Rails API Documentation Drive - Help make the docs better

A group of rails guys (Caboosers) are trying to raise $5,000 or more to get someone to write *good* documentation for the Rails API. If you’ve spent any time with rails beyond a superficial glance, you know that the docs can be, shall we say, lacking in some aspects. Especially now with all the new features (Restful controllers, Active Resource, etc) - this is needed more then ever.

To read more on this, or to contribute, please visit: http://blog.caboo.se/pages/documentation_drive

(Thanks Erik)

The Real Top 10 Excuses Made By Programmers

Inspired by Geek24’s Top 10 Excuses Made By Programmers

Anything that is in Bold is a revision from the original list

10. “I haven’t touched that code in weeks!”

9. “It must be a hardware problem.”

8. “Somebody must have changed my code.”

7. “Im working on it…”

6. “You must have the wrong version.”

5. “That’s weird…”

4. “There must be something wrong with your data”

3. “It’s never done that before.”

2. “It worked yesterday.”

1. “It works for me”

Flickr API keys for direct competitors

A few days ago TechCrunch wrote about Kristopher Tate, the founder of photo sharing site Zooomr, being denied access to the Flickr Commercial API. His intent was to use the Flickr API to create an easy way for users to export and move their images from Flickr to Zooomr.

Flickr denied his request, saying “we choose not to support use of the API for sites that are a straight alternative to Flickr.” Stewart Butterfield, founder of Flickr said “why should we burn bandwidth and CPU cycles sending stuff directly to their servers?”.

It seems that Today, Stewart Butterfield, had a change of heart on the API issue, and posted the following message on the Flickr discussion forums.

Re API keys for direct competitors: this is something that we’ve never had any set policy on and this thread has sparked a lot of internal debate on the team: some people felt that it was unreasonable, some people felt like it didn’t matter since Flickr should win on the basis of being the best thing out there.

I actually had a change of heart and was convinced by Eric’s position that we definitely should approve requests from direct competitors as long as they do the same. That means (a) that they need to have a full and complete API and (b) be willing to give us access.

The reasoning here is partly just that “fair’s fair’ and more subtly, like a GPL license, it enforces user freedom down the chain. I think we’ll take this approach (still discussing it internally).

It great to see that Flickr is reconsidering the previous decision.

Live Blogging for Rails Day 2006

Erik Kastner, from Meta|ateM is live blogging his Rails Days 2006 project.

Updating his blog every hour or so, since early this morning, he is tracking his progress and explaining exactly what he is doing and working on.

Kastner’s project, MyOneGoal.com, will be a place for anyone to work on any one goal at a time.

For example, looking at 43 things, there are over 10,000 people who have listed the goal Lose Weight. That’s not specific or tme-based. “Lose 10lbs in 4 weeks” is all of those things.

Once you’ve set your One Goal, you’ll be able to come on each day and update your progress. Good, bad or the same, it’s the act of keeping the goal in the front of your mind that makes it happen.

Definitely check out his blog to track his progress.

A Ruby on Rails clone of REDDIT in 20 minutes

Ideas on Rails has a great tutorial on how to make a (very, very) lite version of the popular website Reddit, by using Ruby on Rails, in about 20 minutes.

So, in this little tutorial, we will write an app which allows you to

1. submit links
2. view links sorted by points voted or by date/time of submission (”hot” and “new”)
3. vote links up or down (with AJAX, to avoid reloading the whole page)

We don’t add advanced features like user accounts, or checking that users should not vote on a link more than once, because that would be out of the limits of this little tutorial.

Definitely worth checking out. (Thanks Erik)

YouOS : An Ajax web based OS

Check out the demo of YouOS. Currently in an Alpha stage, YouOS is an operating system within your web browser window, written using lots of Ajax. There are all sorts of little apps and programs you can launch, such as Chat, Rss Readers & Flickr Apps, Rich Text Editors and Games like Chess and “YouPong”. This is definitely very neat. You can also signup for a full account.

VIM 7 - Final Beta released.

VIM 7 is on the verge of being released, with many new features and improvements over the current 6.4 version. The last(hopefully) version of VIM 7 Beta has just been released for testing.
Here are some of the bigger improvements:

Spell checking support for about 50 languages
Intelligent completion: Omni completion
Tab pages, each containing multiple windows
Undo branches: never accidentally lose text again
Vim script supports Lists and Dictionaries (similar to Python)
Vim script profiling
Improved Unicode support
Highlighting of matching parens, cursor line and cursor column
Translated manual pages support.
Internal grep; works on all platforms, searches compressed files
Browsing of remote directories, zip and tar archives
Printing multi-byte text

You can view a more complete list at the VIM Announcement Group.

Ruby on Rails: An extensive roundup of resources, projects, books, links, hosts and more.

Update: This article was added to digg. Please digg it!

Update #2: Thanks for all the comments. Adding all the resources to the list.

After seeing new Rails write-ups, tutorials, projects, etc.. pop up almost everyday, I decided to try and go through a lot of them and post the best and most useful ones. Below, you will find what I believe are to be the some of the best Ruby on Rails resources. If you know of some that I have missed, let me know via comments/email, and I’ll probably add them to the list.
Official Sites:

• RubyOnRails.org : Official RoR website.
• The Ruby on Rails Wiki : With Begginer info, Install guides for virtually any OS, Examples, HowTos(getting RoR to work with your DB, Test, Develop, etc), Tips & Tricks and lots more.
• Rails Complete API

Tutorials:

• Beginner’s Guide to Rails, part 1 : A series of tutorials for beginners.
• Getting Your Feet Wet With Ruby on Rails :
• Create Todo List with Ruby on Rails : A beginner’s Ruby on Rails tutorial - Creating a Todo App. (or download the PDF)
• Using Ruby on Rails for Dev on Mac OSX : A great tutorial by Apple, a must if you are going to be developing with RoR on OS X.
• Rolling with Ruby on Rails : An extensive beginner’s guide from Curt Hibbs on onlamp.com
• Rolling with Ruby on Rails, Part 2 : Part 2 of Rolling with Ruby on Rails.
• Ajax on Rails : Curt Hibbs’ third RoR tutorial.
• Distributing Rails Applications : Putting your Rails apps into production mode.
• Ruby on Rails on Oracle : A Simple Tutorial.
• Building Ruby, Rails, LightTPD, and MySQL on Tiger : Another great OS X tutorial.
• Ruby QuickRef : A useful Ruby language quick reference guide. (Thanks jopotts!)
• Instant Rails : A one-stop Rails runtime solution containing Ruby, Rails, Apache, and MySQL, all preconfigured and ready to run. (Thanks zonaprestiti!)

Articles:

• Ten Reasons Ruby Is Cool (Part 1)
• Ten Reasons Ruby Is Cool (Part 2)
• Ruby on Rails Book Roundup
• How to introduce Ruby on Rails in your company
• Exploring Ruby on Rails
• Ruby on Rails Fans
  

Ruby on Rails Open Source Apps:

• Simple Ticket : A Ruby on Rails based trouble ticket system.
• Substruct : The first Ruby On Rails Shopping Cart.
• Typo : Rails weblog.
• Hieraki2 : Wiki Meets Online Doc System.
• Collaboa : Project Tracker.
• Eribium : a content managing system packed full of features. (Thanks Alex!)
• Ajax Scaffold : get up an running with Rails and AJAX quickly. (Thanks Richard White!)

Some of the Real World Rails Sites (Thanks fanarama!):

• BaseCamp : A unique project collaboration tool.
• 43Things : Find your 43 things.
• CrispyNews : a site that allows anyone to create a community news site–for free.
• Kiko : a great, dead simple calendar you can use right in your web browser.
• Penny Arcade
• Here is a more complete list of Real World Rails Usage.

Rails Books:

• Agile Web Development with Rails : A Pragmatic Guide
• Ruby on Rails: Up and Running : From O’rielly, this is the Rough Cuts version. This book will be released July 1st. You can purchase the PDF now.
• Rails Recipes : a collection of recipes that will take you step by step through the the most cutting edge Rails techniques. This book will be released May 1st. You can purchase the PDF version now.
• Ruby for Rails : Ruby Techniques for Rails Developers : This book is available for purchase as a PDF or paperback.

Rails Hosting:

• TextDrive : TextDrive is a hosting company run by and for people who love publishing on the web. With plans starting as low as $12 per month.
• 3SHost : Rails hosting starting at $10 per month.
• DreamHost : Rails hosting for as low as $9.95 per month. (Coupon Code #1: 50RAILS and get $50 off when signing up. [Thanks Will Merydith!]. Coupon Code #2: SAVE96DOLLARS saves $96. [Thanks jopotts!]).
• HostingRails : Curious about rails? This free plan will get you started, but be aware of the small amount of disk space(50MB) and low montly transfer limit(1GB). No Ads, just free hosting for rails!
• You can find hundreds of more hosts listed on the Rails Wiki site.

Firefox extension:

• Search Ruby On Rails Docs with Firefox

Other:

• RadRails : An integrated development environment for the Ruby on Rails framework. (Thanks gookie from digg!)