Merb Slices in Rails 3: The goodies coming along more efficiently

As most of you already know Merb Slices are the mix of merb app and plugin, which carries feature goodies of both. Its the part of an app which can itself work as an application and can be incorporated in any other merb application. For example remember Rails engines. It gives the same functionality but is 100 times better that that.

While Merb is merging into Rails. In Rails 3 we will be witnessing this remarkable feature of Merb in Rails as well. If the planning of new core team goes well...We will be able to mount any of our rails application in another very easily. Core team has given a tentative date for Rails 3 by next RailsConf in May. I can not wait to explore all these  good features. Just keeping my fingers crossed…

More papers @ Vinsol

We at Vinsol have been trying to find the best suitable strategy which merge transparently in Vinsol work environment. Manik calls it XPrum, which sounds kewl. Its our extract of practices from Scrum and XP.

Extreme Programming (XP) is a little different approach towards agile programming what we usually follow at Vinsol. It focuses on simplicity basically to an extent that it advocate use of paper more than any technical tools. We realized its much more handy and visible to notice so we adopted it immediately. We liked the workboard for ticktes idea of SCRUM so we have applied them for our XP stories.

The scene at vinsol can be seen in these pics…

Constant feedback & communication is key for both strategies so our major focus is that. And our goal is to estimate better and accurately and deliver the best code.

Coming year our focus will be more on BDD, Quality of Code and Developer’s satisfaction. If we achieve these three, I hope the clients will ultimately encounter better experience with Vinsol.

Merb + Rails == Great Software

So you heard the news??? Yes, Merb and Rails are going to merge in Rails 3 If thats true it will be a great merger o all times in ruby community. The largest framework of Ruby glued with the fastest one will be cool.

One of the thing which I loved in Merb is its agnostic feature. Specially ORM to quote. As I found Datamapper to be more efficient and useful then ActiveRecord in Rails. If we can use Datamapper in Rails it will be the coolest thing.

While trying Merb I also felt like most of the things are implemented in the same way as in Rails. So the basic difference is just in the values Merb advertise or rather built on …

* Being Agnostic

* Prefer Plugin

I am just waiting for Rails to adopt those values so it could be more efficient and more lovable

Lets try Extreme Programming-Day 1

Well I am reading a book on XP (Extreme Programming)currently and by almost every page its quoting the best amongst the good programming practices. The great part about XP is that though it is named as XP, if we apply the same practices in general life it can make our sailing smooth. I will be quoting some of them here time by time.

So today’s quotes are:

“XP is about the process of becoming more of our best selves and in the process our best as developers.”

“Good relationships lead to good business.”

“Leave yourself exposed and prepare for success. Dont scare.”

“People aren’t computers.”

VERY INTERESTING ONE HERE…

“Its not my job to manage someone else’s expectation. Its’s there job to match there expectation. It’s my job to do my best and to communicate clearly.”

“XP is fully appreciating yourself for total effort today and striving to do better tomorrow.”

What I learnt today:
There are values which programmer thinks are good for program/team/company/himself. And there are practices which make them apply these values. These both are complimentary. Good practice enhance the role of value and good values escalates the adoption through practice. Together they become principles.

Ruby Funday: Live (Conclusion)

Sorry I am posting my last entry a bit late but by the time I finished, the wireless was not there. So here are the last few highlights of Ruby Funday.

Hmmmm… we had a good time at funday but after lunch and free T-shirts most of the people went away.

Anyways I was talking about Gogo’s session on “Air on Rails”. He created a flex application having backend in rails, little lesser than Yammer desktop app in about one hour. Wanna go into details… better if you read his own explanations .

Later on we had a session on Sphinx by Rishav where he compared the 2 sphinx based plugin; UltraSphinx and ThinkingSphinx. Sphinx is the fastest available full text search engine.

Conclusion took place with Akhil’s presentation on UltraSphinx…

Well not actual conclusion…

The fun day had a lot more fun to take place before conclusion. Which involved a ultimate music session by Sur and Hemu. A tremendous Jamming where every contributed…

Ruby Funday: Live – Part 2

Sur’s PURE CODE PRESENTATION went very well. Had a lot of discussion on Ruby not needing the Type Casting which leads to a lil bit doubt coming up in JAVA guys interested in Ruby.

Afterwards we had a real good session by Aditya from Impetus. Aditya talked about the new product they are gonna launch very soon. Its a deployment tool written in C+Ruby Combo. The good news about it is its Open Source which increases its scope widely for future.

In his talks Aditya point out some main features of his deployment product. Which he is calling “ATLAS” right now and is in pre alpha version. Some main aspects they have focussed upon while developing are as follows:

• Runs Rails and Rack compliant applications.
• Multiple web application support.
• Intelligent load balancer.
• and many more to list…

The presentation that followed Aditya’s was Sid from Vinsol. He presented on Internationalization in Rails 2.0. Which was pretty state forward and funny when you see the English got converted in Hindi statements. He compared the Internationalization in Rails prior to 2.2 with Gibberish plugin and the new Rails i18gem implementation. The i18 implementation makes it pretty simple to implement. It has the built-in Active Record error message internationalization suport which was missing in previous release of Gibberish. So thats another cool feature of Rails 2.2

Talking about Rails 2.2. Its officially out just few hours back. Check out http://explore.twitter.com/d2h/status/1017059364.

I am back after Lunch now. And Gaurav is Presenting on ‘Air on Rails’. Check out next post for that.

I ‘ll be back again.

Ruby funday : LIVE

The event kicked of with a opening keynote from Manik, where he focussed on the point of contribution of Indian Technologists to the open source community. Which in general is very low being the 2nd largest country  in population. Whereas Sri Lanka being such a small country contributing more then Indian developers.

He concluded with the fact that although the event is named as RUBY FUN DAY its not only about Ruby but any technology. The message they want to pass is to contribute back to any open source technology we use. So just don’t be selfish give something back  too.

I ll try to post in between the sessions. Right now Sur has started his session on Basic Ruby.

Wait.

I ‘ll be back.