Posted by h3rald
Fri, 11 Apr 2008 11:41:00 GMT
I finally got my hands on a shiny new copy of Design Patterns in Ruby1. The book itself is not brand new and it was already widely praised by many different people online, so I wanted to take a look for myself.
To my surprise, the book is a hardcover edition, which makes it look more professional and more durable than the average programming book2. It’s also smaller and shorter than the average programming book2 (340 pages), which makes it much easier to carry around and less intimidating to read. It’s also not meant to be a reference book, so it is actually pleasant an easy to read all in one go, as you’ll soon find out.
What is it about? — well, design patters in the Ruby language of course. But it’s not the usual brainwash of programming theory you would expect by a typical book on patters, it has plenty of examples of real code. When I say real code I don’t mean the usual Dog/Cat/Horse/<insert animal here> classes or juke-box simulations which don’t work at all etc. etc., I mean actual snippets from well known Ruby applications, like RubyGems, FXRuby and, of course, Rails.
OK well, there’s an exception perhaps: Russ did include a few wild life simulations (ponds with frogs and similar), but it’s only for your own good, and for the sake of tradition.
Anyhow, let’s start from the beginning…
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Posted in Articles | Tags books, review, ruby | 1 comment | no trackbacks
Posted by h3rald
Mon, 21 Jan 2008 12:47:00 GMT
The second shortcut from Addison-Wesley Professional series I’m going to review is called Writing Efficient Ruby Code. A very promising title, especially considering that this book is only 50 pages long.
As usual, this shortcut can be intended as a sort of programmer-friendly detailed cheatsheet: like the other ones in this series it sports a monitor-friendly landscape layout and does not go to deep into the details unless strictly necessary to understand a particular concept.
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Posted in Articles | Tags books, review, ruby | 2 comments | no trackbacks
Posted by h3rald
Fri, 28 Dec 2007 21:19:00 GMT
Note: This article can be considered a sequel for An IE Lover’s Guide to Firefox, which described Firefox through the eyes of an Internet Explorer fan. Similarly, this article describes Opera’s features from the point of view of a user – myself – who has been using Firefox for years and is now considering another browser switch.
I am a Firefox fan. I’ve been using Firefox since it was named “Firebird” and calling it “stable” was a big overstatement. Firefox dragged me out of Internet Explorer, and that was definitely one of its biggest achievements.
Because I’m addicted to trying out new tools, however, I always kept testing new browsers I discovered here and there. K-Meleon, Flock, Sleipnir… When Safari came out for Windows I immediately installed it and used it for about 2 hours, only to realize that it wasn’t – and it still isn’t – usable at all, mainly due to sporadic crashes.
Similarly, I’ve been trying out Opera periodically, as new releases came out, but again it didn’t seem to work for me. The biggest complaint I had was its inability to render heavily-ajaxified web sites properly. However, now it seems that the Opera Development Team made a big effort to improve the browser, and I was pleased to notice that Opera 9.5b (“Kestrel”) doesn’t seem to have this sort of problems at all.
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Posted in Articles | Tags browsers, Firefox, IE, Opera, review, software | 22 comments | no trackbacks
Posted by h3rald
Sat, 15 Dec 2007 10:42:00 GMT
If you ever considered about developing an deploying a Rails application in the last year or so, you must have heard of Mongrel before. If you didn’t, I’d recommend you learn more about it because up to now it proved to be one of the few essential ingredients for deploying scalable Rails applications.
Mongrel is a creation of Zed Shaw who started writing a replacement for FastCGI to use with Rails, and ended up creating a brand new, HTTP web server who turned out to be one of the best things the Rails community ever saw happening.
It was created to be simple to use and configure, nevertheless it does require some skill to set it up and tune it. Documentation is there, along with plenty of blog posts, but there’s also an interesting book from Addison Wesley Professional which is definetely worth a read.
“Mongrel: Serving, Deploying, and Extending Your Ruby Applications” – that’s the title of the book. A Digital Shortcut, 100-odd pages long, in landscape format to make it easier to read on a computer, straight to the point with no added sugar for just 15$ (PDF only). I must say Addison Wesley got it right: the book’s format is, as a matter of fact, optimized for web developers, especially those who can’t afford to read a 500-pages book covering everything about a subject just to find that one thing they don’t know about.
This shortcut can be seen, essentially, as an expanded cheatsheet which will teach you the basics about Mongrel and also give you plenty of advice on how to learn more about it.
Let’s have a closer look at it.
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Posted in Articles | Tags books, Rails, review, ruby | no comments | no trackbacks
Posted by h3rald
Fri, 14 Dec 2007 19:24:00 GMT
When it comes to software, I definitely like to try out new things. My collegues takes the piss out of me because every week day I come up with “some new tool they have to start using” and so on.
As a matter of fact, I like reviewing software as well. I enjoy writing and analyzing new things, evaluating all the new possibilities they may offer, and I also tend to have a rather critical eye for what doesn’t feel right. I’ll use a tool for months but still try out new ones which claim to do the same thing — but better — as they come out.
Unfortunately — or fortunately, depends how you look at it — when it comes to software, there are very few silver bullets, and things keep changing: that’s the way it is and the way it will be.
I must try to write up a page (and ideally update it regularly, that’s the hard part) listing all the tools I use, at some point… but at any rate, if you coded some new app you think kicks ass or you found a hidden jewel in the labyrinth of freeware, just let me know: I’ll definitely try it out, and if it’s worth a post I’ll blog about it.
The same applies to books, actually, as I like reading, especially those which are related to Ruby or programming, nowadays.
The cost of such reviews and articles? Depends! Certainly I wouldn’t mind donations or some compensation of some form, especially from publishers or software companies. It may be money, books, software or even nothing: it really depends on what I have to review.
Please be aware that I am not doing this full time, and I already have a job and a fiancée to look after, but I’ll do my best to publish as much as I can on my site or even elsewhere elsewhere [Note: on e-zines, magazines & similar, not on your brother’s friend’s mother-in-law’s crappy blog!].
For any inquiries, contact me (h3rald [—at—] h3rald.com).
Posted in Blog | Tags books, personal, review, tools, website | 1 comment | no trackbacks
Posted by h3rald
Sun, 25 Nov 2007 14:23:00 GMT
What’s your favorite code editor?
This is a common question which still keeps popping up on community boards, mailing lists, comments, etc. Every programmer who writes code in some programming language normally has an editor of choice. Being realistic, most of the times it’s not only one program but several, depending on the language and on the features needed at the time.
Yes, great, but how do you choose your favorite editor?
By trying a lot of them of course: that’s what I’ve been doing since I started programming. Lately I’ve become fond of Vim (or better, gVim), although I have a few other editors I may recommend, e.g.:
Recently, however, I came across my nth “what’s your favorite editor” thread and someone mentioned Komodo Edit. I knew of it already, actually, but I never had a chance to give it a proper try.
ActiveState is well known mainly for two things:
- Their effort in offering a lot of commercial, windows-based Perl libraries
- Their commercial IDE, Komodo IDE, which I personally tried quite a long time ago
The problems of Komodo IDE are foundamentally two:
- It costs money – this is not great in a world where Eclipse and Netbeans are free
- It is an IDE – which normally means ‘heavy as hell’.
It’s a matter of taste and needs: some people feel more confortable with using an editor for certain tasks, while sometimes an IDE may be the best solution, despite its potential slowness and bulk.
Komodo Edit solves the above-mentioned problems because:
Actually I wouldn’t call it an editor, because it offers quite a lot of features which are normally absent in editors—it’s something in-between, which definitely deserves a try.
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Posted in Articles | Tags programming, review, software | 11 comments | no trackbacks
Posted by h3rald
Wed, 03 Oct 2007 11:53:00 GMT
After reading the very first paragraph of Mr. Neighborly’s Humble Little Ruby Book (HLRB for short, from now on) it was very clear to me that it was going to be quite an unconventional read:
“Yes, there is a Chapter 0. There is a little bit of introductory stuff we need to talk about before
we set you loose on Ruby. You wouldn’t want to get psyched about a new gadget, get it home,
and then figure out you need batteries, a grapefruit, and the ability to speak three languages to
even open the box would you?”
That reminded me immediately of Why’s Poignant Guide to Ruby. without a doubt. I don’t know how it is possible that two witty, crazy, and very inventive guys grew fond of the same programming language. Anyhow, to reassure a few of you, you won’t find any foxes or chunky bacon cartoons in HLRB, just some very well made (although still pretty unconventional) diagrams like this one:
Got the picture? Good. Let’s move on…
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Posted in Articles | Tags books, review, ruby | no comments | no trackbacks
Posted by h3rald
Fri, 29 Jun 2007 17:28:00 GMT
If you asked me what file manager I used on Windows, up to a month ago I’d have answered something like: A43 or CubicExplorer, for sure anything but Windows Explorer.
Well, it turns out that I had to change my mind after all…
There’s a multitude of “Explorer Replacements” which aim to be more feature-rich, more user-friendly, less bloated than Bill’s favorite, and I indeed tried quite a few of them, mostly the free ones of course.
The only problem is that whenever I got close to choose “the one”, I noticed that there always was one or two features missing somewhere, which were present in another and vice versa. Additionally, to be totally honest, the level of integration with Windows and other applications was never complete.
These are a few stupid, silly things which tend to be lacking or at least are not 100% functioning - not in all the file managers I tried, but at least in some:
- Environment variables integration - Alternative file managers normally are not able to parse Windows environment variables.
- Icon overlays - Some file managers can’t render Subversion’s icon overlays.
- Strange context menus - Sometimes right-clicking on a file or a directory may not open the standard Explorer context menu
- Open Folder - Third-party application allowing you to open a folder, will always open it through Windows Explorer
- auto complete address bar….
- Special Folders - Some special folders (e.g. Control Panel) are now accessible using alternative file manager, but others may not (e.g. Network Connections). At any rate, typing “Control Panel” will not open the Control Panel in an alternative file manager.
What about trying to “patch” Windows Explorer instead of using another program altogether?
I never really thought of that until LifeHacker featured the QT TabBar shell extension by Quizo. That was my epiphany: I immediately thought I was going to “patch” Windows Explorer using a few really useful (and free, of course) Windows Shell Extensions.
Here’s my file manager now:
Yes, it is Windows Explorer, with just a few addons:
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Posted in Articles | Tags review, software, windows | no comments | no trackbacks
Posted by Fabio Cevasco
Mon, 28 Aug 2006 11:51:00 GMT
A while ago Google started offering services like Google Mail (Gmail) and Google Calendar to domain owners. Sure everyone likes Gmail, but one of the few bad things about it is that it never feels “unique”: your email address is always gonna be @gmail.com or @googlemail.com.
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Posted in Articles | Tags Google, AJAX, internet, review, web20 | no comments | no trackbacks
Posted by Fabio Cevasco
Fri, 14 Jul 2006 10:03:00 GMT
According to a recent study, PHP is one of the most popular programming languages in the world. In spite of this, PHP is often criticized for its inconsistent naming conventions, its lack of important features as compared to other languages (like namespaces) and its inherent disorganization. Furthermore, PHP is very easy to learn, and this has often led to the common misconception that most PHP developers are inexperienced and that their code is therefore prone to security vulnerabilities and exploits.
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Posted in Articles | Tags CakePHP, review, tutorial | no comments | no trackbacks
