Ruby Zone - Resources for Ruby and Rails developers

How to Create a Sinatra App Using Glassfish

garethr — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 14:52:36 +0000

I magically turned into a Java developer last week for a bit when I had to do some integration with a SOAP based API that really really wanted me to write Java on client as well. That led me down the route of having a good look at Jruby (which I’ve used before, mainly for testing using celerity) and in particular how easy it was to use native Java classes in Jruby (very, very easy as it...

Broad NoSQL Adoption in 2012?

egenesky — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 18:46:47 +0000

The current state of SQL may cause some developers physical pain, especially when they see an industry-wide survey released by Couchbase yesterday that suggest a strong growth in NoSQL adoption in 2012. As a self-defined "Simple, Fast, Elastic NoSQL Database," Couchbase has recently rebranded their NoSQL Membase server from Membase to Couchbase. This merger of Membase, an open source...

Programming Language Popularity by SO and GitHub Cross-Ranking

johncook — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 13:32:07 +0000

Curator's note: Is this two-faceted method for determining language popularity a good metric. The correlation definitely helps its case but I know that Stack Overflow volume doesn't always indicate popularity, but rather, confusion. Also, RedMonk's charts are showing C# slightly ahead of Java on SO but on the tags page, you can see that C# has almost 60k more tags (almost 25% more) and the...

Journey to the Center of JRuby

pat_shaughnessy — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 19:24:26 +0000

This week I decided to take a look at JRuby, which is a Java implementation of the Ruby interpreter. I’ve heard great things about JRuby, but had never taken the time before to look at how it works internally. What I found was an amazingly complex system involving many different technologies. Following the path of execution through the JRuby stack was like peeling away different layers of...

Amon: Lightweight, Open Source App and Server Monitoring

mitchp — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 17:50:34 +0000

Amon (named after the Egyptian Sun god or a demon) is a self-hosted toolkit that allows you to monitor web apps with a small footprint (Amon can fit in 20MB of RAM) and all the information kept in one place. It's a nice open source tool (with good docs) that can run on the smallest VPS you have. If you don't trust similar cloud solutions (some of which are not free) and you want to be in full...

Algorithm of the Week: Data Compression with Prefix Encoding

stoimen — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 14:57:43 +0000

Prefix encoding, sometimes called front encoding, is yet another algorithm that tries to remove duplicated data in order to reduce its size. Its principles are simple, however this algorithm tends to be difficult to implement. To understand why, first let’s take a look at its nature. Have a look on the following dictionary.useusedusefulusefulnessuselssuselesslyuselessness ...

Make your process your Rock Star, not individuals

anichols — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 12:51:28 +0000

I recall a few jobs ago I was managing the Systems Engineering team and trying to grow it into a group that could handle the daily onslaught of issues that would plague our service. We had recruiters working on sourcing folks & we felt like we had very high standards for who we wanted to hire. We talked to and turned away probably hundreds of folks it felt like (I got really good at...

How To: Install graylog2 on CentOS 5 with RVM + Passenger

joemiller — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 06:00:45 +0000

Graylog2 is an open-source self-hosted centralized log management tool. Think of it as a do-it-yourself version of loggly.com, or perhaps a simpler alternative to Splunk. Logs are stored in a MongoDB database. I won’t go into too much detail, so if you want more info check out graylog2.org Preview Text: I decided to see if RVM – Ruby Version...

Local Directory vs. Local Guide

kinlane — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 15:08:49 +0000

When I started working with the CityGrid Places API I needed a project to help me learning about how to use the API, and wrap my head around whats possible when building local web applications. Preview Text: Kin's work with CityGrid places led him to the conclusion that user-centered local direction provides search mechanisms for finding...

Source Code is an Asset, Not a Liability

jim.bird — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 13:58:36 +0000

Some people have tried to argue that source code is a liability, not an asset. Apparently this “is now widely accepted” and... “this is a very strong idea that has a lot of impact across the IT industry and in the way developers view and perform their day-to-day work”.Really? Preview Text: Many have argued that Source Code is a...

Grape API Mounted on RACK with Static Pages

dblock — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 15:24:36 +0000

Here’s how I mount a Grape API on Rack and also serve static pages. Most useful for building a service with documentation. Setup bundler with the required gems. I am using the next version of Grape (frontier branch and the next version of rack-contrib which contains Rack::TryStatic that we’re going to want to use). Eric Genesky

Why Every Ruby Developer Should Learn Smalltalk

avix1000 — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 05:53:43 +0000

No matter what kind of programming you are doing these days you probably heard a lot about Smalltalk. And there is a reason for that. Its influence on what we are doing and using right now is hard to overestimate. Refactoring, XP, TDD, many VM technologies came from the Smalltalk community. James Sugrue

Getting started with Ruby and Neo4j

maxdemarzi — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 15:29:18 +0000

Getting started with Ruby and Neo4j is very easy. Follow these steps and you’ll be up and running in no time. First we install the neography gem: Using Bundler:1 echo "source 'http://rubygems.org' 2 gem 'neography' " > Gemfile 3 bundle install Without Bundler:1 gem install neographyThen we’ll add our tasks to a Rakefile, download Neo4j and start it: ...

A Twitter Experiment: @devops_jerk

anichols — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 12:50:43 +0000

I am @devops_jerk. I’m not a jerk – but I have played one on Twitter. On the 15th of October I setup the account on Twitter. Today, not quite 2 months later, I am officially ending the experiment. I learned some interesting things and had a lot of fun in the process – this blog post talks about the experience. Article Type: ...

Algorithm of the Week: Data Compression with Relative Encoding

stoimen — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 05:01:00 +0000

OverviewRelative encoding is another data compression algorithm. Preview Text: I will show you how you can save space for certain implementations by reducing the amount of characters you are encoding using relative encoding. Christopher Smith