Ponderings...

Is Our Happiness Preordained? – Weren’t born with genetic stuff that makes you more likely to be happy? Having trouble achieving it otherwise? If you’re an anxious introvert with high expectations you might benefit from pretending that you are not. That is, if these researchers are right.

Public Service Announcement: Caring for Your Introvert

Earlier this year I ventured back from a very enjoyable year building and deploying a project in Ruby on Rails into the familiar territory of Java. Ruby has become cemented as a valuable tool that will certainly remain near the top of my tool box, ready for use.

Right now, however, I’m working on problems that are outside the realm of where Ruby shines (though I’m certain it’ll catch up soon enough). In particular, I recently had the need to research some ideas on creating a solution for a problem that lends itself to distributed computation.

Can Ruby be useful in the enterprise? Sure! Of course, that depends on what you’re considering it for, how you define Enterprise, and what day it is (the Ruby community is very active on many fronts, and support that was once lacking is rapidly growing in many areas).

I mostly stayed away from the whole James McGovern fracas recently, but since this was one of the blogs he sent a trackback to, I’ll add one little comment that I haven’t seen too many others express. Ruby was never too bothered about its lack of widespread public adoption in the enterprise. It is doing just fine being quite useful in all kinds of environments, meeting needs and providing an increasing number of developers another powerful way to please their customers and themselves. That being said, there are definitely inroads being made.

Consider the public positions of companies that make their living in the enterprise. For example, look at the position posted by MomentumSI. Jeff Schneider has linked to some analysis done by them recently on the applicability of Ruby in the enterprise. I know and have worked with many Momentum consultants over the years and they are very bright people who have a lot of experience in that arena. Of course, ThoughtWorks thinks pretty highly of Ruby too.

Ruby (and Rails) aren’t really striving to become the great enterprise platform. They are trying (and succeeding) to be great tools to help people get things done, be productive, and enjoy their work. I don’t think the community in general cares too much if they aren’t making great strides in the enterprise (even though I think we’ll see much higher adoption there). They are having too much fun using it to do things they are doing now. And as for wondering how Ruby will continue to grow, only time will tell.

I never realized the amaroK developers had any affinity toward Ruby.

As a part time user of Linux, usually Kubuntu these days, I occasionally use amaroK for playing music to work by. As Linux music player + library applications go, it’s one of the nicest you can find with some features that you don’t find in many other players.

amaroK, like an increasing amount of modern software, supports scripting to allow users to extend the software’s capabilities. They do this by taking advantage of amaroK’s DCOP interface.

This makes it possible to write scripts in almost any programming language, like Ruby, Python or bash scripting. The recommended programming language is Ruby, which is easy to learn and very well suited for amaroK scripting. The amaroK team will be happy to assist you if you have questions regarding Ruby programming.

Not surprisingly, they even recommend Ruby as a nice way to script the application, though they support other languages.

As development goes on, in fact, they are converting compiled portions of code to scripts that can be customized or replaced. This solution came to light after requests by users to support additional sources of song lyrics and deal with the brittle way they interfaced with such sites.

Sooooo, what to do? Scripts to the rescue! What I did is, ripped the hardcoded Lyrc code out. Ported the C++ code to Ruby. Then added a couple of DCOP calls and script notifications for the communication Script <—> amaroK. Added a slice of XML, and you get your spicy new Scriptable Lyrics Feature, mmh.

There was a bit of reaction in the post referenced above to the dependency on Ruby for the newly converted portion of default functionality. If KDE had a default scripting language (similar to the OS X/Applescript relationship) I’d understand those complaints a little more. But then again, OS X installs Python and Ruby by default along with Applescript and nobody really complains.

Is a dependency on a language runtime very different from a dependency on a given library?

Update: As Cornelius Schumacher points out, other KDE projects beginning to do similar things.

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Technorati Tags: kde, linux, scripting, ruby

Almost two years have passed since I rode in my last bike tour, and the time has come for me to get back in shape and work for a good cause. I rode in the Tour de Cure twice, raising money for diabetes research. Now it’s time to do something a little closer to my heart and ride in the LiveStrong Challenge.

About 30 years ago, when I was a young child, my mother fought cancer and beat it. It was a tough fight, but she survived and lived to see me graduate high school. But the treatment in those days had taken its toll on her and she is no longer with us. I continue to be inspired by the fight she fought and what she went through.

In honor of my mother’s battle with cancer, and for all of those millions of people in the same fight, I’m participating in the LIVESTRONG Challenge in Austin in October. I’m going to ride my bike 40 miles and raise at least $500 for the Lance Armstrong Foundation.

The Lance Armstrong Foundation was founded in 1997 by cancer survivor and champion cyclist, Lance Armstrong, to provide practical information and tools for people living with cancer. Their mission is to inspire and empower people affected by cancer through advocacy, public health and research programs.

If you would like to help out with a wonderful cause or just root for someone who hasn’t ridden much in a few years, please donate to help cancer survivors and support me in my fundraising efforts for the LiveStrong Challange. <!- technorati tags start ->

Technorati Tags: bike, cancer