It’s time for us to take another stroll around the Ruby realm and see what is happening. Our community abounds with news and events, so let’s dive in and see what we have this time.
Ruby Heroes
The annual Ruby Heroes awards are accepting nominations. For those that don’t know, Ruby Heroes is a way to recognize accomplished Rubyists that use their valuable time to give back to the community. Anyone can nominate a hero, and the six winners are selected by last year’s Heroes. Know a Rubyist that is worthy of such an honor? Then go nominate them RIGHT NOW. Seriously, go nominate them now. The rest of this article will be here when you get back.
More DCI
I’ve mentioned it before, and I am here to mention it again. DCI is all the rage right now in Ruby circles. With all the buzz about DCI in the Ruby blogosphere, Mike Pack says he has the “right way” to code DCI in Ruby. The article helped me understand DCI a bit better, and spells out how it complements the MVC architecture of Rails. I think we will see more and more about DCI this year, along with some Ruby fixes to help manage the potential performance hit that can accompany DCI. Interesting stuff.
Rails 3.2(.1)
Rails 3.2 has been released, along with it’s first minor release, 3.2.1 . Some of the big gains in 3.2 are a faster development mode and automatic explain plan for slow database queries. Mr. Josh Susser discusses “Modularized Association Methods” in 3.2, which allow you to easily override association methods. Also, Mr. Bates has already put out a Railscast about upgrading. I haven’t upgraded yet, but continue to hear that it “just works”(TM). I’ll be on the upgrade path soon, for sure.
Testing, testing, 1,2,3….
I found a couple of new testing items this week that I thought I’d share. First up is test_engine which allows you to “easily implement testing for a Rails engine” Since everything you do for Rails should be an engine, this gem should come in super handy so you don’t stumble out of the testing gate. The other item is tconsole which boast the ability to speed up test performance while also providing a simple way to run different test types (unit/functional/integration). I especially like the fact that it only supports MiniTest (test/unit), as that is my current testing tool of choice.
Writing a World-Changing API? Here’s Some Tips
This post is almost 2 months old, but I just found it on the excellent RailsTips blog, where John Nunemaker hands out some wisdom on building an API using Rails. All of the tips are great, as they should be, since John was involved in writing the API for the great Gauges service. Check it.
And the Whales Shall Lead Them?
I am always on the lookout for new resources on teaching Ruby and Rails, and I recently stumbled across Rubyonwhales.org. It’s a new blog that is collecting great content around learning Rails. If you are just getting started with Rails, this looks like a great resource.
Ahhhh, I love our community. Don’t you? If you think I’ve missed a Happening in Ruby, hit me in the comments or via e-mail and I’ll check it out and, maybe, put it in our next Happenings.
Glenn GoodrichGlenn works for Skookum Digital Works by day and manages the SitePoint Ruby channel at night. He likes to pretend he has a secret identity, but can't come up with a good superhero name. He's settling for "Roob", for now.
