JRuby- The Element of Surprise

JRuby...I used to think, "meh, who needs Java? I'll stick with the c implementation." Then I started working on a project investing millions of dollars in infrastructure to run Java web applications. Sadly, I initially agreed with the assessment that it was a bit of a hack to run the Ruby on the JVM. Thus I soldiered on, avoiding JSF and EJB, but getting sucked into many of the other indignities of the Java world.  The opportunity arose to build a quick prototype for a different system. The desire to go the Rails route proved successful with a quick delivery and excellent customer feedback- but how would we ever deploy it? How would the proprietary Sun Single Sign On service work? Could it possibly connect to Access Manager- a feat that had taken weeks of development time in Java? A couple of emails with Arun Gupta and Nick Sieger led me to some of the truly impressive work that has been going on. Warbler builds a war file out of your Rails app using jruby-rack. Drop your .jar libraries in the rails lib dir. Muck with your web.xml so you can make it use a filter. Drop the .war file on your server. Done. A little method called servlet_request is now magically available to you. Call servlet_request.getUserPrincipal : it's populated. It's not magic- it's JRuby!
  
It's really suprising how much faster things seem to get done. Now, I know that's sort of silly. People can work fast in any technology that they are good at. In fact, I think the source of most of the disagreement in technology and product selection (which is a plague in the Java world, the GIS world, the database world, etc.) is that people want to use what they are best at because it allows them to shine. I ultimately only care about the end result. I don't mind switching to some technology I know nothing about. It is harder for me to provide value, but I love nothing more than learning new things and evaluating them. 

Anyway, that's why JRuby is even more awesome. Let them write Java. The JVM is a environment where we can all get aong.

Ruby Community

I don't know who "Dan" is, but I like the way he rolls.

"I have no idea what the "Ruby Community" is. How do you define
membership in this community?"

No, no, the "Java Community" has a defined static membership, but the
"Ruby Community" is more dynamic. As long as you respond to the right
messages, you're just assumed to be a member.

Refactoring Ruby

Jay Fields and friends are rewriting/porting Martin Fowler and friends' Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code book to Ruby. I guess since the IDEs aren't there yet, we might as well get going on the manual process! Good show to Jay et. al. They've made a dent in the first section, hope they keep it up.

I still keep a copy of Refactoring on my desk. It's one of about 20 books I still need to keep around on my desktop. The content is somewhat timeless, and (was) not readily available on the internet. Still, the Jav-oid nature of the text makes it a little less relevant to my current world of Ruby. It also serves as a badge of good programming knowledge.

I've been selling off a lot of my other books on Amazon. Someone bought the Sun Certified J2EE Architect guide from 2002 for $16. Someone else bought Rod Johnson's old Expert J2EE development, the early edition, before he finished Spring, for $15. No takers on Tapestry yet at $10. Many books have a used value below a $1. I am debating what to do with them as it's not worth my time to sell them. The chances I need a Turbo Assembler reference have dropped about as low as they can, no library would want it, still, it was a good book in it's day, and it is sad that it is no longer relevant to anyone's life. I also think "professional Java Web Services" is probably not worth the shelf space. Well, maybe it will be recycled into a better book someday.

GE timeline...

Yes, this update is very cool. Three lines of code added to my little Ruby application with XML builder to support it:

xml.TimeStamp do
  xml.when(event_date.strftime('%Y-%m-%d'))
end

gets added to every xml.Placemark do

makes:

<TimeStamp>
  <when>2006-08-28</when>
</TimeStamp>

Which gives you a pretty floating toolbar...
that animates your map view. This was in the old enterprise client, but a little buggy and nowhere near as pretty. In a word...wow!