If the purpose of technology is to make life better, then the big news isn’t about the so-called leaked outline of Steve Jobs’ WWDC keynote, General Electric’s and Microsoft’s discussions about buying Dow Jones or AIR being the name for the Adobe tool formerly known as Apollo.
It hasn’t even been a year since Sun hired JRuby contributors Charles Nutter and Thomas Enebo to work on it full-time. It’s been an even shorter period since Ola Bini (whom I had the pleasure of meeting at RailsConf 2007) got hired to do the same by Thoughtworks.
In that short span of time, they’ve done something impressive: they (and all the other contributors involved) have brought JRuby to version 1.0.
The release is being termed as “Ruby compatible” with all known JRuby bugs causing incompatibilities with Matz’s Ruby (MRI) resolved. Applications should “just work” out of the box.
Here’s InfoQ’s summary of Charles Nutter’s roadmap for JRuby post version 1.0:
- Performance:
In the last year speed has been increased by an order of magnitude and a JIT compiler has been enabled. The team will continue to work on improving the JRuby speed and performance.- Java Integration: Today libraries can be called, interfaces implemented, and classes extended. Edge cases exist however. A redesigned integration API is targeted for 1.1.
- Ruby 2.0 and Rubinius: The goal is to support Ruby 2.0 and Rubinius byte code execution soon.
We at Global Nerdy would like to congratulate the JRuby (and NetBeans) teams on a job well done. We salute you with a filet mignon on a flaming sword!
Here’s the current xkcd comic:
Click the comic to see it on its original page at full size.
According to this quiz that rates a programmer’s personality type along four axes in a manner similar to the Myers-Briggs Personality Index, my programmer personality type is DHSB, which means:
If you’re curious as to what the various ends of the programmer personality type axes for this quiz are, here’s a page that lists them all.
Give the test a try and feel free to report your results in the comments!
This is an idea I’ve been holding since RailsConf 2006, and some of you may think that it’s a bit too early to unveil it. I think I’m just planning ahead.
The idea is called The Rails Pledge, and I strongly encourage all of you who are Rails developers — especially the more fanatical/fan-boyish types, the ones Chad Fowler referred to as “arrogant bastards” in his opening keynote at RailsConf 2007 — to take it.
It goes like this:
I #{stateYourName}
Do solemnly swear
That when the day comes
That a new application platform comes out
And developers flock to it like moths to the flame
That I will take it in stride
And remember the good times
And productivity
And camaraderie with other developers
That came about because of Rails.I also swear that
If this platform suits my needs better
And makes me a more productive and happy coder
And makes it easy to make my users happy,
I will glady migrate to it
Without whining.
(Rails developers who are also Battlestar Galactica fans: feel free to add a little flourish to the Pledge by adding “So say we all” at the end.)
It’s a long shot that anyone will actually take the pledge, but on the very off chance that you do, feel free to use the “I Took the Rails Pledge” button shown here. If you decide to take the pledge and record it as a podcast or post it to YouTube, let me know! I’ll even come up with a prize for someone who gets a recording of DHH taking the pledge.
Index card from the blog Indexed. Click to see the original on its own page.
I’m filing these articles for future reference: they’re recent articles about what happens when your mom and dad join Facebook.
Kids: if you’re going to plan something illegal such as, say, a bush party (that’s Canadian slang for an underage drinking party held in a secluded wooded area), don’t announce it publicly on Facebook. The cops are watching.
Here are some composite screen captures I took from a fascinating video called Thirty-six Youth Facts in One Hundred and Fifty-Nine Seconds:
The video was produced by Paul McGregor of threebillion.com and aired on MTV Asia. The domain name “threebillion.com” refers to the number of people under the age of 25 (the site’s tagline is “Now that’s a lot of consumers”). It features 36 facts about youth, and a good number of them cover their use of technology. If you’re trying to chart your future tech course, it never hurts to see what the kids are up to.
Here’s the video. It’s not too long, and it’s pretty fascinating stuff:
For the benefit of the search engines and those who can’t watch the video, here are the facts that appear in the video: