your application absolutely depends on them you won't be stranded, you'll be able to get the plug-ins easily. So Action Web Service, for example, the Rails answer to how to do SOAP, that whole service will no longer be bundled with Rails. If you need to do a SOAP Web Service it will be easy to install it again. We're saying if there's any doubt whether to use REST or SOAP, use REST. IDGNS: So removing elements is to keep Rails simple and lightweight? DHH: Yes. We don't believe that just because at one point back in the day we included an experiment, or chose to do an API, that it's going to stay for ever. We don't want to turn into Java, this pack rat that just keeps hold of any possession. We're not afraid to take out stuff that's not relevant or we plain don't like. That's important to keeping it a light and friendly framework. IDGNS: Do you have an updated release date for 2.0? DHH: I might be giving one, it depends how things shape out. We've maintained that we hope to complete it this year. This is an open-source project founded on desires to get things done, things wax and wane, so we don't have a traditional road map, and we definitely don't try to pin down shipping dates. IDGNS: Some people have said we should have a standard implementation of Ruby to prevent splintering. What do you think? DHH: There's definitely talk about making Ruby a specification that can be implemented in JRuby or IronRuby (a version of JRuby for Microsoft .Net), I know there are some people who are moving along in that aspect, and that would be nice. None of them impact me on a day-to-day basis. I'm happy with the implementation of Ruby done by Matz [Ruby creator Yukihiro "Matz" Matsumoto]. The JRubys and IronPythonsÂ are niches; that's not what's being used by the majority of Rails users. IDGNS: But enterprises are interested in JRuby because they can use Rails on their existing Java servers.... DHH: JRuby is a great way to open the conversation with enterprises by saying, You don't have to throw out all this "junk" you've accumulated over the years, Ruby is just an incremental piece you can put in. But in some ways, it's sugar coating to get people to really come on board. It's a bridge for getting from one place to another. The majority of Ruby on Rails users out there are people who go straight to Ruby on Rails, they don't have junk in the trunk. And they are still by far the highest number of users. The enterprise is a fairly newcomer. IDGNS: So what's Rails being used for mostly today? DHH: The vast majority is Web applications, that spans public Web sites, some for Web 2.0-ish applications, some e-commerce solutions, we're building collaboration tools. Any application that's a good fit for delivering through a browser is a good fit for Ruby on Rails, from the shaded gradients of Web 2.0 to mortgage processing applications for detecting credit ratings. IDGNS: Where would you like to see it really succeed? What's your dream for Ruby on Rails? DHH: My dream is that people adopt it on its own merits. We're not trying to bend Ruby on Rails to fit the enterprise, we're encouraging enterprises to bend to Ruby on Rails. Come if you like it, stay away if you don't. We're not going head over heels to accommodate the enterprise or to lure them away from Java. That's how you end up with Java, if you start bending to special interest groups. We'll continue to add techniques and technologies that work for us, and it's great if it works for other people too, but Rails is very much an egotistical brainwork for me. I care about designing for me and producing a framework that works great for me, and that's the only constituent I have in mind when I develop it. IDGNS: You remind me a bit of Linus Torvalds talking about Linux 10 years ago. DHH: It's almost impossibly hard to design things for other people. You build it for yourself, that's what you have to do, and then you'll create something you like and you really want to use, and then other people will like it too. There's no way to co-opt and infiltrate us because we don't have commercial pressures. I couldn't care less whether a corporation or a business adopts Rails or not. I'm building Rails for me, so there's not a lot of pressure they can apply. They can't say, add this functionality and we'll get a thousand extra customers for you. That won't work. They're going to have to win arguments on technical merits. IDGNS: How would you characterize Sun's and IBM's relationships to Rails? DHH: I think they recognize what developers want, they are recognizing there is great enthusiasm and passion for Ruby on Rails, and they don't want to miss out on that. To a large extent, they are following the passion, the excitement. We don't want to work in these big environments like .Net and J2EE. I know some people inside of Sun know what's going on, but whether they as a company choose to accept the lessons I don't know. In some ways, Rails is a rebellion against J2EE, but at the same time, they're doing great work with JRuby and Unix level tools like DTrace. Like any big company it's going to have different factions inside. I welcome Sun and IBM to come in and offer services. IDGNS: How many Rails committers are there? DHH: We're 12 people in the core group who have commit access. Then there are hundreds of people who contribute improvements for their own benefit. IDGNS: How old are you and what was your background before you created Ruby on Rails? DHH: I'm 27. I worked with PHP and Java, they were my main background. I was mostly doing PHP on my own, and I worked at a Java shop for a period of time. It was J2EE to some extent and otherwise Java in general. Those were the two forming influences. With Ruby On Rails, I tried to form the best of both worlds to make it as quick as PHP and as solid and clean as something like Java.
367280
Zed rails, Bray dizzy The launch of a low-cost Ruby on Rails integrated development environment from SapphireSteel Software based on Microsoft's Visual Studio comes at a turning point for both the Ruby language and its associated Rails framework. But quite what the turning point will be is open to question.â¦
211617
With RubyConf 2007 coming up this weekend, it's no wonder that the 2008 regional conference schedule is starting to flesh out.  the Gotham Ruby Conference hasn't mad an official annoucement yet, but should be in April.  Folks on the West Coast will be happy to hear that there are rumblings of two or three California based Ruby conferences.read more
144022
A few more of the International PHP Conference slides have surfaced for your enjoyment:  Sandro Zic - A comparison of PEAR Installer, Phing, and ZZ/OSS Installer alan@akbkhome.com - PEAR and PHP 5 (blog entry)
318761
DevShed ramps up another new series today with this new article giving developers a look at working with object-oriented programming through the eyes of design patterns. It's another excerpt from the George Schlossnagle book "Advanced PHP Programming".   This chapter provides an overview of the advanced OO features now available in PHP. Some of the examples developed here will be used throughout the rest of this book and will hopefully serve as a demonstration that certain problems really benefit from the OO approach.   The article lays down the foundation for the more complex information to come. It introduces object-oriented programming briefly, and talks about some of the handy features of it - like inheritance, static attributes and methods.
396345
Sandro Zic recently gave a presentation on Java and PHP, and posted his slides here. I didn't attend his talk, so I don't have all the facts, but I would like to comment on one of his slides [...]. First, a minor point. Limited or no OOP has rarely stopped any software from being enterprise-ready. Most modern operating systems continue to be written in C, and the large Cobol programs running on mainframes that manage your bank accounts and insurance do not use OOP. [...] Let's address some of his other criticisms: Virtually no multi-threading, Lack of maintenance tools, and Immature frameworks.
464538
Microsoft gives to receive Microsoft has released early code for its Ruby-on-.NET scripting language during a week of actively courting developers and community feedback.â¦
238992
With open-source software being formally introduced Monday, WSO2 seeks to bridge the Ruby programming language and the Ruby on Rails Web framework with the SOA and Web services spaces.The company is set to debut WSO2 WSF/Ruby (Web Services Framework for Ruby) 1.0, providing a Ruby extension to support the Web Services WS-* stack. Ruby developers can incorporate security and reliable messaging capabilities needed for trusted, enterprise-class SOAP-based Web services, WSO2 said. But the product also supports the alternative REST (Representational State Transfer) Web services."Ruby, as you know, has become a very popular language the last few years, and what we are enabling is for Ruby to become part of an enterprise SOA architecture," WSO Chairman/CEO Sanjiva Weerawarana said.While Ruby has been popular in the Web 2.0 realm, sometimes it needs to talk to legacy architectures, he said. With the new framework, developers could build a Web application using Ruby and then hook into enterprise infrastructures, such as JMS (Java Message Service) queues. For example, a Web site might be built with Ruby that then needs to link to an order fulfillment system based on an IBM mainframe or minicomputer, Weerawarana said.With the December release of Ruby on Rails 2.0, the builders of Rails swapped out a SOAP library and replaced it with REST capabilities. In doing this, David Heinemeier Hansson, the founder of Rails, stressed that that SOAP and its attendant WS-* stack had become too complex.But Weerawarana stressed REST may not always be sufficient. "[The REST preference] is a perfectly fine position to take if you don't need any kind of these security and reliability infrastructure [capabilities]," he said. WSO2's framework would replace the SOAP capabilities removed in Rails 2.0, he said.Weerawarana's stance was seconded by a user of the company's products, Stefan Tilkov, CEO of infoQ, a consulting firm near Dusseldorf, Germany. While saying he likes Rails because it picks and chooses technologies, such as opting for REST over SOAP, Tilkov said businesses may not be ready to welcome Rails and the lesser known REST Web services at the same time, he said."Sometimes, you have to decide whether you want to fight all of the possible battles at once. Trying to introduce both Rails and [REST] at the same to a company can really be a challenge," he said. WSO2 is providing WS-* and SOAP capabilities for Rails, Tilkov stressed.Still, Tilkov likes REST. "I'm a very big REST fan, and I [advocate] the use of REST whenever I can," he said.WSF/Ruby 1.0 binds WSO2's Web Services Framework for C into Ruby to provide an extension based on three Apache projects. These include: Axis 2C, which is a Web services runtime to support REST and SOA; Sandesha/C, supporting WS-Reliable Messaging; and Rampart/C, for WS-Security capabilities.Also, WSF/Ruby 1.0 uses Ruby on Rails as its deployment model for providing services.Client and service APIs are offered. Support is featured for SOAP 1.1 and SOAP 1.2. The software is interoperable with Microsoft .Net, the WS02 Web Services Application Server, and other J2EE implementations. SOAP Message Transmission Optmization and WS-Addressing capabilities are included as well.Downloadable here, WSF/Ruby 1.0 is offered under the Apache License 2.0. While it is free, WS02 does sell development and production services as well as training for it. Production support prices start at $2,000, while development support begins at $2,500 for 10 hours. Training costs $400 per day per person with a minimum of five persons required.WSO2's long-term strategy includes allowing scripting languages like Ruby, Perl, and PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor) to participate in an enterprise SOA.