http://www.rubyweeklynews.org/20060910.html
Ruby Weekly News 4th - 10th September 2006
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Ruby Weekly News is a summary of the week's activity on the ruby-talk
mailing list / the comp.lang.ruby newsgroup / Ruby forum, brought to you
by Tim Sutherland.
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Articles and Announcements
* RuPy 2007 - Python & Ruby Conference
--------------------------------------
Jakub Piotr Nowak announced a Python & Ruby Conference, to be held at
Adam Mickiewicz University, Poland in 2007.
"The philosophy of RuPy is to put together Python & Ruby experts with
young programmers and to provide a good communication channel for
East-West exchange of prospective ideas."
* Adobe releases the Ruby on Rails RIA SDK
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Adobe have released a Ruby on Rails RIA SDK that lets you build Rails
applications with a Flex (Flash-based) front-end instead of
HTML/Javascript. It's an open source project (New BSD license), and is
being developed in the open, with contributors welcome.
* Italian Ruby Book
-------------------
Lawrence Oluyede announced "Ruby per applicazioni web", an Italian
Ruby book, written by di Marco Ceresa with a chapter contributed by
Lawrence.
"The book is going to be available in the stores before the end of
this month so check it out my fellows Italian readers."
* Euruko 06
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"Euruko06, the European Ruby Conference, will be in Munich, November 4
and 5, 2006", reminded Stefan Schmiedl. He noted that the conference
fee is only 20 euros.
* Sun hires JRuby developers
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Sun announced its hire of the main JRuby developers, Charles Nutter
and Thomas Enebo. Tim Bray posted the official "Sun PR party line" in
JRuby Love, giving reasons for the hires and where they're looking to
take JRuby.
Charles also commented in JRuby Steps Into the Sun. "And yes, JRuby
will remain as open source as it is today. It just might start moving
a bit faster (as if it weren't moving fast already!"
> You can imagine how excited I am about this opportunity, and how
> pleased I am to know that Sun takes Ruby so seriously. Not only will
> I get to work on the project I've poured my heart into this past
> year, but I'll be able to do it while helping one of my favorite
> companies turn a technological corner. Naturally I've been talking
> with a myriad of folks at Sun over the past several weeks, so
> believe me when I say these guys really get it. The tide has turned
> and dynamic languages are on everyone's agenda. It's going to be
> quite a ride.
* The Ruby Mine - News and Articles for the Italian Community
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Chiaro Scuro was pleased to announce The Ruby Mine, a site aiming to
be a reference point for Italian developers looking for high quality
content in their native language.
"We are also actively looking for developers, writers, editors and
contributors that would like to help us further spread this elegant
language throughout the country."
* Thousands of words on Ruby
----------------------------
Tim Bray finished a series of essays called the Ruby Ape Diaries, and
there were some interesting responses. Ape is "Atom Protocol
Exerciser", a tool that Tim's developing.
* My book is out -- Ruby on Rails: Up and Running
-------------------------------------------------
Curt Hibbs said that his and Bruce Tate's book Ruby on Rails: Up and
Running is out and about. It's published by O'Reilly, and "is a
quick-start guide expressly designed to get you going with Rails
quickly."
Threads
Crashing RubyConf
-----------------
Gavin Kistner suddenly realised he was too late to register for RubyConf
2006 (Denver, Colorado, October 20-22, 2006), which was a pity since he
lives only 30 minutes away.
Assuming the answer was no, but hoping anyway, he asked how sold out it
is: "might be OK for those of us who live nearby to drive in, attend
sessions, and drive out?"
David A. Black said that unfortunately "sold out" really means sold out.
"Sold out means we're at capacity, based on the facilities and our
judgment as to what would make for a successful and reasonably comfortable
event." Anyone who isn't pre-registered won't be allowed in, regardless of
whether they try to pay at the door.
"Public areas of the hotel are, of course, hangable out in", he added,
with several other posters suggesting Gavin go to the lobby and bar, in
order to talk with Rubyists outside the conference proper.
Austin Ziegler heard that some of the most interesting discussions at last
year's RubyConf occured around the pool later in the day.
David: "It was a remarkable sight: a spontaneous pool-side discussion that
actually had more people at it than attended the first RubyConf in 2001!"
Using RubyInline for Optimization
---------------------------------
Eric Hodel: "I wrote an article on using RubyInline for optimization where
I take png.rb, sprinkle in a little profiling and a little C and make it
go over 100 times faster."
The article is 'Using RubyInline for Optimization'.
Dominik Bathon said the article is nice, but you can get around the same
performance improvement using pure Ruby, by avoiding many redundant array
to string conversions in the original png.rb.
New Releases
Many new releases, including ...
sandbox 0.2
-----------
why the lucky stiff released a new version of the FreakyFreakySandbox.
> The sandbox extension lets you create new Ruby environments, either
> restricted or featureful. Need a safe little housing for dangerous code,
> with an explode-proof shield on it? Aha, get over here. Or, need to load
> a conflicting library into a safe, clean Ruby? See, look at all these
> reasons.