This Week in Ruby: Rails Rumble Dates, Active Admin 0.5, Protected Methods in Ruby 2.0
Welcome to this week's Web-based syndication of Ruby Weekly, the Ruby e-mail newsletter (Now at 16,300 subscribers! C'mon.. check it out ;-)).
Highlights include: an announcement over the dates for this year's Rails Rumble, releases of Active Admin 0.5 and Bundler 1.2, as well as Aaron Patterson looking at a difference in Object#respond_to? in the forthcoming Ruby 2.0.
Featured
The Rails Rumble is Back! Dates and Details Announced
The popular 48 hour Ruby development contest is back and will run this October 13th and 14th. Registration opens on October 1st. Learn all about it here.
Active Admin 0.5.0 Released
Active Admin is a popular administrative interface generation system for Rails and a new version has been a long time coming. 0.5 introduces batch actions (i.e. select multiple rows and delete them all), a customizable root route, and more view components and factories.
Bundler 1.2 Released
The vital dependency management tool gets an update and now supports specifying Ruby versions in Gemfiles, local git repos, and using 'bundle package' to package git and local path dependencies.
'Why The Lucky Stiff' Documentary to Screen at RubyConf 2012
Fabio Akita talks about Why The Lucky Stiff, a creative and enigmatic Rubyist who disappeared from the Web back in 2009, and reveals that a documentary about his work is under production and due to be shown at RubyConf 2012.
ConFoo 2013 Call for Papers is Open
The Call For Papers is only open for 10 more days and the conference itself is in February 2013.
Reading
Protected Methods and Ruby 2.0
Aaron Patterson looks at how the behavior of Object#respond_to? will change with regards to protected methods in Ruby 2.0.
Backbone.js and Rails
Wondering exactly what you need to do to create a Backbone.js app that leans on
Rails? This blog post (first in a series of two) covers it with an example app and an in-depth look at rendering with Mustache.
How to Easily Create Single Page Apps with Sprockets
A short and sweet example of using Sinatra and Sprockets for the back-end of a single page webapp.
A Ruby exit, exit!, SystemExit and at_exit Blunder
Phil Whelan discovers that the 'exit' method doesn't always do what its name seems to suggest..
Pragmatic Concurrency With Ruby
A delightfully in-depth look at some Ruby concurrency topics by Dotan J. Nahum.
Performing Linear Regression with Ruby
A walkthrough of the basics of linear regression (useful in statistical analysis) and using Ruby to perform simple linear regression.
Random Ruby Tricks: Class.new
Steve Klabnik shares some pointers to using Class.new to summon up new classes.
Ruby Tidbit: __LINE__ and Heredocs
An interesting quirk in how __LINE__ works in association with here documents. Makes sense but I'd never thought about this before.
Building a Geofencing System with Ruby and MongoDB
A short series of posts by John Murray that digs into using Ruby and MongoDB to build a 'geofencing' system.
PiecePipe Examples: Map, Aggregation and Group-By
Shawn Anderson shows off PiecePipe, a Ruby library for writing code where you focus on the flow of data through a pipeline of steps without worrying about the iteration and 'glue code.' An interesting approach.
Code Tuning, A Programming Pearl in Ruby
Daniel Lobato seems to share my love for the classic 'Programming Pearls' book and digs into optimizing a simple sequential search through an array.
What's New in the Upcoming SimpleForm 2.1.0
SimpleForm is a popular Rails form plugin and this post shares some of what will be in the forthcoming 2.1.0 release.
Watching and Listening
A 2 Hour Introduction to Ruby On Rails
At a recent Boston Ruby Group Project Night, Dan Pickett gave a 2 hour long 'introduction to Rails' workshop, building a Rails app along the way.
JRuby Basics (RailsCasts)
Ryan Bates wanders off of the usual Rails-focused trail to give a 10 minute tour of JRuby, including how to set it up and use Java classes from within Ruby.
FnordMetric (RailsCasts)
FnordMetric is a Redis and Ruby based realtime event tracking app that's great for keeping track of user activity in your Rails app. Ryan Bates demonstrates.
The Ruby Rogues Discuss 'Growing Object Oriented Software Guided by Tests'
The inimitable Ruby Rogues spend an hour discussing the superb 'Growing Object Oriented Software Guided by Tests' by Steve Freeman and Nat Pryce. If you haven't read this book yet, you should check it out.
Why The Lucky Stiff Documentary Trailer
A short 2 minute preview of a documentary about Why The Lucky Stiff that's planned to be screened at this year's RubyConf.
Libraries and Code
Labrador: A Web-based Client for Your Rails Development Databases
Aims to be database agnostic and includes Pow integration and automatic database integrations. Looks really nice.
Rubysh: Ruby Subprocesses Made Easy
Makes shelling out easy with a sh-like syntax layer for Ruby.
pg_power: ActiveRecord Extension for PostgreSQL
An ActiveRecord extension which lets you take advantage of several special PostgreSQL features with Rails, including PostgreSQL schemas, partial indexes, foreign keys, and comments.
Zeus: Boot Any Rails App in Under A Second
A new Rails app preloader, but one that takes a radically different approach to Spork and has very delicate Ruby and OS version requirements.
Ruby Decorators: Python-esque Method Decorators for Ruby
It's not a new idea but I like Fred Wu's simple implementation of Python-like method decorators using the unary + operator and method_added.
Jobs
Software Engineer – Experienced / Senior [New York City]
Are you an innovative software engineer with skills equivalent to 5–7 years of Java or Ruby experience? Do you want to be a key member of an incredibly driven team that knows how to have fun? We’re building our team from 14 to 21 this year. Join us!
Ruby Developer, Nature Publishing Group (London, United Kingdom)
Passionate about technology and science? Come join our team of Ruby developers at the Nature Publishing Group, responsible for the most influential scientific journals in the world for over 140 years.
Last but not least..
5500 Flashcards on Web Development With Rails
Jack Kinsella has released a free set of 5500 questions and answers on various aspects of Ruby, Rails, JS and CoffeeScript development. They're designed to be used with Anki, a free open source flashcard viewer.
What is ARGF.class in Ruby 1.9?
A question on Stack Overflow shows off an interesting quirk in Ruby 1.9. Why does "ARGF.class" give such a curious response? Two respondents try to come up with an answer.
