NetBeans, Eclipse and IntelliJ

I've made some progress getting to know Eclipse as a programming environment, but on Friday night (as per the post) I was told about JRuby (which I'd confused with IronRuby) and advised to take a look at NetBeans. So now it's installed, registered and yet another 'hello world' program has run.

Although I know little of Java I recognise an industry heavy weight when I see one. Walking past the coffee house at Oxford Road Manchester I often wondered wish I had time to get to know Java proper. Java's is too much for me and like the armchair astronomer I currently am, in theory so far Ruby has caught my eye and imagination. Behind Java though there is a huge catalogue of libraries and at present Ruby is written in Java.

Apparently the IDE of choice is IntelliJ, but this is not Open Source. I will download this too c/o a trial demo. Wonder if they sponsor worthy causes...? Following Scotland On Rails and Joe O'Brien's observation to focus on Ruby not just Rails, I must also use irb - that is interactive Ruby. It's copied on to the Eee PC now.

I'm working my way through the jQuery in Action book. One existing website page that will benefit from a review and recode is the FAQ. Already I'm thinking about what animations /effects it is sensible to use. It will be interesting to revisit the page created in response to Pippa's question on the humanistic-mechanistic axis. The jQuery used was lifted from a tutorial/blog site and although edited it probably contains some errors / redundant code.

I have not mentioned Drupal for a while, we'll get there.... There's another book on the shelf Learning PHP & MySQL. Must chase the new Drupal 6 book from Mercer too.

Friday night chatting another Ruby-Rails delegate in Edinburgh mentioned having been put-off by the prospect of tackling databases and then I realised: Yes, that's me too - the rabbit like eyes : the glare of headlights - it's all there.
Must seek some therapy, or get off the road....

"Great Scot!" Ruby & Rails - Scotland On Rails

Just back from Edinburgh this evening. Took it steady about 60mph, so used just half a tank of fuel - not bad for 400 miles (return). Had to take it easy as it was just above freezing in places and I ended up playing Star Trek. It was snowing for a time North of Penrith. When I was able I put the head lights on full-beam: warp drive!

Scotland On Rails was great - the organisation, speakers, content and company. The sessions I attended included testing, testing testing, migrating to Ruby 1.9, DSLs .... and the last session on JRuby with the announcement of version 1.1 that provoked a round of applause:

JRuby on Rails: Up And Running!

Charles Oliver Nutter and Thomas Enebo
JRuby 1.1 has been released, and is becoming the Rails platform of choice for many Rails shops. In this session, we’ll show how to start from scratch or migrate your existing Rails app to JRuby. We’ll demonstrate the various deployment options on JRuby. We’ll show how to integrate Java libraries into your app. We’ll walk through NetBeans’ Ruby and Rails support and talk about how JRuby has enabled better tools and better solutions for Ruby developers. And we’ll have a conversation with the audience about where JRuby on Rails should go from here. Be prepared to talk shop and see lots of code and demos.

I'd been really looking forward to Joe's presentation on DSLs and was not disappointed. My enthusiasm here is not because Hodges' domains makes a DSL a dead-cert, far from it; it's just that I miss playing with Plasticine:

Domain Specific Languages : Moulding Ruby

Joe O'Brien

Ever wondered what all the fuss is about when it comes to DSL’s and Ruby? It seems to be all we hear about. This talk will peel away the onion and look at what it is about Ruby that makes it the perfect candidate for creating your own languages. I will show you, through examples, how you can create your own languages without the need for compilers and parsers. We will also cover some real world examples in areas of Banking and Medicine where DSL’s have been applied.

Amid the clamour that is Rails, Joe also stressed that people should focus and explore Ruby itself. Something I need to get on with. Paul Dix's talk this afternoon was fascinating in terms of scale, processing, math libraries and mention of clustering:

Collective Intelligence: Leveraging User Data to Create Intelligent Rails Applications
Paul Dix

Take advantage of user data to create intelligent Rails applications! This talk will focus on data mining to create complex application behavior and gain insight into the patterns and habits of your users. Examples of these techniques can be seen with recommendation systems like those created by Amazon, Netflix, last.fm, and others. Additional examples include spam filtering systems for email or comment filtering provided by Akismet.

I will focus on techniques for gathering data, specific gems and plugins for performing various data mining and machine learning tasks, and performance issues like how to distribute the work to separate servers. Theory in this talk will be light and the specific algorithms will only get a mention by name. We’ll be looking at real world Ruby and Rails code examples for building recommendation, ranking, and classification systems.

I wasn't the only Ruby newbie and met a few of my peers, we noticed on the first day the number of sessions on the theme of testing. Last week I'd watched Matz' February talk on Ruby 1.9 and the future which helped me out through the past two days. Last night in The Crags one of the speakers Ritchie (whose session I missed) kindly explained about his conjoint talk and the significance of JRuby, NetBeans IDE and IntelliJ. Given Richie's knowledge, experience and that closing session, I'll definitely investigate these.

There's only one conclusion - totally overwhelming: but totally worth the brain ache.
So great job and many thanks to Alan and the team, plus the luminous speakers and sponsors.