May 31, 21:12 | Comments (73)
So I was obviously pretty proud to be featured in Wired a few months back, but the current issue of Linux Journal certainly tops that feeling. A cover, dammit!
But even better than my smug face on glossy paper is the dedication of this issue to Ruby and Rails. They have an interview with yours truly, an introduction to Ruby, a tutorial on RubyGems, all about using Ruby as enterprise glue, and another tutorial on using Rails to build a shop with Ajax and RJS. It's a very, very impressive line-up and dedication.
I'm so proud to see this mark in big letters how far we've come over the last 22 months or so since Rails 0.5 saw the light of day for the first time. And Linux Journal isn't even the only major press achievement we've had this month. Dr. Dobb's also had a great article on us in their June issue.
What an awesome lead up to RailsConf, now just three weeks away.
May 04, 4:18 | Comments (38)
The first RailsConf scheduled for June 22-25 in Chicago sold out so fast it made our heads spin. 550 seats were snatched up before the program was even ready or a week had passed. That left a lot of people from Europe and even the US without much of a chance to participate.
Here comes the remedy: RailsConf Europe. From September 14th to 15th, London will set the stage for the second official Ruby on Rails conference.
The program has yet to be finalized, but a good number of headliners have already been confirmed: Dave Thomas, Jamis Buck, Jim Weirich, and my favorite blogger and thinker on passion, Kathy Sierra. Marcel Molina, David A. Black, Chad Fowler, and yours truly are also lined up. A call for proposals should be going up shortly to fill in the rest.
Bringing over that many speakers from the US and putting them and the conference up in central London ain't cheap, though. So the sticker might carry a bit of an initial shock. There's a super-early bird special of £400 and the rates then travel from there to a just-before price of £575.
But none of the speakers are taking home a dime and Chad Fowler has been working his ass off for free through RubyCentral, which is the non-profit organization putting on this show. They have in the past used profits from conferences to fund Ruby hackathons. So at least you know your quid isn't being blown on white powdery rails. All the hype is 100% home-grown.
To the tune of that violin, let me just remind that as with RailsConf Chicago, there're a limited number of seats. Roughly 500 spots. When they're gone, they're gone. If you want to go to an official Rails conference this year, meet and hear the core team among others speak, this is the last chance.
See you all in London in September!
May 02, 21:15 | Comments (55)
More than 40,000 copies of the Agile Web Development with Rails book has been sold. That makes it one of the best selling computer programming books in its period, which would probably make the conventional wisdom "don't screw with the cash cow". But how much fun would that be?
Thus, today we're announcing the 2nd edition of Agile Web Development with Rails. It's more or less a complete rewrite that'll include the latest approaches and best practices developed in the Rails community over the past year. From RJS, to join models, to migrations, to RESTful interfaces, to Capistrano will be covered in the new edition following the same structure of building something real in an agile setting.
It's not done yet, though. Dave Thomas has been steering the ship since December and has so far navigated about half of the course. But what's there is already valuable enough to be worth seeding. So starting today, the beta version of the book is available for instant PDF download and for combo purchase (get the paper book when done).
Now should you get this book if you already own the first edition? Depends. If you're the kind of person who are already keeping up to date with the change logs through RSS, is constantly riding edge, and has a good number of applications under your belt, you might well not need it.
But with the more than 500 changes launched in Rails 1.1 alone, I can almost guarantee you that you missed something. Even members of the core team are routinely pleasantly surprised learning about new nuggets they didn't catch on commit.
What's even cooler about this beta book is that it'll ship as one package. The new chapters are clearly marked and distinct from the old ones. So you get a complete book with half the content being the rewritten stuff and half the content filling in from the old edition. And as the rewriting goes on, new versions will be available for download with more of the new stuff and less of the old.
BTW, checkout the cover. We're cycling through the metaphors. Now we've done trains and tracks, skating and bars, so you just know that the 3rd edition will be feature white lines of powder on a mirror. Right, Dave?
So I was obviously pretty proud to be featured in Wired a few months back, but the current issue of Linux Journal certainly tops that feeling. A cover, dammit!