Ruby's Best -- Please Help

ruby-talk
1

On the “Why Ruby?” project wiki (http://whyruby.rubyforge.org/), I am trying
to compile a list of the very best ruby packages and applications that can
be used as examples to showcase Ruby as a development medium.

I seeded this list with a few items that immediately popped into my head,
but I need your help to fill out this list more completely, and to vote for
the Ruby packages and applications that you believe are the “best of the
best”.

Please take a moment to go to:

http://whyruby.rubyforge.org/wiki/wiki.pl?Ruby’s_Best

and add/vote for your favorites.

Thanks,
Curt

2

I’m going to bed in two minutes, so I have to beg your pardon for not
writing this myself, but portupgrade and tdiary may bhe good
additions

···

il Thu, 13 May 2004 22:55:26 +0900, “Curt Hibbs” curt@hibbs.com ha scritto::

Please take a moment to go to:

http://whyruby.rubyforge.org/wiki/wiki.pl?Ruby’s_Best

and add/vote for your favorites.

3

If you were an early visitor to:

http://whyruby.rubyforge.org/wiki/wiki.pl?Ruby’s_Best

You may want to go back again and look at all of the entries that other
people have made since then and vote for the ones you think are the best
representatives of outstanding Ruby software. The primary purpose is to get
a good sense of which Ruby packages are the best candidates to showcase in
presentations to advocate the use of Ruby.

Thanks,
Curt

Curt Hibbs wrote:

···

On the “Why Ruby?” project wiki (http://whyruby.rubyforge.org/),
I am trying
to compile a list of the very best ruby packages and applications that can
be used as examples to showcase Ruby as a development medium.

I seeded this list with a few items that immediately popped into my head,
but I need your help to fill out this list more completely, and
to vote for
the Ruby packages and applications that you believe are the “best of the
best”.

Please take a moment to go to:

http://whyruby.rubyforge.org/wiki/wiki.pl?Ruby’s_Best

and add/vote for your favorites.

Thanks,
Curt

Incoming mail is certified Virus Free.
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4

gabriele renzi wrote:

Please take a moment to go to:

http://whyruby.rubyforge.org/wiki/wiki.pl?Ruby’s_Best

and add/vote for your favorites.

I’m going to bed in two minutes, so I have to beg your pardon for not
writing this myself, but portupgrade and tdiary may bhe good
additions

Then, if you don’t mind adding them tomorrow, please – that would be great.
I’ve got a ton of things to do so I can get to bed while its still possible
to get 4 hour sleep :frowning:

Curt

5

Curt Hibbs wrote:

If you were an early visitor to:

http://whyruby.rubyforge.org/wiki/wiki.pl?Ruby’s_Best

You may want to go back again and look at all of the entries that other
people have made since then and vote for the ones you think are the best
representatives of outstanding Ruby software. The primary purpose is to get
a good sense of which Ruby packages are the best candidates to showcase in
presentations to advocate the use of Ruby.

I just cast my votes. Also, an observation (but not a criticism): It is
interesting to me that there aren’t any entries on the list that I would
consider pure end-user “applications”. One could technically argue that
an IDE like FreeRIDE is an application, but I don’t see anything there
that really stands on its own – they’re all packages, tools, etc. that
developers would use to develop end-user applications, web sites, whatever.

6

Curt Hibbs wrote:

If you were an early visitor to:

http://whyruby.rubyforge.org/wiki/wiki.pl?Ruby’s_Best

You may want to go back again and look at all of the entries that other
people have made since then and vote for the ones you think are the best
representatives of outstanding Ruby software. The primary purpose is to get
a good sense of which Ruby packages are the best candidates to showcase in
presentations to advocate the use of Ruby.

Advocate the use of Ruby for what?

It isn’t clear to me that what appears to be a popularity contest will
lead to a useful presentation on advocating Ruby. We might do better to
determine why people bother writing software at all, understand what
they look to accomplish, and show how Ruby suits their needs.

When trying to get people to use Ruby, the biggest push back I get is
“Nobody knows it. I can’t get people to support it.”

While showcasing WEBrick or Drb might get some nods of admiration, I
don’t see how they demonstrate that Ruby a) is easy to learn, and b)
handles the same business requirements as Java, C#, and other, more
widely deployed, languages.

Maybe I miss the point of trying to pick some showcase Ruby programs,
unless the idea is to walk through the code and explain how
straightforward it is to write something interesting and good.

Or maybe to show off some stunt code in order to simply grab people’s
attention. But “Watch, this is cool” only gets you so far.

The apps on that list are all quite good, but most would have had no
place in the last three Java jobs I had.

Ruby is competing against J2EE/JSP/servlets, and app servers such as
WebLogic, and their .Net counterparts.

We need to demonstrate that Ruby easier to develop, easier to maintain,
and solves the same business needs (including concerns over speed,
security, scalability, and reliability).

Perhaps Ruby needs the equivalent of the “Pet Store” example.

James

7

Lyle Johnson wrote:

Curt Hibbs wrote:

If you were an early visitor to:

http://whyruby.rubyforge.org/wiki/wiki.pl?Ruby’s_Best

You may want to go back again and look at all of the entries that other
people have made since then and vote for the ones you think are the best
representatives of outstanding Ruby software. The primary
purpose is to get
a good sense of which Ruby packages are the best candidates to
showcase in
presentations to advocate the use of Ruby.

I just cast my votes. Also, an observation (but not a criticism): It is
interesting to me that there aren’t any entries on the list that I would
consider pure end-user “applications”. One could technically argue that
an IDE like FreeRIDE is an application, but I don’t see anything there
that really stands on its own – they’re all packages, tools, etc. that
developers would use to develop end-user applications, web sites,
whatever.

I guess Instiki is the closest thing on the list to an end-user application.
There’s Hal’s Tycho, but it really too early in its development.

Ironically, writing end-user applications was what I’ve always wanted to do
with Ruby, but instead I’ve been helping to build out the (needed)
infrastructure. Someday I will write that killer end-user Ruby
application… but not in time to get it on this list! :slight_smile:

Seriously though, if anyone has a good candidate for an end-user
application, please add it to this list.

Thanks,
Curt

8

Lyle Johnson wrote:

I just cast my votes. Also, an observation (but not a criticism): It is
interesting to me that there aren’t any entries on the list that I would
consider pure end-user “applications”. One could technically argue that
an IDE like FreeRIDE is an application, but I don’t see anything there
that really stands on its own – they’re all packages, tools, etc. that
developers would use to develop end-user applications, web sites, whatever.

I think that’s true of our community in general. The Ruby “Application”
Archive has fewer applications than it has anything else, I think.

Let’s all work on that in our copious spare time.

Hal

9

Curt Hibbs wrote:

If you were an early visitor to:

http://whyruby.rubyforge.org/wiki/wiki.pl?Ruby’s_Best

You may want to go back again and look at all of the entries that other
people have made since then and vote for the ones you think are the best
representatives of outstanding Ruby software. The primary purpose is to get
a good sense of which Ruby packages are the best candidates to showcase in
presentations to advocate the use of Ruby.

Advocate the use of Ruby for what?

[snip]

We need to demonstrate that Ruby easier to develop, easier to maintain,
and solves the same business needs (including concerns over speed,
security, scalability, and reliability).

Perhaps Ruby needs the equivalent of the “Pet Store” example.

Good call. Coming from a J2EE background I’m really fed up with all
the “e-commerce, b2c” demo applications used to prove that
Struts/WebWork/EJB/Spring/Hibernate/C# is the supreme development
platform. But they’ve provided an excellent code-base for learning and
“best-practices”. It’s also crucial to demonstrate a complete, working
“enterprise” application (from presentation tier, domain model to
persistence/integration layer).

Perhaps the Ruby equivalent would be a “Jewelry Shop”? :slight_smile:

//Anders

···

–
/**

  • Anders Engström, aengstrom@gnejs.net
  • Your mind is like an umbrella.
  • It doesn’t work unless you open it.
  • /Frank Zappa
    */
10

I think James is right that a PetStore is going to be one of the most
important things needed to successfully advocate Ruby in a Java/.NET
dominated world.

But another big advantage Java has is IBM’s Robocode. It’s a great
introduction to programming - you play a game, you know how to write Java.
It particularly appeals to young coders (and young people who aren’t coders,
but will be after playing for a bit).

A thread starting at (ruby-talk:21131) suggests a Ruby version of this. In
fact, RAA lists Rubots as a project that was started in December 2002 by Tim
Bates, but never progressed.

If Tim’s still around, I wonder if he’s got any code lying around. If not, I
may just start trying to hack something up that mirrors Robocode fairly
closely - it seems to me (a Ruby nuby, admittedly) a fairly good design to
start with.

“James Britt” jamesUNDERBARb@neurogami.com wrote in message
news:40A4EC25.2000205@neurogami.com…

···

Advocate the use of Ruby for what?

It isn’t clear to me that what appears to be a popularity contest will
lead to a useful presentation on advocating Ruby. We might do better to
determine why people bother writing software at all, understand what
they look to accomplish, and show how Ruby suits their needs.

When trying to get people to use Ruby, the biggest push back I get is
“Nobody knows it. I can’t get people to support it.”

While showcasing WEBrick or Drb might get some nods of admiration, I
don’t see how they demonstrate that Ruby a) is easy to learn, and b)
handles the same business requirements as Java, C#, and other, more
widely deployed, languages.

Maybe I miss the point of trying to pick some showcase Ruby programs,
unless the idea is to walk through the code and explain how
straightforward it is to write something interesting and good.

Or maybe to show off some stunt code in order to simply grab people’s
attention. But “Watch, this is cool” only gets you so far.

The apps on that list are all quite good, but most would have had no
place in the last three Java jobs I had.

Ruby is competing against J2EE/JSP/servlets, and app servers such as
WebLogic, and their .Net counterparts.

We need to demonstrate that Ruby easier to develop, easier to maintain,
and solves the same business needs (including concerns over speed,
security, scalability, and reliability).

Perhaps Ruby needs the equivalent of the “Pet Store” example.

James

11

I’ve noticed that about the ruby community in general - there’s a lot
more interest in developing libraries, hacking the language, etc, than
in writing actual “applications”. I think it’s partly because of the
(unusually?) high level of interest in language design rubyists have,
and partly because as programers, we feel the lack of libraries more
than we feel the lack of apps.

martin

···

Lyle Johnson lyle@knology.net wrote:

I just cast my votes. Also, an observation (but not a criticism): It is
interesting to me that there aren’t any entries on the list that I would
consider pure end-user “applications”. One could technically argue that
an IDE like FreeRIDE is an application, but I don’t see anything there
that really stands on its own – they’re all packages, tools, etc. that
developers would use to develop end-user applications, web sites, whatever.

12

I just added, and then removed, a little SQL analysis gizmo I wrote:

http://pqa.projects.postgresql.org/

I don’t know… does “end user” mean, say, any non-Ruby-programmer -
like a database admin/developer/tuner person?

Yours,

Tom

···

On Fri, 2004-05-14 at 09:48, Curt Hibbs wrote:

Seriously though, if anyone has a good candidate for an end-user
application, please add it to this list.

13

Curt Hibbs wrote:

I guess Instiki is the closest thing on the list to an end-user application.
There’s Hal’s Tycho, but it really too early in its development.

Much too early for that one. The only people I want to see that are ones
who are curious and/or want to assist.

Ironically, writing end-user applications was what I’ve always wanted to do
with Ruby, but instead I’ve been helping to build out the (needed)
infrastructure. Someday I will write that killer end-user Ruby
application… but not in time to get it on this list! :slight_smile:

Seriously though, if anyone has a good candidate for an end-user
application, please add it to this list.

I think there’s a full-featured mail client… I haven’t looked at it in
a long time, as I was running Windows then and couldn’t get it to work.

A good way to find apps is simply to look under that section of the RAA
to jog your memory. Surely there are some “best” items there?

Hal

14

I’ve been out of the mainstream Java development world for a few years,
now. I did some googling for J2EE PetShop and found a few things, including
some screenshots of one implementation of it, but I didn’t find anything
that really clearly explained the scope of the Pet Shop application. What I
saw in the screen shots looked trivial, though, so if someone could narrow
my searches down and point me towards something that clearly explains the
scope and requirements, it looks like it could be an interesting side
project for me to implement it using Ruby & Iowa, maybe as part 2 of my Iowa
tutorial (which is almost done; cheers).

Thanks,

Kirk Haines

···

On Sat, 15 May 2004 07:13:51 +0900, Anders Engström wrote

Good call. Coming from a J2EE background I’m really fed up with all
the “e-commerce, b2c” demo applications used to prove that
Struts/WebWork/EJB/Spring/Hibernate/C# is the supreme development
platform. But they’ve provided an excellent code-base for learning
and “best-practices”. It’s also crucial to demonstrate a complete, working
“enterprise” application (from presentation tier, domain model to
persistence/integration layer).

Perhaps the Ruby equivalent would be a “Jewelry Shop”? :slight_smile:

15

My experience… It takes forever to make an application, my AEditor
project is far from completed, its ugly, it sux. However it has spawned
bunches of minor libraries (subcomponents of aeditor).

http://aeditor.rubyforge.org/

On the other hand, tiny applications can be made very quickly.
I once wrote a tetris game in a weekend in 260 lines of Ruby code.
Its bundled with SDL. But there is too little functionality
in it, so I don’t think it can be considered being a real application.

http://raa.ruby-lang.org/project/ruby-sdl/

···

Martin DeMello martindemello@yahoo.com wrote:

Lyle Johnson lyle@knology.net wrote:

I just cast my votes. Also, an observation (but not a criticism): It is
interesting to me that there aren’t any entries on the list that I would
consider pure end-user “applications”. One could technically argue that
an IDE like FreeRIDE is an application, but I don’t see anything there
that really stands on its own – they’re all packages, tools, etc. that
developers would use to develop end-user applications, web sites, whatever.

I’ve noticed that about the ruby community in general - there’s a lot
more interest in developing libraries, hacking the language, etc, than
in writing actual “applications”. I think it’s partly because of the
(unusually?) high level of interest in language design rubyists have,
and partly because as programers, we feel the lack of libraries more
than we feel the lack of apps.

–
Simon Strangaard

16

Apps are the things we get done at home or work for productivity or
interest, which are private or of little interest to others.
Libraries are the reusable components that make building an
application much easier, which are publically available.

Ruby being a very high-quality programming language, I think it’s
appropriate that its target market is programmers, not “users” :slight_smile:

rdict is one app I like, and which I would use regardless of its
implementation language. glark also looks good, but I haven’t really
used it yet. Then there’s rake, which blurs the lines.

Cheers,
Gavin

···

On Sunday, May 16, 2004, 12:13:50 AM, Martin wrote:

Lyle Johnson lyle@knology.net wrote:

I just cast my votes. Also, an observation (but not a criticism): It is
interesting to me that there aren’t any entries on the list that I would
consider pure end-user “applications”. One could technically argue that
an IDE like FreeRIDE is an application, but I don’t see anything there
that really stands on its own – they’re all packages, tools, etc. that
developers would use to develop end-user applications, web sites, whatever.

I’ve noticed that about the ruby community in general - there’s a lot
more interest in developing libraries, hacking the language, etc, than
in writing actual “applications”. I think it’s partly because of the
(unusually?) high level of interest in language design rubyists have,
and partly because as programers, we feel the lack of libraries more
than we feel the lack of apps.

17

I think part of it might also be that many of us use the language for things
other than desktop applications. I write applications in Ruby every day.
They are all web based applications targetted for specific business needs,
though, and not general interest sorts of applications. My impression is
that many users of Ruby likewise use the language for some specific niche
other than general purpose applications programming.

Kirk Haines

···

On Sat, 15 May 2004 23:13:50 +0900, Martin DeMello wrote

I’ve noticed that about the ruby community in general - there’s a lot
more interest in developing libraries, hacking the language, etc,
than in writing actual “applications”. I think it’s partly because
of the
(unusually?) high level of interest in language design rubyists have,
and partly because as programers, we feel the lack of libraries
more than we feel the lack of apps.

18

I think one of the killer apps is portupgrade/portinstall.
Strangely it gets mentioned rarely.

···

il Sat, 15 May 2004 14:11:41 GMT, Martin DeMello martindemello@yahoo.com ha scritto::

Lyle Johnson lyle@knology.net wrote:

I just cast my votes. Also, an observation (but not a criticism): It is
interesting to me that there aren’t any entries on the list that I would
consider pure end-user “applications”. One could technically argue that
an IDE like FreeRIDE is an application, but I don’t see anything there
that really stands on its own – they’re all packages, tools, etc. that
developers would use to develop end-user applications, web sites, whatever.

I’ve noticed that about the ruby community in general - there’s a lot
more interest in developing libraries, hacking the language, etc, than
in writing actual “applications”. I think it’s partly because of the
(unusually?) high level of interest in language design rubyists have,
and partly because as programers, we feel the lack of libraries more
than we feel the lack of apps.

19

Dave Burt wrote:

A thread starting at (ruby-talk:21131) suggests a Ruby version of this. In
fact, RAA lists Rubots as a project that was started in December 2002 by Tim
Bates, but never progressed.

If Tim’s still around, I wonder if he’s got any code lying around. If not, I
may just start trying to hack something up that mirrors Robocode fairly
closely - it seems to me (a Ruby nuby, admittedly) a fairly good design to
start with.

Yeah, I’m still here, lurking. Haven’t had time to do anything serious
with Ruby for a while, to my chagrin. Rubots is one of those things I’ve
been meaning to come back to, as one does, particularly now I have a bit
more Ruby experience under my belt. As for code, most of what I have is
merely skeleton code that outlines my design - nothing functional, which
is maybe part of the reason I’ve not been enthused to pick it up again yet.

You’re welcome to a copy of what I’ve done if you like; I did a fair bit
of research into how best to quarantine the robo code from the
surrounding framework which you might find useful. I’m not particularly
proud of the rest of it though, and would probably start again from
scratch if and when I took another look at it.

I agree that it would make a good way of introducing people to the
language, and this was one of the goals behind the original project. Now
that I see there is some interest, I may be inclined to take another
look at it, but as I’m drawing towards the end of the semester, not
right now. You know how it is.

Tim.

···

–
Tim Bates
tim@bates.id.au

20

Martin DeMello wrote:

I just cast my votes. Also, an observation (but not a criticism): It is
interesting to me that there aren’t any entries on the list that I would
consider pure end-user “applications”. […]

I’ve noticed that about the ruby community in general - there’s a lot
more interest in developing libraries, hacking the language, etc, than
in writing actual “applications”. I think it’s partly because of the
(unusually?) high level of interest in language design rubyists have,
and partly because as programers, we feel the lack of libraries more
than we feel the lack of apps.

Also as programmers, we tend to build tools. At work I have Ruby
utilities for dumping the database in various interesting ways (useful
for debugging our system (written mainly in Java)), ruby installation
scripts (this was a big win) for installing software, documents and
middleware event, tools to parse and analyze the afore mentioned
middleware events. Also testing tools and support scripts. Non of this
counts as an end-user application, but I don’t go a day without
interacting with some software that’s written in Ruby.

···

Lyle Johnson lyle@knology.net wrote:

–
– Jim Weirich jim@weirichhouse.org http://onestepback.org

“Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct,
not tried it.” – Donald Knuth (in a memo to Peter van Emde Boas)