Bitwise Magazine

The Ruby Way

Book Review

Tuesday 13 February 2007

The Ruby Way (2nd Edition)
by Hal Fulton
Addison-Wesley: http://www.awprofessional.com/ruby
Computer Manuals (UK): http://www.compman.co.uk
ISBN: 0-672-32884-4
$39.99 / £28.99

The so-called ‘Pickaxe Book' (Dave Thomas's Programming Ruby) isn't the only Jumbo-sized tome on the Ruby programming language. At over 800 pages, Hal Fulton's The Ruby Way could barely be said to be a lightweight. I must admit that, over the years, I have become increasingly suspicious of doorstopper programming books. Many of them contain more stuffing than a Christmas turkey. I am happy to say that this is not the case with The Ruby Way. In spite of its size, it is reasonably terse. If you are new to Ruby, this may sound like a contradiction. After all, how can such a fat book be said to be terse when it's devoted to a language which is as small and simple as Ruby? Small? Simple? What, Ruby…? At first sight, Ruby may indeed seem simple, but its apparent simplicity is (...)

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Back To The Command Prompt!

Is this really the death of the IDE...?

Monday 12 February 2007

We don’t want none of those steenken’ IDEs. Such, it would appear, is the confirmed prejudice of many a modern day programmer. This is a prejudice which, I confess, I do not understand. The determination to use the worst tools for the job seems, to me, positively perverse.

However, the anti-IDE sentiment is remarkably prevalent among the ranks of the advocates of ‘scripting languages' such as PHP, Python and Ruby. Lurking as I frequently do on forums and newsgroups devoted to those languages, I am often made to feel like an old and lumbering mammoth who's somehow strayed into field full of ‘agile' gazelles. Then again, I never have seen the light when it comes to agile methodologies or, indeed, to any other –ologies. These agile youngsters would have me believe that IDEs are bad, big and slow you down... Suffice to say, I beg to differ. I grew up with IDEs ranging from the simple (but darn' good for its day) Turbo Pascal to the much more complex (and remarkably good for our day) Visual Studio. En route I've dabbled in Delphi, Visual (...)

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Delphi Astro? Spacely? PHP?

Ah, the frustration...

Monday 12 February 2007

There has been lots of rumour and speculation lately about CodeGear(ex Borland Developer Tools Group)’s plans to launch a Delphi-like environment for PHP...

Today I managed to corner a CodeGear 'person in the know' in a darkened room and wouldn't let him out until he spilled the beans. So now I am in a position to reveal all! Alas, being honest and trustworthy sort of chaps, we came to a gentleman's agreement that I would keep what I know to myself. This is called going 'off the record' in the squalid world of journalism and it's something of which I thoroughly disapprove when other journalists do it. 'Pull yourself together, man!' I feel like telling the blighters, 'You have a scoop! An exclusive! So, by heaven! Spill those pesky beans...!' Alas, were I so to do, I fear this would be the last time any 'person in the know' from CodeGear or any other software company would confide in me. So, firmly shut my mouth shall stay (for the (...)

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Delphi For PHP?

Or so they say...

Thursday 8 February 2007

Rumours are emerging of a new product from Borland spinoff company, CodeGear, which will extend their visual Pascal product, Delphi, to work with PHP!

The new product will (apparently) be called Delphi Astro. There will also be a product called (bizarrely) Delphi Spacely, which will target Windows Vista and AJAX. Details are sketchy and (inconveniently) in Swedish. If anyone knows more (or can translate from Swedish to English), please let me know. For Swedish speakers, see HERE.

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Ruby On Rails Tutorial : The Basics

The Simple Way To Get Started With Rails

Tuesday 6 February 2007

Ruby On Rails is the fashionable way of developing web applications at the moment. But if you’ve never used Rails, it is not at all obvious how to get started with it. In this article, I’ll explain how to create a first Ruby On Rails application.

First Install Ruby and Rails… This tutorial assumes that you have both Ruby and Rails installed. Furthermore, it also assumes that you have a passing familiarity with the Ruby language. For a guide to installing Ruby and doing some simple Ruby programming, see the Bitwise Introduction to Ruby. For a more comprehensive tutorial on the Ruby language, download a free copy of The Little Book Of Ruby from the SapphireSteel Software web site. See also: Part Two of this Tutorial Ruby On Rails : The Ten Minute Expert Once you've got Ruby up and running, you will need to install a copy of the Rails framework. There are various ways in which you can install Rails. One way is by using the Ruby Gem ‘package manager'. As long as you are connected to the Internet, this will go (...)

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Ruby Off The Rails...?

The pros and cons of simplicity

Wednesday 31 January 2007

There is something scary about the Ruby On Rails phenomenon. Browse through some of the Ruby On Rails forums and newsgroups and you’ll come across hordes of self-proclaimed Rails ‘experts’ who haven’t a clue how to program Ruby. Stranger still, many of them treat Ruby as an irrelevance barely worthy of consideration.

How can this be? How can it be possible for ‘developers' to know little about the art of programming and next to nothing about the programming language in which they claim to be ‘developing'? The answer can be stated in one word: Rails. Rails is a ‘framework' that helps in the creation of interactive web-based applications. It does this by constructing web pages in response to user interaction. When you need to interface with the database or with the web page or do any sort of programming ‘behind the scenes', you will need to write code in Ruby. So it might seem paradoxical (terrifying even) that so many people are creating Rails applications when they don't understand Ruby! Look, Ma, No Coding! Before I go any further, let me say plainly that Rails is a (...)

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Ruby On Rails – The Ten Minute Expert

Bluff your way in Rails with this simple guide...

Wednesday 31 January 2007

Ruby On Rails is currently the programming equivalent of War and Peace – most people have heard of it, hardly anyone knows what it’s all about.

We all know the name of Tolstoy's masterwork but very few of us ever get around to reading it – well, there never seems to be quite enough spare time! Similarly, lots of developers have heard the name ‘Ruby On Rails' but very few of us have written any Ruby On Rails applications. While I can't help you to bluff your way in Tolstoy, I think I can save you a bit of effort with Rails. In this article, I'll explain what the fuss is all about and help to guide you through the ideas, the technology and the buzz words. See also: Ruby On Rails Tutorial : The Basics So What The Heck Is Ruby On Rails, Anyway? OK, so before going any further, let's dispel one popular myth: Ruby On Rails is not a programming language. Ruby is a programming language and Rails is a ‘framework' (...)

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Visual Studio, Ruby and The Year That Never Was

Life Beyond The Lost Weekend…

Monday 29 January 2007

It was a movie featuring Ray Milland, if I remember correctly. The Lost Weekend, I mean. He had what is euphemistically known these days as a ‘bit of a drink problem’. One moment, there he was, merrily tootling along without a care in the world; the next moment, everything changed and his life descended into a grainy black-and-white blur. Time passed, and he couldn’t remember a thing…

It's been a bit like that for me. Except, it wasn't a weekend, it was a year; and it wasn't the booze that was to blame, it was a little programming project that grew to Gargantuan proportions. At any rate, I won't bother you with the details. I've related the salient facts more than once in previous blog entries. Suffice to say, this past year has gone by in a blur. We've been working an average of 12 to 14 hours a day, 7 days a week – and, for the life of me, I can't remember what on earth we were doing… Well, we reached a pretty important point today. We finally released the first commercial version of the software. It's called Ruby In Steel and it's a Ruby and Rails IDE for Visual Studio 2005. It was developed by the same people behind Bitwise and you can get a 30-Day (...)

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Why Every Developer Should Have A Dog

I’d never have got this far without her...

Sunday 21 January 2007

It’s suddenly turned cold today. Which is good news for the dog. It may be cold but at least it’s stopped raining – which, naturally, means there’s a long walk in prospect…

Here we see two members of the software development team hard at work... To be honest, I can do with an excuse to get away from the computer. As regular readers will no doubt know, the past year has been a hectic one for me due to the fact that I've been working on an insanely ambitious Ruby / Ruby On Rails IDE for Visual Studio (I won't go over the history of this as I've explained the origins of this project elsewhere). We are now within days of releasing the commercial edition of Ruby In Steel Developer, and it feels as though our software ‘ship', which has been sailing ahead at great speed for so many months, has suddenly become becalmed. Development on the program itself is now frozen – no more new features are going in – and only the last minute bits and (...)

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Rexx World

Power plus simplicity - is Rexx the programming language you’ve been searching for?

Monday 8 January 2007

There are millions of free and open source languages, tools, and development accessories out there. How do you find the right ones for your work?

I’d like to introduce you to a world of related languages and tools with which you may not be familiar. All relate to Rexx, a free scripting language used worldwide, that offers 9 free interpreters and thousands of add-on tools that run on every platform, from handheld devices to mainframes (and everything in-between). This brief article tells you everything you need to know—

Why use Rexx? When not to use Rexx Free Rexx interpreters and tools and where to download them Where to find free tutorials Where to get other information, access forums, and find support The defining characteristic of Rexx is that it combines ease of use with power. This is a neat trick – normally these traits conflict. How does Rexx pull it off? Rexx has— Minimal syntax Consistent, reliable behavior based on a minimum of rules Features are based on linguistic flexibility — rather than identifying syntax A small instruction set with functions and objects providing power Extensibility Free format Strong language standards I do most my scripting in either Perl, the Korn shell, or Rexx. Each has its own unique personality and advantages. I choose Korn (...)

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PhotoPlus 11

High Quality Image Editing and a Low Price

Sunday 7 January 2007

Serif: http://www.serif.com/
£59.99

For information on this award see HERE

I happened to be designing some bitmaps to use in a Visual Studio toolbar recently – not the sort of thing many people do every day, I admit, but something that poses the sort of challenge which you might think any competent image editing package should be able to cope with. Certainly Adobe’s $299 Fireworks should be up to the job. Not so!

To my surprise, Fireworks can't save 32-bit bitmaps, which Visual Studio requires for transparent backgrounds to images. If an expensive package like Fireworks couldn't do it, I assumed that Serif's budget-priced PhotoPlus 11 wouldn't do it either. Once again, I was wrong. PhotoPlus not only exports to 32-bit BMP, it even has an export optimizer to let you select from a range of common and not-so common formats (gif, jpeg, pict, tiff, ras and others) and you can fine-tune the images by selecting options in a dialog box. My guess is that Serif products are often unjustifiably overlooked by ‘serious' users on the basis that, at such low prices, they surely can't be much good. In fact, in my experience of Serif products – from the video editing software, MoviePlus, to their (...)

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Goodbye, Wilf

Wilf, you will be missed...

Friday 5 January 2007

It is with great sadness that I announce the death of Wilf Hey.

Wilf wrote the wonderfully eccentric and always fascinating Mathematical Digressions column in Bitwise and is well known for the Wilf's Workshop column in PC Plus magazine. I always looked forward to our long and rambling telephone conversations in which Wilf and I frequently discussed a bizarre range of subjects ranging from mathematics to magic and often digressing into languages, music, science, art, life, the universe and (almost) everything in between. He really was a man of great intellect, boundless enthusiasm and considerable charm. Wilf died on January 2nd, 2007. He will be very keenly missed. I extend my deepest sympathy to his (...)

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The Great OOP Debate

Object Orientation - triumph or failure?

Monday 1 January 2007

Dermot Hogan, a long-time OOP-sceptic, is now the lead developer of an OOP IDE. Here he debates the pros and cons of Object Orientation with OOP-convert, Huw Collingbourne…

Huw: Back in June 2005, you wrote a column in which you argued that Object Oriented Programming (OOP) has turned out to be a failure. In the period since then, you and I have been working on the Ruby In Steel IDE written for one object oriented language (Ruby) and written (largely) in another object oriented language (C#). Is this an admission that you got OOP all wrong when you criticised it before? Dermot: A little background first. I've been working on a Visual Studio ‘package' which adds Ruby editing and debugging support to Visual Studio 2005. Visual Studio, in its current incarnation anyway, is based on COM interfaces. COM is object oriented in a way, but isn't object oriented in the modern sense in that it doesn't use inheritance. I've implemented the Ruby part using a (...)

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Visual Studio SP1 woes

If it ain’t broke don’t fix it

Saturday 23 December 2006

“It’s better to have known bugs rather than unknown fixes”. It’s a motto that’s served me well over the years, and it applies particularly to software ‘fix packs’ or ‘service packs’. Well, I broke the rule yesterday and installed Visual Studio SP1. And I’m now re-installing Visual Studio from scratch as I write this. It’s nobody’s fault but mine, and, yes, Microsoft’s.

The problem I've got is that the debugger no longer functions as it once did. I used to be able to hover over a variable and ‘drill down' into it. Now I get the message “Function evaluation disabled because a previous function evaluation timed out” all over the place and once I step with F10, Visual Studio disappears into a black hole, from which I can't recover. Whatever the cause (these are pretty complicated variables: generic lists of dictionaries of sorted lists – that sort of thing), this did NOT happen with the original Visual Studio installation. Unfortunately, this is vital for my debugging and I can't really live without it. So bye-bye SP1. That's not the only problem with SP1. I started installing it at lunchtime yesterday. I was still at it in the (...)

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CodeGear Is Go!

The Borland developers are back (with a new name) at last...

Tuesday 19 December 2006

Yes, Delphi, C++Builder at al are back in action...

Just in case you missed it, CodeGear (that is, the renamed and wholly owned subsidiary-ized Borland Developer Group) has finally got their web site on line: http://www.codegear.com/ Welcome back, chaps!

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Delphi For VS: Lost In The Translation?

Yet another twist to this French farce…

Thursday 7 December 2006

More on the story (or non-story?) which emerged in the French language technology journal, Le Monde Informatique last week. As you may recall, the journalist, Pierre Tran, originally claimed that CodeGear planned to dump its own development environment, the Borland Developer Studio (BDS), and move Delphi over to Microsoft’s Visual Studio.

Much excitement and many denials from CodeGear followed on from this assertion – including one denial here on Bitwise from Delphi's product manager and a phone call to me from their European division to assure me that the Le Monde story was totally without foundation. I was also told that the journal would be publishing a new feature in which they planned to admit to their error. And so they have… …well, kind of. True enough, the writer does now say that CodeGear has no plans to move Delphi into Visual Studio (reproduced below in my, by no means guaranteed 100% accurate, translations)…. “Contrary to what was written in a previous version of this article, CodeGear has no intention of abandoning this platform (BDS) for the next versions of Delphi and (...)

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Selling Your Software - 2BrightSparks Interview

The story of a business founded on freeware...

Tuesday 5 December 2006

For 2BrightSparks it all began with one man and a freeware utility. In just three years the business has grown into a successful company with six employees. What’s the secret of their success? Huw Collingbourne tries to find out as he speaks to the man who started it all, Michael J Leaver…

HC: What's the story behind 2BrightSparks? When, how and why did you create the company? MJL: Around three years ago (2003) I was working in a software development business that produced resource management software for hospitals and other healthcare providers. Everything was written in Delphi 5 and I'd been using Delphi since version 3. One problem I had was keeping local backups of the source code and other documents. There were freeware backup programs available at the time, and of course you could easily write a batch file and use xcopy; but being a typical developer (i.e. I wanted things done my way) I decided it would only take a few hours to cobble something together, and so wrote the first version of SyncBack. I made it available on my personal website and was surprised to (...)

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Latest On Le Mystère Code Gear

Monday 4 December 2006

Le Monde Informatique said Code Gear was planning to abandon its old Delphi IDE and switch to Visual Studio. Code Gear said, “Oh no we’re not!”

Now the Editor in chief has posted this response (shown here in my fairly free translation): We are currently collecting together the sources in order to study them. Meanwhile, I have confidence in my journalist. Because if there's something which I know after all these years in the technology press, it is that there are as many truths as there are people supplying marketing strategies. In addition, I have left a message to the European representative of CodeGear to arrange a meeting. I hope I'll be able to arrive at a rapid conclusion. And for those Francophones among you who (justifiably) don't trust my translation, here's the original: Nous sommes en train de rassembler les sources et de les étudier. En attendant, je fais confiance à mon journaliste. Car s'il y a quelque chose (...)

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Delphi’s Alive, Kicking and NOT Moving To Visual Studio

So Who Started This Rumour In The First Place?

Monday 4 December 2006

The Mystery deepens. A couple of days ago, I reported a story from the French technology journal, Le Monde Informatique, in which it was stated that plans were afoot to abandon the traditional Delphi IDE (formerly known as the Borland Developer Studio) and switch Delphi over to Microsoft’s Visual Studio.

"Cette politique signe également l'arrêt de Delphi en tant qu'IDE autonome. Les prochaines versions viendront se greffer sur Visual Studio, comme un nouveau langage de la plate-forme .NET." This story was rapidly and vociferously denied by Code Gear and, following some comments posted on the French site, the editor of Le Monde Informatique made a small adjustment to the story, stating, that instead of abandoning the Delphi IDE, Code Gear would continue with the current IDE as a standalone product but future versions would use a Visual Studio runtime (whatever that means). "Cette politique signe également l'abandon du moteur de l'IDE de Delphi. Comme cela l'avait déjà été annoncé, les prochaines versions utiliseront Visual Studio comme socle technique. Delphi continuera d'être (...)

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Delphi For Visual Studio?

The old order changeth...?

Friday 1 December 2006

According to the French language technology journal, Le Monde Informatique, Code Gear (the newly formed company which will henceforth develop the Borland programming languages), plans to migrate Delphi into Visual Studio.

This, says the journal, signals the end of the Borland developer Studio as a standalone IDE (“ l'arrêt de Delphi en tant qu'IDE autonome”). Delphi will continue to target both Win32 and .NET and will also support its Visual Class Library (VCL). Update: (2nd Dec' 06) Code Gear denies the above, saying that the company does not plan to move its development tools to VS. So where did the story originate? I shall watch developments keenly...

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