This morning I attended another JRuby talk, this time with Thomas Enebo. It turned out to be, almost default, Sun JRuby talk.
There was one interesting difference, though. Normally we are shown how to run Ruby on Java and how to use Java components in our Ruby apps. Thomas took JMonkeyEngine (a java 3d scenegraph/game engine) and showed that he coded a simple game in Ruby, steering clear of the rather complex Java code.
Yesterday evening we attended a panel discussion with DHH and Rails Core Members Jeremy Kemper and Michael Koziarski.
DHH elaborated on default choices (like database, templating system and test suite) after being asked if Rails would switch over to RSpec instead of TestUnit. The answer was that Rails offers several defaults, which should suffice for new and basic users, who don’t know about all options and just want to get started.
A tutorial on JRuby with Nick Sieger holding your hand is just great. This guy knows JRuby inside-out and he has an answer to even the most difficult of questions.
After a short 15 minute introduction, Nick left us with our Rails app to start it with JRuby on a mongrel. I’ve been toying around with JRuby a bit before, and this was rather easy. Some people, however, encounter some issues with their apps because of incompatible gems, like OpenSSL or RMagic which are not available for the Java platform.
Today, RailsConfEurope 2008 started! Well, at least if you signed up for Tutorial Day.
The first tutorial I’m attending is about Hacking Rails Internals. At first I thought about this as a great way to enhance my own apps and be able to easily integrate other apps like Radiant or Mephisto. However, the more I saw of the demo (it really is more a demo than a tutorial really), the more I disliked hacking Rails Internals.
Today a delegation of Kabisa is leaving for RailsConf Europe 2008! We’re going by train this year and we hope to arrive this afternoon around 5.
I’ll keep regular updates here on Ariejan.net about RailsConf and all the things I’ve seen and done.
If you’re going to visit RailsConf Europe yourself, feel free to seek us out and have a chat!
See you at RailsConf!