Nonsense

Welcome to this week's Web-based syndication of Ruby Weekly, the Ruby e-mail newsletter.

You may imagine that the ruby-core mailing list is a 24/7 programming disco dealing with core Ruby implementation topics.. but no, it's usually a low-traffic list with calm discussion of bugs and patches. This week, however, some Interesting Stuff™ has happened and the kimono has been lifted on a few issues including, notably, a potential Ruby 1.8.8.

As 2010 comes to a close, I've dug through Ruby Inside archives to remind myself how far the Ruby scene has progressed over the year. Over the past couple of years, it's been hinted that the pace of developments in the Ruby world is slowing down, but nothing could have been further from the truth in 2010 (well, except in September..)

Coderpath is a weekly podcast by Ruby developers Miles Forrest and Curtis McHale where they typically interview a different Ruby developer and discuss some of their current work. Most of the episodes are in an interview format and guests so far include a handful of Ruby developers you'll know (such as DHH and Ryan Bates).

Overt humor isn't usually Ruby Inside's thing, but it's the holiday season, so there's nothing wrong with kicking up your heels and having a little fun. Don't worry - this won't become a habit. Promise! After the fold, check out a chart showing how programming language fanboys (Ruby's included) see each other's respective languages.

They've had several days to settle in, but because most of you will be reading via the RSS feed it's time to make a point to announce that... Ruby Inside and Rails Inside have both been redesigned! If you usually just read the full-text RSS feed, do come and visit the site - if only to let us know what you think.

Since Why The Lucky Stiff's supposed disappearance yesterday, I've been coming across a lot of interesting links with mirrors of his projects, discussions surrounding his disappearance, and lots of other juicy stuff. I think it's worth keeping track of this stuff so I'm kicking off a compilation post dedicated to Why related links.

Update: I retract the post Be Professional or Be Edgy: How Context Can Keep Everyone Happy of April 27, 2009 in full. It covered an issue that started as a Ruby-related thing, but quickly became focused on the behavior and sentiments of some Rails communities. Ruby Inside is a Ruby news blog; therefore my editorial was unuseful and made for dull reading. I apologize for falling into such boring territory.

RubyCamp 2008 in Vancouver, Canada - January 26, 2008

(photo credit: dwortlehock)

I know there's going to be some controversy around this clever piece of code by Jay Phillips. He's developed "Superators", a library that finally makes it easy to create new operators within Ruby that look like line noise. Always wanted a "-~+~-" or "===~-+~++" operator? Now it's within your grasp! As Aleks Clark says: "Job security and spiffy DSL construction in one neat package."

Remember the infamous "Ruby on Rails Vs" videos by the guys at RailsEnvy.com that were such a hit at RailsConf? Well they're back with two more..

Ruby Inside hasn't had any new items for the last several days as I've just bought a house, and have had to enjoy the various work that brings. So, to get things back on track with Ruby Inside, here's a roundup of some of the key news and articles I've seen over the past week instead:


Why Releases His Shoes To The World
Despite the finest Ruby blog in the land, Why's RedHanded, slipping into a coma earlier this year, Why continues to wow the Ruby community with his contributions. This time around, he's built a cross-platform toolkit for making "Web-like Desktop Apps" using Ruby called Shoes. Drool over this sample code:

Standout Jobs Need a Ruby Guru

Blink and you'd miss it, but Ruby Inside celebrates its first anniversary today. To commemorate it, I want to post about the history of the site, how it all came together, present some statistics, and give some blog-related tips for anyone else who wants to create a similar blog.

Classifier is a Ruby gem developed by Lucas Carlson and David Fayram II to allow Bayesian and other types of classifications, including Latent Semantic Indexing.

Slideshare is like the YouTube or Scribd of presentations and slideshows and it features a few good Ruby and Rails related slideshows that are worth flicking through. This post links to some of the best:

I'm currently putting together the list of publications that my publisher, Apress, can send and push my book to. Unfortunately Ruby has a rather lacking publishing ecosystem, but I figure I'd try "ruby magazine" in Google none the less.