The guys over at LessEverything have recently released a new social networking application with all the features you would expect in such a beast. However, this isnt like MySpace or Facebook, Lovd is open-source. And its written in Ruby on Rails to boot.

Even if you have no interest in running your own social networking app, you should download the source and use it like I did, as a great learning tool. Its nice to be able to download software thats written by some of the top RoR programmers and be able to learn from it!

I was up REALLY late last night doing some coding and I received an email from the Apple Developer site saying that they have added some new articles. In particular, the first one listed was a new Ruby on Rails walk-through that has been updated for Rails 2.0 and Leopard.

They show examples of coding a Rails app in Xcode which I thought was pretty cool. I have never used Xcode before but Im definitely going to at least open it and give it a whirl now after reading the article.

My hats off to Apple, a very good read!

You can find the article on the Apple Dev site.

The next RubyJax meeting is scheduled for March 20th and will be held at 7406 Fullerton St, Jax, FL, 32256 which is right across the street from the Avenues Mall.

See you there!

With the Jacksonville ColdFusion Group on somewhat of a hiatus (no meeting since August 2007) I decided to head over to the local Ruby on Rails User Group Meeting to see what was the haps in the Jacksonville Ruby community.

First off, let me say that I had no idea there was such an interest in Ruby on Rails right here in Jacksonville. To say the least I was shocked to find out that Obie Fernandez lives here and runs his RoR based consulting business HashRocket from Jacksonville Beach. For those of you not in the know, Obie is to the RoR community what Ben Forta and Ray Camden are to the ColdFusion community.

The meeting had a good turn out, Im not sure of the exact numbers but I would estimate around 20 people showed up. Since they had no formal presentation lined up, they decided to do some pair programming. Basically, taking one or two of the noobs like myself and pairing you up with one of the more experienced guys. For about an hour and 45 minutes I got to sit with an experienced RoR programmer who answered pretty much every stupid question I came up with and even helped me solve several problems in the RoR application Im working on as a learning aide.

Back 7 years or so ago when I was running the Jacksonville ColdFusion Group (Allaire days), we always struggled to get presenters so I ended up doing about 90% of the presentations. I sure wish I would have thought of pair programming back then. Its a great way to get some of the newer folks some personalized attention to help them out.

I suspect that getting presenters nowadays isn't quite as difficult with the introduction of Adobe Connect, but, if for some reason you find your next meeting without a speaker, consider pair programming, I bet you get a great turn-out!

The guys have Railsenvy.com have posted another video poking fun at another language. You might remember some of the other ones I posted here about PHP. Now they have a ColdFusion one. Its pretty funny. But if you compare it to the others, they dont really pick on the language too much.

Derek Perez has posted a very good article entitled ColdFusion Isn't Dead, Its Never Lived; Dynamic Languages Reign Supreme discussing some of the finer points of Dynamic Languages and raising some pretty hairy questions about the current trend in ColdFusion development. Definitely worth taking a few minutes and reading!

Well, so far Coldfusion is still safe with only one more to go. This ones on PHP again.

Here is the second one. This time they are bashing on PHP. Again, pretty funny. But I dont think its as good as the first one. The teddybear stuffed into that jar representing Hibernate was genius! There are supposed to be 4 of these things in total, I wonder what other languages will be targeted?

Not really Coldfusion related but funny none the less. The guys at RailsEnvy are releasing one of these everyday leading up to RailsConf. Check it out.