Slashdot Mirror

Depending on the anonymous reader's level of experience and literacy, Why's Poignant Guide to Ruby ( http://www.rubyinside.com/medi... ) may be a good introduction to the language, or to programming in general. It's a bit too whimsical to really teach you design patterns or anything, but as far as a first-time guide to the idea of variables and loops, it might be just what is needed.

That's very clever to have done that upside down thing with plain text.

http://www.rubyinside.com/upside-down-ruby-351.html

JRuby had a number of performance advantages (and some disadvantages) over Ruby 1.8.x when I last looked, but looking again now, I can see that Ruby 1.9 has killed it in terms of optimizations on some basic test cases: http://programmingzen.com/2007/12/03/the-great-ruby-shootout/

http://www.rubyinside.com/the-2010-ruby-implementation-performance-shootout-3554.html

"Ruby 1.9.2 RC2 and JRuby 1.5.1 are almost joint first place for fastest Ruby implementation"

But my point was mostly that if you're already running an enterprise Java stack then running Jruby could offer a lot of conveniences and hackability to integrate into the rest of the tool chain.. But we're both speculating on all this.

Thanks for the civil dialog!

C

Perl

Python

Ruby

He is having problems printing. In this case Java may be the best solution to the problem. Given a choice I really do prefure java to java script but that is just me.
In this case he was asking for the best browser to solve his problems.
I would suggest using Chrome since this seems like an Intranet app and not an Internet app.
To solve the printing issue I would suggest going with a PDF output. That will bypass all the issues with browser printing and will give the developer a good print out. Hey PDF really is a good solution for printing.
But yes there seems to me a lot of ways to skin this cat. You could write a Java app or applet. You could do a classic client server solution in any number of languages, you can do a browser based solution.
Since the author posted that he is writing in Rails he is probably committed to a web based solution. A popular but I feel over hyped solution. However if that is where his skills lie might I suggest that he look at http://www.rubyinside.com/prawn-ruby-pdf-library-987.html and http://ruby-pdf.rubyforge.org/pdf-writer/demos/index.html
Since this is a ticketing system for a shipping he may want to think about things like interfacing with RFID and barcode readers. Not to mention generating barcodes.

You're absolutely right. After seeing widely-publicized incidents like the trademark shenanigans involving DHH, and then the blatant sexism at GoGaRuCo, I refused to become associated with that community.

As a professional, I don't want my name linked to such childish behavior. So I took Ruby and Ruby on Rails off of my resume in May of 2009, and have taken contracts dealing with Django and Python instead.

Unlike the RoR community, the Python community somehow seems to be able to avoid petty arguments and blatantly unprofessional behavior. Then again, the Python community is generally made of more experienced professionals interested in developing high-quality software applications, rather than 18-year-old college students "rebelling" against PHP to develop Web-2.0-buzzword-compliant web sites.

Over at Ruby Inside we did (and are maintaining) a roundup of ~36 Rails 3.0 beta links/articles (it's up to about 40 now, I think). If you've got Rails 3.0 installed and want to know how to use X or Y or want to learn some of the back story/motivation, the links should come in useful. They're only things that are actually worth reading. Well, mostly.. :-)

But they're not allowed to use it for any commercial purpose other than competitive advertising without permission.

Want to write a book about Ruby on Rails and use the Rails logo? Not unless it's endorsed by David Heinemeier Hansson

Except ... Rails. Rails is a trademark, so in theory we now need to write Rails(tm). Now I can understand the Ruby on Rails(tm) logo being trademarked, if you don't want it appropriated, but Hansson has gone a bit further.

On the use of the logo he's said

So I only grant promotional use for products I'm directly involved with. Such as books that I've been part of the development process for or conferences where I have a say in the execution.

This steps out of protection and into control, he's been refusing to allow books to use the logo on their covers. He's even trademarked "Ruby on Rails", taking the name of something he didn't invent or write and using that as part of his mark;

"Rails", "Ruby on Rails", and the Rails logo are trademarks of David Heinemeier Hansson.

Want to have a Ruby on Rails(tm) conference? Better not include the name of the platform in your conference name then, that would be violating Hansson's trade mark. Even more "interesting" is the Ruby on Rails(tm) logo was a community effort (although the wiki pages for that are now gone. The original logo was even open source. The money to register the trademarks came from the community, but the marks are in the hands of Hansson alone.

It's not trademarks that are the problem, it's the person who controls them. If, for example, the Rails(tm) marks were overseen by a committee (made up, as a starting point, of everyone that helped pay for them) then that would be more acceptable than the current situation.

Thanks for the kind review Slashdot! Thanks, Brian!

You can browse the table of contents of the book and read the beginning of each section at O'Reilly's website.

You can find another review of the book at rubyinside.com

> Very true. Rails has deployment issues. See here,
> and especially read the comments:
> http://www.rubyinside.com/no-true-mod_ruby-is-damaging-rubys-viability-on-the-web-693.html [rubyinside.com]

That was a good read, thanks for the pointer. Though as one fellow pointed out, Java seems to have survived the lack of a mod_java. And mod_proxy_balancer + mongrel seems to be doing the trick for most folks. You're right, good comment thread on that one... thanks.

Very true. Rails has deployment issues. See here, and especially read the comments: http://www.rubyinside.com/no-true-mod_ruby-is-damaging-rubys-viability-on-the-web-693.html

Check out this interesting blog by Peter Cooper, where he suggests a Ruby environment fors kids:

Taking Ruby to the kids