Seeking ideas for new Ruby projects

ruby-talk
1

I have a bad habit of skipping from one project to another. Actually, many
developers I know have the same habit, but I may be worse than most.

I am trying to think of an idea that
  - is interesting to me
  - is potentially useful
  - might attract the interest of other developers.

Some of my rough ideas are:

1. A todo-list manager (yes, yet another one) with emphasis on extreme
extensibility (and with certain optional features that I have never seen
all in one place)

2. An old-fashioned text formatter that takes plain text and produces a
document. Ruby code may be embedded in it. Adapters permit exporting
as HTML, as an ODT, as a PDF, as a Word doc, as XML/RSS/Atom, and
so on.

3. An embedded mini-language for regular expressions that permits us to
write really complex regular expressions "more as if they were programs"

4. A graphics DSL on top of ImageMagick (like a sophisticated layer on top
of RMagick)

5. A "better, more powerful" Ruby interface for Evernote. (The library I
have seen is a fairly "thin" wrapper, too thin for my tastes.)

6. A Ruby interface for LibreOffice (as I mentioned in another email). I
don't know what's involved in this.

7. A different/better ORM. My personal favorite is Sequel, but I have at
times longed for one that was "inside out" from ActiveRecord. At one time,
Ezra Zygmuntowicz and I brainstormed this idea a little, calling it
PassiveRecord (a name that has since been taken, I think).

8. I'm a big believer in dev tools. Anything that measures or diagrams
Ruby code, especially large systems, is interesting to me.

9. A mockup of what "better reflection" might look like in Ruby (think Ruby
2.2 or later). I have some notes and ideas here.

10. A web app (gasp!) for authors (print and web). I believe enough in
the commercial possibilities of this that I won't specify details here.
BTW - the "gasp" is because I normally don't like web coding in general,
and I'm a little disappointed by the giant chunk of time and energy in our
profession that is devoted to it. And I don't like being referred to as a
"backend" developer. Fifteen years ago, essentially ALL computer science
was "backend." Recruiters who think the web is the entire universe can,
well, kiss my backend. End of micro-rant. :slight_smile:

Comments are welcome... *especially* if you are interested in helping. :slight_smile:

Cheers,
Hal

2

3. An embedded mini-language for regular expressions that permits us to
write really complex regular expressions "more as if they were programs"

If you going to do that... start off with a PEG, way more powerful.

There is a PEG library for ruby somewhere.

7. A different/better ORM. My personal favorite is Sequel, but I have at
times longed for one that was "inside out" from ActiveRecord. At one time,
Ezra Zygmuntowicz and I brainstormed this idea a little, calling it
PassiveRecord (a name that has since been taken, I think).

Have you come across the Object Role Modelling variant of that acronym...
  http://www.orm.net/
Got bought out by microsoft, they didn't know what to do with it...
Seems to be languishing.
Now mash that up with http://www.thethirdmanifesto.com/ and you have a killer.

8. I'm a big believer in dev tools. Anything that measures or diagrams
Ruby code, especially large systems, is interesting to me.

As soon as a "round trippable" language of the power of ruby, but more
automagically analyzable/provable appears on the horizon... I'm
learning it.

9. A mockup of what "better reflection" might look like in Ruby (think Ruby
2.2 or later). I have some notes and ideas here.

See comment above.

I also believe static / strict typing is inverted.

Programmers should write code dynamically as per Ruby dynamic / duck
typing... but the compiler should infer what types are required by the
signatures of the methods applied to them, and then check that the
code would work.

ie. 99% of code could be statically checked to detect NoMethodError
exceptions. (Of course the very dynamic nature of ruby makes it
impossible to detect 100%)

10. A web app (gasp!) for authors (print and web). I believe enough in
the commercial possibilities of this that I won't specify details here.
BTW - the "gasp" is because I normally don't like web coding in general,
and I'm a little disappointed by the giant chunk of time and energy in our
profession that is devoted to it. And I don't like being referred to as a
"backend" developer. Fifteen years ago, essentially ALL computer science
was "backend." Recruiters who think the web is the entire universe can,
well, kiss my backend. End of micro-rant. :slight_smile:

Being playing with client side webby stuff recently... I half like
half hate http://d3js.org/

Comments are welcome... *especially* if you are interested in helping. :slight_smile:

See your comments about developers, ahhh, umm, "agility" at top of
your post... :-))

···

On Wed, Apr 10, 2013 at 8:12 AM, Hal Fulton <rubyhacker@gmail.com> wrote:

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3

other examples where you could help :stuck_out_tongue:

i have a new Binding for wxWidgets https://github.com/Hanmac/rwx
or bindings for other Libs like libarchive, OGRE or CEGUI

i am also part of a team that trys an new RPGMaker totaly written in
Ruby https://github.com/OpenRubyRMK
currently i am trying to begin with the scripting part of the game
engine

···

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