SFRuby.org

I have been tipped off by the excellent fellows over the water at the East Bay Ruby Meetup group that a RubySF IRC room is a-brewin’. Check it out on Freenode in the #rubysf room, and maybe we’ll see you there.

Meetup tomorrow (Monday)! At CitizenSpace! 6:15pm!

See y’all there:

Thanks to Ivan Storck, we have a venue for June: Citizen Space.

AGENDA:

• Alex Wayne demos his Rails plugin: FlexImage.

• Scott Persinger will talk about Vodpod.com – a service for building collections of videos taken from 100s of sites around the Net. “We’ll cover our recent efforts to integrate our Rails app with Facebook.”

• Lightning Talks: give a 5 minute quickie about what you’ve been doing.

We’re going to 21st Amendment (upstairs mezzanine) afterwards for food, drinks, and more face-to-face. 563 2nd St.

The downlow.

Adap.tv is currently looking for a software engineer fluent in Ruby and Java.

Briefly describe what your company does?

Adap.tv is a new ad network designed specifically for the online video medium. We apply state-of-the-art algorithms from machine learning and probabilistic reasoning to the problem of matching relevant ads to video content. We make it very easy for both publishers and advertisers to integrate, while maintaining a happy and relevant user experience.

How are you using Ruby or Rails?

We use Ruby mostly for some internal development tools right now, though we're interested in the possibility of moving some production code over.

We currently use Rails for both internal, developer-facing apps and for some client-facing websites.

Are you using Ruby or Rails in an unique or interesting way?

We do a lot of number-crunching, so we've been making use of Rails to tie together some very successful quick-and-dirty data visualization and exploration for our scientists and engineers.

How has Ruby or Rails benefited your business?

Oh, the usual: increased productivity, easier code management,faster turnaround time, happier coders.

Have any open source projects been released from your company's work with Ruby or Rails? If no, why not?

No, mostly because what we've built is fairly special-purpose and specific to our platform. Also, since we're a startup trying to out-race any competition, we're already juggling too many balls right now.

That said, we have engineers who have maintain open-source Ruby projects in their copious spare time.

Favorite plugins/gems?

We make good use of Hpricot and gruff.

Are you doing any Ruby work that is non-Rails related?

Currently what we have in pure Ruby is mostly one-off scripts and some developer tools, including a simple code review system that integrates nicely with Subversion. There is motivation to move more of the main codebase over to Ruby, but the limiting factor right now is that we don't yet have enough software developers familiar with Ruby to raise the truck number to a comfortable level.

Is there a demo of your technology available?

The best place to see ads we've placed is by browsing through "Video Games" and "Travel & Outdoors" videos on Metacafe, one of our partners. E.g. http://www.metacafe.com/watch/559526/bermudatravelbermudatravelvideopostcardbermuda/

You can see we're trying to make the user experience as friendly as possible, by showing ads that are relevant, by not allowing them to interrupt the video, and by limiting content to static text and images. Of course relevance is the hard part, and that's where the machine learning, etc. comes in to play. The rest is "just" a matter of good engineering.

Parting thoughts?

We're hiring, so come work for us! We're not the hippest startup out there, but hey, we're actually making money. Also, if you're interested at the intersection between fun engineering challenges and serious machine learning, AI, and statistics, you'll feel right at home.

Can you briefly describe what your company does?

We produce Lingr a social networking site based around chatrooms. All of our content is user-generated, and we have a fully open API with an active developer community.

How are you using Ruby or Rails?

The user-facing parts of Lingr are all implemented in Ruby on Rails. The Comet parts are implemented in Java. For more details about our architecture, see http://blog.lingr.com/2006/08/lingrunderthe.html.

Are you using Ruby or Rails in a unique or interesting way?

Yes- in concert with Java rather than in opposition to it :-)

That is a great viewpoint. What are your thoughts on JRuby?

I think it's great, particularly in terms of being a way into the "enterprise" world for ruby. Packaging a Rails app as a warfile is a really interesting concept.

How has Ruby or Rails benefited your business?

How has it not? Without Rails, we probably wouldn't exist!

Have any open source projects been released from your company's work with Ruby or Rails?

Yes- we publish code at http://svn.lingr.com.

Three best things about Ruby or Rails?

1. The productivity gain versus other frameworks is remarkable.
2. ActiveRecord is the greatest invention since sliced bread.
3. Captistrano is the second-greatest invention since sliced bread.

You mention loving Capistrano. Do you use it for anything else besides deployment? Any interesting use cases or recipes to share?

Well, we have quite a few custom recipes.

First, because part of our runtime environment isn't ruby, our standard "deploy" recipe has to start/stop Java processes, compile Java source, etc. No magic there but it sure ain't included in the out-of-the-box Capistrano tasks.

Second, we use Capistrano to automate things like "install this new gem". Again, no magic, but being able to install new stuff on the entire production stack with a single command is sexy.

Third, and perhaps most interesting, we use Capistrano to "hot deploy" new revisions, without any downtime. Each production machine contains some custom ruby scripts that can talk to our load balancer via telnet. We walk down the list of our production app servers, instructing them to tell the load balancer they are out of service, then do an "svn up", then restart the app server process, and, finally, tell the load balancer they are back in service. Of course, this "hot deploy" only works if no database migrations are involved, but, when we can use it, it's awesome to push out new features and bug fixes without users experiencing any downtime or "we'll be right back" pages.

Three worst things about Ruby or Rails?

Honestly, I can't see any. What I hear most people complain about is "lack of scalability", but I write most of those complaints off to a lack of experience in actually scaling web applications (i.e.- it's heresay).

As Jason Hoffman of Joyent so ably demonstrated on page 38 of his presentation at http://media.joyent.com/JHoffmanRailsConf-May2007.pdf, Rails itself is a small part in the business of scaling a Rails-based web application.

Favorite plugins/gems?

Ferret, tztime/tzinfo_timezone, backgroundrb

Ezra's backgroundrb really is cool... how is Lingr using it?

Chatrooms are event driven - when someone says something, you need to broadcast that event to everyone listening to that channel (room). We use backgroundrb to take that broadcast out of the HTTP request cycle. That helps protect us against a situation where, if there was a problem in broadcasting the event (e.g.- some event server has crashed), it could delay the response to the speaker, not to mention take an application server instance out of service until the problem is resolved.

Is there anything in Rails 2.0 that tickles your fancy?

I have only seen a brief overview, but what I noticed was several of the new features are things that we are already doing with our own code, such as mashing up and gzipping javascripts and stylesheets, as well as distributing requests for static resources (images, javascripts, stylesheets) to several different hostnames for faster page load time.

Beyond that, the new "sexy migrations" thing seems nice.

Parting thoughts?

We hope to release more plugins in the near future. We have a lot of interesting and reusable bits inside Lingr, but, unfortunately, we have no time to prepare them for public scrutiny :-) Hopefully that will change soon.

Rails takes so much of the pain out of development that I find myself more distracted by my own crazy ideas for websites now, because Rails makes the barrier to actually implementing them so much smaller :-)

Our first interviewee is currently looking for a kick-ass Unix sys admin who also knows Rails.

Briefly describe what your company does?

Our site lets users upload Flash and Shockwave games - we wrap them in chat, profiles, points, ratings, and a central metagame. We share ad & microtransaction revenue with developers - who retain rights to their games.

Are you using Ruby/Rails in a unique or interesting way?

A couple of interesting bits - we have a Flash API that lets game developers report high scores, Xbox-style achievements, and soon share levels and do multiplayer games. All this stuff is viewable through the Rails app and also directly in the Flash client. We use JSON to pass objects between the two.

You mention the Flash API. Do you also have a public facing API that allows third-party developers to do things like add Kongregate score badges to other sites, etc?

Not yet, though of course that's on our roadmap.

How has Ruby/Rails benefited your business?

Kongregate is a pretty rich web app - there's no way we could have gotten all this working in 11 months if we were using Java (as I did at Electronic Arts).

Have any open source projects been released from your company's work with Ruby/Rails?

We're going to be releasing some interesting custom form builder stuff pretty soon.

Three best things about Ruby/Rails?

Speed, maintainability, joy.

Three worst things about Ruby/Rails?

It would be awfully nice if Ruby did concurrency well enough for our chat/multiplayer server to be native Ruby...

Favorite plugins/gems?

I really like Mocha. Being able to use mocking without the clutter of dependency injection solely for mocks is very clean. Hpricot is quite cool as well and cache_fu is looking very sweet.

Deployment is always a challenging and therefore interesting part of a Rails project. Can you share your experience with deployment?

The most I've learned about deployment is to simplify as much as possible. Capistrano has been a huge aid, I can't imagine trying to update a deployed rails application without it. We host at Engine Yard, and they've been great for bootstrapping our application with a minimum of fuss. We use Ezra's application stack: nginx, mongrel and mysql. Nginx in particular has been excellent.

What parts, if any, of Rails 2.0 are you looking forward to the most?

We follow a bit behind edge, so we're already using some things today. Of the things we're not using, I'm most looking forward to initializers.

As the market for Ruby developers heats up even more, hiring is just that much tougher.

A good number of companies have been posting to our job board recently to scout for the best talent.

And while the job board is great at what it does (list jobs), it proves of little use to the majority of readers that are already working professionally in the field and are not looking to switch jobs.

Still, companies are looking to gain visibility with developers and established rubyers are still interested in work being done at other companies.

So we decided to bridge this gap with mini company interviews.

Starting today we'll be posting a series of interviews to highlight interesting things companies are doing with Ruby.

Hopefully this can serve the dual purpose of generating recognition for the company and also provide an interesting read for developers.

Is your company looking to generate some buzz? Doing interesting stuff in Ruby? Let us know!

The newest geeky event in town, geekSessions, will hold its first panel discussion on May 22nd at 6:30pm at the classy City Club. The topic? Ruby on Rails: To Scale or Not to Scale.

You’ve heard it all before, sure, but not from people like these: the Twitter sysadmin, Jason Hoffman of Joyent fame, the guy who wrote DTrace, and the VP of Pivotal.

Check out all the details right here: http://www.geeksessions.com/2007/04/27/ruby-on-rails-scalability/

See you there!

Yup, it’s that time again: Meetup time. This Tuesday the 8th the Ruby meetup will take place at the lovely Odeo venue. Details here.

AGENDA:
- RadRails, by Jeff Norton from Aptana
- Recruiting and hiring Ruby developers, by Neil Sanchez from MindSource
- Jonathan Dugan will talk about “The Pros and Cons of Startup Money”
- Guy Argo will present his analog of mofo for non-microformatted web-sites: TableScraper
- More Lightnight Talks, face-to-face, and food & drinks at 21st Amendment afterwards

VENUE:
- Obvious/Twitter at 164 South Park, San Francisco, CA 94107 (AKA Odeo)

See ya there.

It’s all over. But, it was good. Here are some of the fruits:

• Colin Charles had a bunch of posts about talks
• Leslie Wu wrote up days one (part 1 and part 2) and two
• Ezra posted his slides on Mongrel Handlers (& Merb)
• rabble posted his slides on Intro to ActiveRecord
• Tom posted his slides on Chronic
• Blaine posted his slides on Scaling Twitter
• Also, there’s a video of Blaine’s talk
• Pivotal did a great write-up
• And, of course, the tumblelog

Anything I missed? Leave it in the comments and I’ll add it. See you next year.

Update 1: CMSWire Reports here, here, and here!

The SDForum SVRC is underway. I’m watching rabble do Q&A right now after his super talk. Great slides, too.

Check out the group tumbling action over at http://svruby.tumblr.com/. If you’re around Freenode today or tomorrow, stop in #svrc.

Josh Susser, even the scholar, does a great job explaining what went down at the April SF Ruby meetup. Make sure to check it out if you missed the show, or if you were there and couldn’t remember the name of a project you saw.

Local Rubyists never never quit. Here’re some highlights.

• Are you using GeoKit? Andre wants to know.
• Assaf, as always, ponders web services.
• Say cheese!
• Zack wants you to be careful when scoping.
• Bandega, a (Rails) site for local SF indie rock, was launched.
• PJ spent too much time fighting a cookie bug in IE.
• Mike says RubyOSA got a new site. Nice.
• Other Mike gives tips on getting your webapp’s mail delivered.
• Juixe looks at simply_helpful.
• Rabble and Kellan launched an events calendar for the web 2.0 expo right here.

A whole grip o’ local Ruby developers will be speaking at the upcoming Silicon Valley Ruby Conference April 21st and April 22nd (Saturday and Sunday).

Those slated to speak:

• Alex Chaffee
• Asuman Suenbuel
• Blaine Cook
• Charles Nutter
• Evan (Rabble) Henshaw-Plath
• Evan Phoenix
• Ezra Zygmuntowicz
• Joe McGlynn
• Josh Susser
• Kevin Clark
• Murray Spork
• Thomas Enebo
• Tom Preston-Werner
• Tor Norbye

Looks like a super solid line up, if you ask me. More, straight from the horse’s mouth:

In the past two years, Ruby on Rails— a framework for quickly building highly interactive and robust web applications—has become the single most talked about framework in software and is now poised to become the web development platform. If you’re a software developer who’s curious about the cutting edge and wondering what the noise is all about, SDForum invites you to spend two days drinking from a ruby-colored fire-hose.

Learn from the Early Adopters. New technologies involve risk, pain, and a learning curve. Avoid the most disastrous mistakes, and learn how to quickly reap compelling benefits by learning from the people who’ve been there. Understand the Enthusiasm. Experience the power of Ruby first-hand. Spend two days immersed in the world of Ruby and then decide for yourself.

Hear From Founders who are Risking it All. Thinking about a new startup? Wondering if Ruby makes sense for you? Hear from founders who decided to bet the farm on Ruby.

Get all the gory details (and register) over at the SDForum site

Don’t miss another hackfestish meetup today. Details here.

When: Thursday, March 22, 2007, 5:30 PM

Where: Citizen Space 425 2nd St #300 San Francisco , CA 94108

Local Rails celebrity and mashup artist Andre Lewis recently answered more than three but less than six questions about maps, his new book, and the Rails Way over at Apress’ site. It’s a great read and has some great advice for budding Rails superstars, which I will now plagiarize for your enjoyment:

Don’t waste too much time figuring out the “Rails Way” to solve whatever problem you’re working on. It’s easy to get fixated on coding style, since ruby is an extremely idiomatic language and Rails is a very prescriptive framework. But remember: a live site with hacked-together code is always better than a half-finished site built with perfect Ruby goodness. Once you hack your own way through the problems, you’ll be much better positioned next time to understand why the idiomatic Ruby form or Rails convention is the way it is. And, you’ll have a live site under your belt as well!

More goodies over at the microinterview.