Recently in Ruby (and friends) Category

At the bottom of my sidebar, you might notice a new item, my del.icio.us tags. I have recently begun to actively use this on-line bookmark and bookmark sharing service. When I see something on the web I want to share with my associates and co-workers, or even my friends, I can use a button installed in my browser to store, and tag a bookmark in my on-line del.icio.us account.

Readers can browse my bookmarks, or look at bookmarks I have given a certain tag. Let me know what you think of this idea, do you use del.icio.us? Have you ever visited another user's bookmarks?

If you look very closely, you might notice a tag down there today that most people would find unusual for me to have used: kids I remember being fascinated with programming when I was a kid and wishing for access to a computer to learn. Hackety Hack is an interesting sounding tool to teach your kid how to program. (Hack is not a bad word, no matter what the news media would have you believe.)

If you are interested in manifesto's and such, you are encouraged to read the Hackety Hack Manifesto. I thought this "bylaw" was great:

Also, helpful sentences. Preferably short and with a period.

I was surprised when I found this, because it is written at least in part by _why, who I have heretofore found to be a little difficult to read. I really liked reading his stuff, just don't think the why's (poignant) guide to ruby is for kids 13 and up, which is the described age range for Hackety Hack.

Although Why makes me think, sometimes I want a little more hand holding.

Rolling with Ruby on Rails provides all that, and by the end of the tutorials, I was thinking up reasons to write RoR applications.

If you're not comfortable with MySQL administration, you may want to work through the revised version: RwRoRR. by Bill Walton and Curt Hibbs. Some of the GUI MySQL software described in the original version is no longer available so I had to wing that part. The new version uses the MySQL console and a structure file to create the tables for the excersizes.

Not counting installing Ruby and MySQL, it took about 2 hours to get through the original tutorial. I should think the new version would go much faster. This is highly recommended for any programmer who wants to see a demonstration of RoR's potential.