Virtual Ruby Group

ruby-talk
21

irc is great, but i don't know if it is the right spot to solicit to
others, "hey do you want to band together and work on a project
together?!" I dont' want to disrespect the #ruby-lang channel or scare
people far far away.

This mailing list and the IRC channel seem like the obvious places to
do that already; that's why it would sort-of worry me if we set Yet
Another Web Site where you go to solicit other people to join you on a
Ruby-related project. That is to say, I don't want us to get so
"diluted" that it actually becomes *harder* to find Ruby people
because you're not sure web site, or mailing list, or IRC channel to
flock to.

I play in a game called VGA-planets. It's from the days a VGA screen was
highres. It is still played, amazingly enough!!
But the user community is totally, utterly fragmented. A shame.

However, an IRC channel with a million users won't work. So there will
have to be some spread. While Ruby is as it is now, there is a central
place and things will remain cohesive. Linux is Many, but Linux is also
One.

However, it is very hard to become One when you start with many. It is
easier to remain One when you grow to become Many.

VGA-Planets' central place is dormant. No wonder the community fell apart.

Perhaps another way of saying it: if this Virtual Ruby Group is 'extra',
that is good. If it is 'instead of', it is bad. (hey, you asked on the
ML/NG, so you probably think 'extra'; I can feel why ppl can be offput,
though).

I was thinking that a Virtual Ruby Group could be as simple as a couple
people who didn't have other rubyists in their area to band together on
their own ML, and to setup online meetings once a month to start a
project together. This seems like a good way for ruby programmers, both
new and advanced to be apart of something. This could get as geeky as
people with WebCams, Microphones, etc... or just be a 2 people emailing
each other back and forth.

....but with your own ML, only use it for meetings, not for general Ruby
questions. We have a ML. Do not fork the ML.

(plenty of web-software that encourages you to make your own this, your
own that, your own everything. That does not mean it is always a good idea.)

I may be wishful thinking here, and this wasn't entirely thought out to
be honest. I was just thinking when I was at the Ruby Meetup Group(s)
web site, "WOW there are alot of 1-2 people groups, if they joined
together there'd be a whole slew of rubyists, just think what they could
accomplish!".

Absolutely!

+--- Kero ----------------------- kero@chello@nl ---+

all the meaningless and empty words I spoke |
                     Promises -- The Cranberries |

+--- M38c --- http://httpd.chello.nl/k.vangelder ---+

22

> Sort of, and sort of not. I remember going to a few other Ruby Groups
> web sites (I think Seattle.rb was the most recent and it was mentioned
> on the list) and I really the liked the idea of people getting together
> and starting projects together. I thought this was really awesome of
> these groups to do this.

Oh, yes. Definitely.

> irc is great, but i don't know if it is the right spot to solicit to
> others, "hey do you want to band together and work on a project
> together?!" I dont' want to disrespect the #ruby-lang channel or scare
> people far far away.

I'd think it's a fine place to do that. And for a larger project, you
can set up another channel.

This mailing list and the IRC channel seem like the obvious places to
do that already; that's why it would sort-of worry me if we set Yet
Another Web Site where you go to solicit other people to join you on a
Ruby-related project. That is to say, I don't want us to get so
"diluted" that it actually becomes *harder* to find Ruby people
because you're not sure web site, or mailing list, or IRC channel to
flock to.

Splintering the group can be a problem, but all that's needed is
occassional posts here announcing updates, or a couple of group
members to add urls, irc channel name, etc. to their sig files.

> I was thinking that a Virtual Ruby Group could be as simple as a couple
> people who didn't have other rubyists in their area to band together on
> their own ML, and to setup online meetings once a month to start a
> project together. This seems like a good way for ruby programmers, both
> new and advanced to be apart of something. This could get as geeky as
> people with WebCams, Microphones, etc... or just be a 2 people emailing
> each other back and forth.

Oh, yes, now this sounds fine once a group's established. I haven't
yet had a chance to look at Skype (http://www.skype.com) but it might
be something that you could use; it seems to have a pretty high geek

I've not tried skype, but I hear good things about it. I've done
quite a bit of voice chat (in fact, I'm chatting a buddy in Georgia
atm), and it can work well. Not sure how well it works in large
crowds, about the most I've tried is 6 or 7, and that may be a
realistic limit.

quotient. :wink: And of course Hal mentioned the desire to integrate pair
programming capabilities into FreeRIDE; there might be other
Ruby-based technologies that you could develop to facilitate these
virtual user group meetings.

In our case, we tend to rely on http://rafb.net/paste/ for quick/dirty
stuff. We also have a "private" version of that, but it's quite
limited - ie: doesn't keep a history, etc.

I would love to see a "team" version of nopaste, that keeps a project
history. Something that falls between Forums and CVS. Perhaps this
should be the first project -- building a small team communication
center?

> I may be wishful thinking here, and this wasn't entirely thought out to
> be honest. I was just thinking when I was at the Ruby Meetup Group(s)
> web site, "WOW there are alot of 1-2 people groups, if they joined
> together there'd be a whole slew of rubyists, just think what they could
> accomplish!".

Yes, and let me be clear that I'm not trying to throw cold water on
the idea. I'm glad you're excited about it and hope that it goes
somewhere. I'm one of those people out in the Ruby desert (that is the
Tennessee Valley) and until I recruit some more guys at work to get
into Ruby, the Internet is my virtual user group too. :wink:

This also seems like the appropriate place to mention the RubyCentral,
Inc. codefest grant program (see http://www.rubycentral.org); it is a
program designed to provide support for local and regional groups
working on development of Ruby libraries. The first round of
solicitations has just ended (i.e. you can't apply for a grant right
now), but if this first round of work goes well there may be
additional ones in the future.

I look forward to see how that works out, and I'm hoping for the best.
I still have a the beginnings of an xBase library that I'd love to
find a team to help flesh out.

···

On Fri, 18 Feb 2005 22:36:06 +0900, Lyle Johnson <lyle.johnson@gmail.com> wrote:

On Thu, 17 Feb 2005 23:04:34 -0500, Zach Dennis <zdennis@mktec.com> wrote:

--
Bill Guindon (aka aGorilla)

23

I'd be interested in something along these lines.

Saw what Sun is doing with the idea in an interesting article:
http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/jonathan/20050105#developers_don_t_buy_things

Can see a screen shot of what they're doing with it for Java here:

···

On Tue, 22 Feb 2005 00:41:36 +0900, Tanner Burson <tanner.burson@gmail.com> wrote:

On Mon, 21 Feb 2005 21:02:19 +0900, Curt Hibbs <curt@hibbs.com> wrote:
> One more suggestion: you could make a FreeRIDE plugin out of jabber4r, and
> then use the jabber4r comm link both for chat-style messages and for
> synchronized edited.
>
I have actually thought heavily of making a jabber-based
shared-workspace editor. The idea has a lot of potential.
> Curt

--
Bill Guindon (aka aGorilla)

24

Bill Guindon wrote:

···

On Tue, 22 Feb 2005 02:43:23 +0900, Shalev NessAiver > <shalev@simplyphysics.com> wrote:

So.... let's set something up. First - the irc channel. I currently
am in "ruby-VRUG and VRUG-ruby" on freenode. I assume we would want to
decide on a network and a final name for this....

Based on this: http://www.rubygarden.org/ruby?RubyOnIRC
I'd say the 'ruby-VRUG' would be the prefered name. Perhaps it should
be lowercase?

Either way, should add it to the wiki once a channel name is chosen.

ruby-vrug sounds good to me!

Zach

25

I'm not exactly into pair programming (on a formal level at least),
but I've long wanted a "dual control" editor for discussing ideas with
other geeks far far away.

···

On Tue, 22 Feb 2005 04:01:10 +0900, Hal Fulton <hal9000@hypermetrics.com> wrote:

To clarify lest anyone misunderstand: When I said pair-programming features
for FreeRIDE, I meant of course *remote* pair programming.

--
Bill Guindon (aka aGorilla)

26

Hal Fulton <hal9000@hypermetrics.com> writes:

Curt Hibbs wrote:

One more suggestion: you could make a FreeRIDE plugin out of jabber4r, and
then use the jabber4r comm link both for chat-style messages and for
synchronized edited.

That seems like an interesting idea, though I don't know the first thing
about Jabber.

To clarify lest anyone misunderstand: When I said pair-programming features
for FreeRIDE, I meant of course *remote* pair programming.

The idea has always interested me, but I have always felt daunted by the
prospect of implementing it. I wouldn't attempt it alone, as I recall how
many hours it took me just to get that little chess server to work. But
hopefully Jabber hides most of the networking details, leaving FXRuby and
Scintilla as the biggest hurdles.

If you have access to a Mac, I'd recommend to try SubEthaEdit, where
multiple people can edit the same document too.

I've spend some time thinking about how to write something about that,
but making it usable even on high latency connections and handling
eventual conflicts seems rather hard to me.

···

Hal

--
Christian Neukirchen <chneukirchen@gmail.com> http://chneukirchen.org

27

Kero wrote:

I was thinking that a Virtual Ruby Group could be as simple as a couple
people who didn't have other rubyists in their area to band together on
their own ML, and to setup online meetings once a month to start a
project together. This seems like a good way for ruby programmers, both
new and advanced to be apart of something. This could get as geeky as
people with WebCams, Microphones, etc... or just be a 2 people emailing
each other back and forth.

.....but with your own ML, only use it for meetings, not for general Ruby
questions. We have a ML. Do not fork the ML.

(plenty of web-software that encourages you to make your own this, your
own that, your own everything. That does not mean it is always a good idea.)

Absolutely!

Kero,

All of your points are valid, and some of them I may/may not disagree with, but I dont' think this Virtual Ruby Group is at that point yet to be thinking of those things. We still need to find out who's all interested and throw out some project ideas. Once we see what we're working with I'm sure the participating folks will be able to throw out suggestions for successful communication between the group, which will work for them.

One foot forward at a time, thanks for your feedback,

Zach

28

I play in a game called VGA-planets. It's from the days a VGA screen was
highres. It is still played, amazingly enough!!
But the user community is totally, utterly fragmented. A shame.

That was a great game in its day.

VGA-Planets' central place is dormant. No wonder the community fell apart.

Sad to hear.

···

On Sat, 19 Feb 2005 00:54:51 +0900, Kero <kero@chello.single-dot.nl> wrote:

--
spooq

29

Well, I just did that with a VNC connection. You can't get any more dual-control than that!

-Shalev

···

On Feb 21, 2005, at 2:14 PM, Bill Guindon wrote:

On Tue, 22 Feb 2005 04:01:10 +0900, Hal Fulton > <hal9000@hypermetrics.com> wrote:

To clarify lest anyone misunderstand: When I said pair-programming features
for FreeRIDE, I meant of course *remote* pair programming.

I'm not exactly into pair programming (on a formal level at least),
but I've long wanted a "dual control" editor for discussing ideas with
other geeks far far away.

--
Bill Guindon (aka aGorilla)

30

SubEthaEdit is amazing. It uses the Rendezvous protocol (which I think is just ZeroConf) to automatically connect over the network.
Pretty simple using that.

-Shalev

···

On Feb 21, 2005, at 2:24 PM, Christian Neukirchen wrote:

Hal Fulton <hal9000@hypermetrics.com> writes:

Curt Hibbs wrote:

One more suggestion: you could make a FreeRIDE plugin out of jabber4r, and
then use the jabber4r comm link both for chat-style messages and for
synchronized edited.

That seems like an interesting idea, though I don't know the first thing
about Jabber.

To clarify lest anyone misunderstand: When I said pair-programming features
for FreeRIDE, I meant of course *remote* pair programming.

The idea has always interested me, but I have always felt daunted by the
prospect of implementing it. I wouldn't attempt it alone, as I recall how
many hours it took me just to get that little chess server to work. But
hopefully Jabber hides most of the networking details, leaving FXRuby and
Scintilla as the biggest hurdles.

If you have access to a Mac, I'd recommend to try SubEthaEdit, where
multiple people can edit the same document too.

I've spend some time thinking about how to write something about that,
but making it usable even on high latency connections and handling
eventual conflicts seems rather hard to me.

Hal

--
Christian Neukirchen <chneukirchen@gmail.com> http://chneukirchen.org

31

Bill Guindon wrote:

···

On Tue, 22 Feb 2005 04:01:10 +0900, Hal Fulton <hal9000@hypermetrics.com> wrote:

To clarify lest anyone misunderstand: When I said pair-programming features
for FreeRIDE, I meant of course *remote* pair programming.

I'm not exactly into pair programming (on a formal level at least),
but I've long wanted a "dual control" editor for discussing ideas with
other geeks far far away.

Quite right, you don't have to be a major XP geek. Such a tool
might have several usage modes.

Hal

32

Bill Guindon wrote:

Can see a screen shot of what they're doing with it for Java here:
Oracle Java Technologies | Oracle

That looks very sweet. I noticed Jabber posted to this thread. It looks like this already a jabber4r package on rubyforge. This sounds like a very good goal. So who knows both about freeride and jabber? And who should head this project up? (I'd prefer someone who knows something of freeride and jabber) considering I know little of both.

Zach

33

All of your points are valid, and some of them I may/may not disagree
with, but I dont' think this Virtual Ruby Group is at that point yet to
be thinking of those things. We still need to find out who's all
interested and throw out some project ideas. Once we see what we're
working with I'm sure the participating folks will be able to throw out
suggestions for successful communication between the group, which will
work for them.

One foot forward at a time, thanks for your feedback,

mmh, what had Treebeard to say... "Hasty" ?

May the Virtual Ruby Group be an inspiring, happy, sharing,
and-much-more community!

PS: I prolly should not have used the word "fork".
way too heavy. apologies.

+--- Kero ----------------------- kero@chello@nl ---+

all the meaningless and empty words I spoke |
                     Promises -- The Cranberries |

+--- M38c --- http://httpd.chello.nl/k.vangelder ---+

34

Shalev NessAiver <shalev@simplyphysics.com> writes:

SubEthaEdit is amazing. It uses the Rendezvous protocol (which I
think is just ZeroConf) to automatically connect over the network.
Pretty simple using that.

-Shalev

The actual data runs over ordinary TCP/IP with a BEEP protocol,
Rendezvous is only used for discovery.

···

--
Christian Neukirchen <chneukirchen@gmail.com> http://chneukirchen.org

35

Shalev NessAiver <shalev@simplyphysics.com> writes:

Well, I just did that with a VNC connection. You can't get any more
dual-control than that!

Well, it would be nice if everyone had their own cursor, maybe? :slight_smile:

···

--
Christian Neukirchen <chneukirchen@gmail.com> http://chneukirchen.org

36

Well, it lacks some of the features I'm used to, but still, this seems
to have some promise:
http://www.moonedit.com/indexen.htm

···

On Tue, 22 Feb 2005 09:15:52 +0900, Hal Fulton <hal9000@hypermetrics.com> wrote:

Bill Guindon wrote:
> On Tue, 22 Feb 2005 04:01:10 +0900, Hal Fulton <hal9000@hypermetrics.com> wrote:
>
>
>>To clarify lest anyone misunderstand: When I said pair-programming features
>>for FreeRIDE, I meant of course *remote* pair programming.
>
>
> I'm not exactly into pair programming (on a formal level at least),
> but I've long wanted a "dual control" editor for discussing ideas with
> other geeks far far away.

Quite right, you don't have to be a major XP geek. Such a tool
might have several usage modes.

--
Bill Guindon (aka aGorilla)

37

http://www.moonedit.com/indexen.htm

I've, done some digging on it, and it's quite impressive. Up to 14
users editing the same file simultaneously, with all cursors visible
(each user can have a different color). Add voice chat to it
(Teamspeak, Skype, etc.) and it's quite powerful.

It's a bit limited on the editing side, but it does allow
customization including macros with key bindings. Not to mention, it
seems quite new, announced some time in January I believe.

nice article about it here:

···

On Wed, 23 Feb 2005 10:59:24 +0900, Zach Dennis <zdennis@mktec.com> wrote:

Bill Guindon wrote:

> Can see a screen shot of what they're doing with it for Java here:
> Oracle Java Technologies | Oracle
>

That looks very sweet. I noticed Jabber posted to this thread. It looks
like this already a jabber4r package on rubyforge. This sounds like a
very good goal. So who knows both about freeride and jabber? And who
should head this project up? (I'd prefer someone who knows something of
freeride and jabber) considering I know little of both.

From my previous post (earlier today):
--
Bill Guindon (aka aGorilla)

38

Weren't we first going to implement a "Team Version of NoPaste"?

Start small and work our way up I should think.
(Though this idea sounds great!)

-Shalev

···

On Feb 22, 2005, at 8:59 PM, Zach Dennis wrote:

Bill Guindon wrote:

Can see a screen shot of what they're doing with it for Java here:
Oracle Java Technologies | Oracle

That looks very sweet. I noticed Jabber posted to this thread. It looks like this already a jabber4r package on rubyforge. This sounds like a very good goal. So who knows both about freeride and jabber? And who should head this project up? (I'd prefer someone who knows something of freeride and jabber) considering I know little of both.

Zach

39

Kero wrote:

mmh, what had Treebeard to say... "Hasty" ?

Maybe you were putting a long handle on your axe. :wink:
<reference type="fantasy" author="jordan"/>

May the Virtual Ruby Group be an inspiring, happy, sharing,
and-much-more community!

PS: I prolly should not have used the word "fork".
way too heavy. apologies.

No, I think we all understand. There's a danger of
fragmenting the Ruby community.

But I don't think that will be the case just from a
bunch of people getting together to work on projects,
and communicating incidentally via some online channel.

Hey, maybe I can even find some interest in some of
my projects... I never have much luck there...

Some people expressed interest in Tycho, but I will
likely have to go back to Fox 1.0, as 1.2 just isn't
working for me.

Hal

40

Yeah....

···

On Feb 21, 2005, at 3:03 PM, Christian Neukirchen wrote:

Shalev NessAiver <shalev@simplyphysics.com> writes:

Well, I just did that with a VNC connection. You can't get any more
dual-control than that!

Well, it would be nice if everyone had their own cursor, maybe? :slight_smile:
--
Christian Neukirchen <chneukirchen@gmail.com> http://chneukirchen.org

....but not nearly as fun.

-Shalev