sorted by: recent | see :
popular
Content Tagged controversy
Ruby 1.9 Drops Support For 9 Platforms (Ruby 1.9.0-3’s Release Bombshell)
Photo credit: Blakespot. License: CC 2.0 Attribution
Yuki Sonoda has announced the release of Ruby 1.9.0-3, a snapshot release of the still-experimental Ruby 1.9 (wait until Christmas for the production ready 1.9.1). Minor releases aren't typically covered here on Ruby Inside, but the dropping of support for nine platforms in Ruby 1.9 might be of significant interest to some:
Ruby 1.9 no longer supports the following platforms because they have no active maintainer.
- BeOS
- WinCE
- OS/2
- Interix
- bcc32
- Classic MacOS
- djgpp
- VMS
- human68k
I will remove platform-specific codes for them from Ruby, unless someone become a maintainer by 25 Sep.
It seems unlikely anyone will be too bothered about losing Ruby on Mac OS 9, DOS, BeOS or WinCE, but if you are bothered, get on to ruby-talk right away. Even if you don't think you could maintain it yourself, renewed interest in your platform might encourage others to get involved.
Further to the above, Ruby 1.9.0-4 is due on August 25, 1.9.0-5 on September 25, 1.9.1 RC1 on October 25 (this will be quite a significant test - put it in your calendar), 1.9.1 RC2 on November 25, and 1.9.1 proper on December 20, 2008.
This post supported by Rails Kits: Get billing and subscription code "to go" with the SaaS Rails Kit. Quickly add credit card and PayPal payments to your Rails app. Now supports Authorize.net and other payment processors. Get 10% off by using the discount code "rubyinside" at checkout before August 1st.
Microsoft’s Latest Bad Idea? ARAX - Ruby-powered AJAX
Microsoft’s got plans for Ruby beyond the fine IronRuby project in the shape of “ARAX” (Asynchronous Ruby and XML), a Ruby-flavored variety of the popular AJAX Web development techniques. Microsoft’s Silverlight plugin will be able to process and run Ruby code that’s directly within Web pages similar to how browsers process JavaScript. This allows Ruby developers to write Ruby code instead of the equivalent JavaScript as they do now.
eWeek interviewed John Lam, creator of and program manager for IronRuby, to find out more about the project. Lam seems to feel that Ruby developers aren’t happy with using multiple languages and dealing with context shifts:
[A]t some point you might have to add some JavaScript code that adds some custom functionality on the client yourself. So there’s always that sense of, ‘Now I’m in another world. And wouldn’t it be nice if I have this utility class I wrote in Ruby…’ Today if I want to use it in the browser I have to port it to JavaScript. Now I can just run it in the browser.
On the other hand, though, he seems to have no issue with HTML and CSS:
It’s a known thing and people understand this technology. The part that [is important], at least as far as Rails programmers are concerned with, is they would like to be able to do some Ruby on the client. JavaScript is no longer the ugly stepchild that it used to be, but it’s quirky in certain ways. That’s not to say that Ruby isn’t, but Ruby has more ‘oohs and ahs’ about it than JavaScript does.
Naturally, the success of this idea rests on the success of Silverligh, but it remains to be seen whether Silverlight will take off. Silverlight’s dynamic language support is exciting and innovative but whether it’ll actually prove worthwhile to developers in the long run is doubtful. Microsoft already seems to have enough issues with .Net 3.x (.Net 3.5’s runtime is a 190MB download - almost an operating system in its own right!) and IE 7 adoption on the operating systems it actually controls updates for.
An amusing part of eWeek’s article was a fine shot across the bow from David Heinemeier Hansson:
It’s great to see Microsoft making progress on IronRuby. Just like JRuby provides people who are stuck with an inventory of Java infrastructure and programs an easy way into Ruby, so does IronRuby for those who are still sitting on a Microsoft stack. As with JRuby, though, I don’t expect a lot of Ruby programmers with no existing connection to Microsoft to go gaga over it.
Let’s just cross our fingers and hope it doesn’t become another proprietary rehash (JScript, J#) and that Silverlight isn’t abandoned or dumbed down on non-MS platforms (as Internet Explorer, Media Player, Messenger and Office were or are).
North Oaks, Minnesota tells Google Maps to Fu** off!
Uh oh… It looks like Google Maps Street View is invading privacy of private lands. Although most people probably won’t care that much but how did Google Maps get pictures of private lands in the first place?
Since the introduction of Google Maps’ Street View last spring, the feature has caused controversy in several cities and with the federal government. The Pentagon banned Google Maps from taking any images of military facilities, and a Pittsburgh couple sued the company over images of their home taken from the private road in front of their house.
The North Oaks City Council sent a letter to Google in January asking the company to remove the images and destroy the files or possibly be cited for violating the city’s trespassing ordinance.
Google spokeswoman Elaine Filadelfo said the images of North Oaks were removed shortly afterward. She didn’t know of any other city in the country that has made a similar request.
Ruby Inside Meta News - May 8, 2008
It’s a rare occurrence, but there’s some “meta” news to give out about Ruby Inside. Regular programming follows this break!
FeedBurner Feed Ads Be Gone!
Subscribers to the Ruby Inside feed will be familiar with the graphical ads after each post. They perform horribly (think click through rates of 0.1%). I’m glad that Ruby Inside’s audience is so savvy and I’m sick of annoying you with irrelevant nonsense. Those ads are now gone.
Ruby Inside Turns 2 - So I Need To Eat My Hat
In just three weeks, Ruby Inside will be two years old. Unfortunately, two years ago I said I’d “eat my hat” if Ruby hadn’t beaten Python in the TIOBE index by May 2008. It hasn’t. I am currently sourcing a sugar hat. On the plus side, Ruby has moved from #20 to #9, while Python has moved only from #8 to #7. I’m not making any promises for next year, however.
Sponsored Post Footers - Not In A Sucky Way
I want to reassure you that Ruby Inside isn’t interested in payola. No incentives are received for writing about something here. Even the “Thank You to Ruby Inside’s Sponsors” posts are something I do out of courtesy; not a mandatory part of the deal.
In removing the FeedBurner ads (see above) I want to replace them with something useful to both you, the reader, and to those in the community who have something to promote. With that, I’m launching the concept of sponsoring the footer of a post (or multiple posts). It’s limited to a few lines of text, set off separately at the bottom of a post, with a link or two as necessary. Only things of interest to Ruby Inside readers will be allowed. The first couple will be going up soon, so keep an eye out. I
f you, your company or your project is interested in sponsoring posts, e-mail risp [/at/] peterc.org for more details. The big benefit in sponsoring posts is that the tagline will stay attached to the posts as long as Ruby Inside is around. You’ll also hit all 16,000 subscribers rather than just those who visit the site. You get the idea..
New Logo
If you haven’t seen it yet, Ruby Inside has a new logo. Blame Charles Nutter. I must say, though, I prefer this new one in any case.
For Sale?
It’s the first mention here, but followers of my Twitter stream will be aware I’ve considered selling or otherwise “changing the ownership structure” of Ruby Inside for a little while now. Investigations into this are only casual so far. One option is to farm out the advertising / commercial side to a team with the savvy to do that, and I have a very good proposal on the table for this already. The other option is to “sell up”, perhaps while still posting here, and let someone / a company with big ideas shake things up a bit.
In any case, it’s all very casual right now, but options are being explored. I still love working on Ruby Inside, I still love keeping up with the news, but I’m gradually moving into other areas with my big ideas, and am definitely not against Ruby Inside evolving to a new level under someone else’s wing. Contact me if you have any direct interest or ideas, or just comment here if you have general feedback.
Thank You!
Given that Ruby Inside’s turning two years’ old very soon, I want to thank you, the reader, for continuing to subscribe, continuing to support, and otherwise make working on Ruby Inside the amazing experience it is and has been.
The Promise and Peril for Alternative Ruby Implementations
Promise and Peril for Alternative Ruby Impls [Implementations] is a lengthy, but interesting, essay by Charles Nutter of the JRuby team. He looks at Ruby 1.8, Ruby 1.9, JRuby, Rubinius, IronRuby, MacRuby, and some minor implementations, and covers their background along with their current development state and how they might proceed in future. For those interested in the state of the many Ruby implementations, this is a must read.
For those who want a shorter version without any of the context or smart insight Charles brings: the Ruby 1.8.7 previews have thrown a spanner in the works, Ruby 1.9 still doesn’t run Rails (but will very soon), Ruby 1.9 might not prove better enough to woo developers, JRuby rocks, Rubinius is cool but improving performance will be hard, Rubinius seems to be retreating to using more and more C primitive functions and moving away from “Ruby in Ruby”, IronRuby is clever but might have trouble running Rails properly, MacRuby is a great idea, and all of the other, minor implementations seem stuck in the mud.
Trivia: Two Freudian slips when writing this post. I mis-typed “Peril” as “Perl” in both cases.
Is Windows a First Class Platform for Ruby?
Luis Lavena is the new maintainer of the popular Ruby “One-Click Installer” for Microsoft Windows. As part of this new role, Luis has set a milestone of cutting the dependency on pre-built packages. He wants to move development from Visual C++ 6 to MinGW, so that Windows-based Ruby developers will, at least, be able to take advantage of a Linux-esque build system for Ruby libraries in future. Back in January, Luis wrote Ruby for Windows, a post where he elaborated on these ideas and wrote candidly about the state of Ruby on Windows (inability to compile some gems without VC6, etc.)
Unfortunately, he didn’t get much of a reaction, and was led to write Is Windows a support platform for Ruby? I guess not, a somewhat frustrated post where Luis asks whether he should continue with the OCI / VC6->MinGW work or not. He wants to know whether anyone is actually interested in Windows being a first class Ruby platform or not, or whether there are other alternatives.
As a non-Windows user, I don’t have any opinions, but as a Ruby user, I share Luis’s concerns that a poor Windows Ruby ecosystem could harm the growth and spread of the language. So, we’d really love to know if Windows is a platform that Ruby developers truly want to support, or whether there are other approaches that should be taken.
Is Windows a first class platform for Ruby, or not?
Ruby as an AppleScript Replacement?
John Muchow has put together a three part (so far) set of blog posts that guides you through using Ruby as an alternative for AppleScript on OS X (part 1, part 2, part 3) using the rb-appscript library. It’s very slow moving so even if you’re a complete AppleScript / OS X newbie, you’ll be able to follow it.
Ruby > AppleScript
With all of the developments going on between OS X and Ruby lately, I’m becoming convinced that Ruby could become the de-facto OS X scripting language of choice within the next few years. I’m a programmer, but I find AppleScript hideous enough to avoid it wherever possible, and I’m not the only one. I forget where, but I recently read an article about AppleScript that suggested while it reads like English, it’s not particular easy to code in because it isn’t English and the constructions are very rigid. Compare this AppleScript code:
tell application "TextEdit"
get paragraph 1 of document "Read Me"
end tell
To this Ruby alternative:
app(’TextEdit‘).documents[’Read Me‘].paragraphs[1].get
The AppleScript reads better in English terms, but the Ruby version is, arguably, easier to remember how to reconstruct, as long as you’re familiar with Ruby syntax. Ruby’s reflection / inspection capabilities also ensure that even if you forget the name of a method / term, you can look it up on the fly! Try that in AppleScript! (Oops, I’m wrong, for now.)
RubyOSA
As well as rb-appscript, let’s not forget RubyOSA, a Ruby bridge to the Apple Event Manager, a library that makes controlling OS X applications child’s play:
Justin Williams has put together an all-in-one RubyOSA tutorial that’s worth reading and demonstrates how to control NetNewsWire from Ruby.
Ruby & OS X Books?
Lastly, where are the Ruby and OS X books? Are you writing one now that you can tell us about? Are you a publisher looking for someone to write such a book? Is there already a book that’s dedicated to using Ruby specifically with OS X? If not, it’s finally time for one.
Zimbra now Yahoos! thoughts - Zimbra - Forums
Zimbra: del.icio.us tag/zimbra
email
Zimbra
yahoo
controversy
acquisitions
discussiongroups