Iowa Ruby Brigade Meetings

July 2010

Tue, 29 Jun 2010 22:13:25 GMT

July 8, 2010

6:00 - 7:30 PM

Topic

Hands-On Test-Driven Development

We're going to try a different format for this month's meeting. Please bring your laptops and be ready to write some code!

Most developers are aware of Test-Driven Development (TDD), and/or variants such as Behavior-Driven Development (BDD), in which development follows an evolutionary approach by repeating a very short cycle: write a test or spec, see it fail, write just enough application code to make the test pass, refactor, and repeat. This basic "red-green-refactor" approach is not new, and is in wide-spread use.

Nevertheless, there are many developers who, for whatever reason, do not use such an approach. In some cases, developers simply haven't tried it, or are not quite sure how to get started. Our goal at this meeting is help people get started with TDD/BDD so they can judge for themselves whether this approach works for them and might be worth pursuing further.

We'll start with a little discussion of the pros (and cons?) of test-first development. Then we'll quickly move to a hands-on coding exercise. We'll divide into pairs and all work on solving the same programming problem using a test-first approach. At the end, we'll share our work and discuss how things went.

Ideally, each pair will include at least one developer with some previous TDD/BDD experience. If that's you, please be sure to come to this meeting because we need your expertise.

By the same token, if you haven't done much TDD/BDD, please don't miss this meeting because there is really only one way to learn this skill and that's by practicing it, ideally with the help of a more experienced pair programmer.

The details of the programming exercise are still being worked out. We'll let you know before the meeting if there is anything else you should have set up in order to be ready. Our default testing framework for this exercise will be RSpec, but feel free to use a different framework (Test::Unit, Shoulda, etc.) if you have a preference.

Prerequisites: None!

June 2010

Tue, 08 Jun 2010 01:50:51 GMT

June 10, 2010

6:00 - 7:30 PM

Speaker

Darrin Holst / GeoLearning

Topic

Haml & Sass

Darrin will lead a discussion of Haml & Sass based on the PeepCode screencast.

Special thanks to PeepCode for giving us permission to use this format and show the screencast at our meeting.

May 2010

Wed, 21 Apr 2010 14:07:14 GMT

May 13, 2010

6:00 - 7:30 PM

Speaker

Cassie Schmitz / Co-Founder, PrintWhatYouLike.com

Topic

Rails 3

After the long wait, Rails 3 Beta has finally been released! With the merge with Merb, Rails has undergone significant changes. In this talk, Cassie will go over what's new in Rails 3 including:

Controller Abstraction
Routing with ActionDispatch
Model Abstraction
Arel Integration
Revamped ActionMailer

April 2010

Fri, 26 Mar 2010 13:45:18 GMT

April 8, 2010

6:00 - 7:30 PM

Speaker

Matt Secoske / nimblelogic

Topic

The Lightweight web: singing Sinatra to the tune of Redis

We will dive into the Sinatra web framework, along with a detour through Redis in an attempt to show just how lightweight a Ruby web service can be. This will be an informal overview and discussion, with an aside to cover the reasons why you should consider Sinatra for your next web service project.

We will also probably spend some time looking at "Evented" Sinatra and Resque, the Redis + Sinatra queuing framework from the fancy chaps at Github.

A little about Matt Secoske:

Matt Secoske is the Principal at nimblelogic, a boutique (that means small) software development company that is dedicated to writing kick-ass software for kick-ass clients. He spends much of his time trying to stay abreast of the latest web development technologies, and can be found lurking on Twitter as @secos, and on a rarely updated "blog" at mattsecoske.com.

March 2010

Fri, 26 Mar 2010 13:38:30 GMT

March 2010 meeting was canceled.

February 2010

Wed, 20 Jan 2010 15:56:58 GMT

February 11, 2010

6:00 - 7:30 PM

Speaker

Levi Rosol / SportsLeeg

Topic

SportsLeeg - Adventures In My First Rails Application

SportsLeeg is the only site that offers premium levels of team management functionality and social interaction for people associated with high school and other amateur sports.

In this presentation Levi will talk about creating his first ever Rails application. From researching Rails, to building a business plan, to rolling the site out live and expanding the development team. The good, the bad and the ugly will get covered here.

Topics that will be covered:

How the SportsLeeg idea was formed
Rails vs. .Net
OS X vs Ubuntu vs Windows?
LovdByLess vs CommunityEngine
Heroku vs WebbyNode
Making time to build the project
Growing the team when you have no funding
Functionality of SportsLeeg today, and in the future

January 2010

Mon, 11 Jan 2010 14:58:33 GMT

January 14, 2010

6:00 - 7:30 PM

General Discussion

We don't have a specific presentation this month, but we'll still meet and discuss current developments in the Ruby world. Please join us, and please bring something Ruby-related to share with the group.

December 2009

Wed, 02 Dec 2009 18:53:26 GMT

December 10, 2009

6:00 - 7:30 PM

Speaker

David W. Body / Big Creek Software, LLC

Topic

MongoDB

MongoDB is a scalable, high-performance, open source, schema-free, document-oriented database that aims to combine the best features of document databases, key-value stores, and RDBMSes. MongoDB stores JSON-style documents and supports dynamic queries with rich JavaScript query expressions.

MongoDB provides a native Ruby driver, and several open source projects provide additional support for using MongoDB from Ruby, including an ActiveRecord adapter.

This presentation will cover the following topics:

Intro to MongoDB and overview of MongoDB capabilities
Using MongoDB from the JavaScript shell
Using MongoDB from the Ruby driver
Using MongoDB from within a Rails application

We'll talk about when MongoDB might be a good choice for your project. We'll also try to compare and contrast MongoDB with other document-oriented databases like CouchDB (covered at our February 2009 meeting).

November 2009

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 15:10:23 GMT

November 12, 2009

6:00 - 7:30 PM

Speaker

David W. Body / Big Creek Software, LLC

Topic

RubyGems - Past, Present, and Future

RubyGems is the standard for distributing and managing Ruby code packages. Beginning with Ruby 1.9, RubyGems is included with Ruby itself.

Everyone who has worked with with Ruby is probably already familiar with using RubyGems to download and install Ruby libraries written by others. Gems exist for many tasks, including, for example, manipulating images, validating credit cards, parsing HTML, and generating PDF's. Gems are also an excellent way of distributing your own code if you create a Ruby library you want to share with others.

In this talk, we will briefly discuss the history of RubyGems before focusing on the present and future of RubyGems. Specifically, we will discuss:

Using RubyGems and managing your RubyGems environment
The transition to GemCutter from RubyForge and Github
Creating and publishing your own gems using Jeweler
Bundler (a gem to bundle gems)

There will be plenty of time for discussion, so bring your RubyGems questions and ideas.

October 2009

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 12:36:52 GMT

October 8, 2009

6:00 - 7:30 PM

Speaker

Darrin Holst / GeoLearning

Topic

Searching ActiveRecord Models

Search is one of the most common tasks performed by computer users, so it's not surprising that a common application requirement is that data within an application be searchable. In a Rails application, or for that matter any application that uses ActiveRecord, what are the best ways to implement search functionality?

Darrin has set out to answer that question and he will share what he has learned. This presentation will compare the following approaches to searching ActiveRecord models:

Plain Old SQL
Plugins/gems that wrap SQL
Sphinx/UltraSphinx

There will be time for discussion, so bring your questions and suggestions for alternative ways to implement search in an ActiveRecord application.

September 2009

Sat, 29 Aug 2009 14:46:17 GMT

September 10, 2009

6:00 - 7:30 PM

Speaker

Yehuda Katz / Engine Yard

Topic

What's New in Rails 3?

In honor of the Iowa Ruby Brigade's two-year anniversary, Yehuda Katz of Engine Yard will join us to talk about some of the new features in Rails 3, and to answer questions and discuss topics of interest to the group.

Of course Rails 3 is the result of the merger of two Ruby web frameworks: Ruby on Rails and Merb. Yehuda was lead developer of Merb, and as a Rails core team member, Yehuda has played a central role in the development effort to merge the two frameworks. Yehuda will talk about that effort and preview some of the changes in Rails 3.

We'll also have plenty of time for questions and general discussion.

Yehuda Katz is currently employed by Engine Yard, and works full time as a Core Team Member on the Rails and Merb projects. He is the co-author of jQuery in Action and the upcoming Rails 3 in Action, and is a contributor to Ruby in Practice.

He spends most of his time hacking on Rails and Merb, but also on other Ruby community projects, like Rubinius and Datamapper. And when the solution doesn't yet exist, he'll try his hand at creating one - as such, he's also created projects like Thor and DO.rb.

Yehuda will join us via remote video conferencing.

August 2009

Fri, 10 Jul 2009 22:00:37 GMT

August 13, 2009

6:00 - 7:30 PM

Special Joint Meeting with Des Moines CocoaHeads

Speaker

Luke Amdor / Big Creek Software, LLC

Topic

Creating Mac OS X Applications with MacRuby

MacRuby is a full 1.9 compatible version of Ruby that runs on the ObjectiveC runtime. But that's not all. MacRuby brings the elegance and flexibility of Ruby to create full fledged Mac OS X desktop applications. MacRuby doesn't sacrifice speed to do this either.

In this presentation, we'll discuss:

how MacRuby fits in the Mac OS X and Ruby ecosystem.
Ruby, Objective-C, and CoreFoundation fundamentals.
how MacRuby works its magic
how to set up MacRuby projects
integration with Interface Builder
future of MacRuby

We'll also put together some Mac OS X applications:

the quintessential Twitter client
a Flickr photo search using HotCocoa
using Test Driven Development to create Cocoa applications

We'll also explore the possibility of iPhone applications using MacRuby.

July 2009

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 23:38:53 GMT

July 9, 2009

6:00 - 7:30 PM

Speaker

David W. Body / Big Creek Software, LLC

Topic

Cucumber & Webrat

Cucumber is a tool that lets software developers write descriptions of how software should behave in plain English (or any other natural language). These plain text descriptions can be executed by Cucumber and can serve as automated acceptance tests for the software they describe.

Here is a simple example. Describe a HelloWorld class as follows:

  Scenario: HelloWorld says Hello
  Given An instance of HelloWorld
  When I send it the say_hello message
  Then it should say "Hello, Iowa Ruby Brigade!"

Implement the HelloWorld class:

class HelloWorld
  def say_hello
    "Hello, Iowa Ruby Brigade!"
  end
end

After some minor setup, execute the description with Cucumber and you get this output:

Scenario: HelloWorld says Hello
  Given An instance of HelloWorld
  When I send it the say_hello message
  Then it should say "Hello, Iowa Ruby Brigade!"

1 scenario (1 passed)
3 steps (3 passed)
0m0.001s

Although Cucumber is written in Ruby, Cucumber can be used to write descriptions (acceptance tests) for software written in Ruby, Java, or .NET. What's more, Cucumber can be used to describe (test) web applications written in any language.

Topics that will be covered:

Introduction to Cucumber
Using Cucumber with RSpec
Using Cucumber with Ruby on Rails
Using Cucumber & Webrat with Java web applications

June 2009

Wed, 03 Jun 2009 11:33:23 GMT

June 11, 2009

6:00 - 7:30 PM

Speaker

David W. Body / Big Creek Software, LLC

Topic

Rack & Metal

One of the most significant changes in Rails 2.3 was Rack integration. Rack integration not only simplifies deployment, but it also enables Rails Metal, which provides a simple way to add super-fast actions to a Rails application. Yet because these change are largely internal, many Rails developers may not even be aware of Rack or Metal — even after upgrading to Rails 2.3.

But Rack isn't just for Rails. Other Ruby web frameworks also include Rack adapters, including Camping, Merb, Sinatra, and Ramaze, to name a few. Web servers providing Rack handlers include Mongrel, WEBrick, Thin, and Phusion Passenger, to name a few. In fact Phusion Passenger, which is often referred to as "mod_rails" could more aptly be named "mod_rack."

Rack is a minimal API for connecting web servers with Ruby web frameworks. How minimal? Here is a simple Rack application:

class HelloWorld
  def call(env)
    [200, {"Content-Type" => "text/plain"}, ["Hello world!"]]
  end
end

David will introduce Rack and explain briefly how it works. We will then look at how Rails and other frameworks use Rack, and how developers can take advantage of Rack.

Topics that will be covered:

Building and running a simple Rack application
Rack integration in Rails, including script/server and rake middleware
Rack middleware
Rails Metal
and more...

May 2009

Wed, 29 Apr 2009 18:30:00 GMT

May 14, 2009

6:00 - 7:30 PM

Topic

RailsConf Recap & General Discussion

RailsConf is May 4-7, 2009, and at least half a dozen members of the Iowa Ruby Brigade will be there. We'll talk about what happened at RailsConf and give everyone who attended a chance to share some new things they learned with the group.

We'll also discuss anything else of interest to the group, so bring your Ruby and Rails questions.

April 2009

Wed, 08 Apr 2009 13:36:50 GMT

April 9, 2009

6:00 - 7:30 PM

Speaker

Cassie Schmitz / PrintWhatYouLike.com

Topic

PrintWhatYouLike.com

In this presentation, Cassie will talk about building her new startup, PrintWhatYouLike.com, an online editor that lets you reformat any web page for printing. Try it out at: www.printwhatyoulike.com Cassie will show how cool Ruby technologies have been used to power PrintWhatYouLike.

Topics that will be covered:

Reasons for moving from Google App Engine to Ruby on Rails
Creating a proxy server
Using Hpricot to parse even horribly invalid HTML
Supporting web pages from around the world
Incorporation of Twitter on homepage
and more...

March 2009

Sat, 21 Feb 2009 02:12:12 GMT

March 12, 2009

6:00 - 7:30 PM

Speaker

Darrin Holst / GeoLearning

Topic

Shoes

Shoes is a lightweight Ruby GUI toolkit for beginners developed by Why the Lucky Stiff. Here's an example of a simple Shoes application:

Shoes.app {
 @push = button "Push me"
 @note = para "Nothing pushed so far"

 @push.click {
   @note.replace "Aha! Click!"
 }
}

Darrin will present an introduction and overview of Shoes, including the recently released "Raisins" version.

For more information on Shoes, see

http://shoooes.net/about/

http://github.com/why/shoes/tree/master

December 2008

Wed, 10 Dec 2008 13:20:45 GMT

December 11, 2008

6:00 - 7:30 PM

Speaker

David W. Body / Big Creek Software, LLC

Topic

Ruby and Rails Debugging

David will lead a discussion of Ruby and Rails debugging tools and techniques, including but not limited to

puts (stdout) and logging
The standard Ruby debugger
Interactive Ruby (IRB) / Rails Console
NetBeans Ruby Debugger
IntelliJ IDEA Ruby Debugger

Everyone is encouraged to share their own debugging tips and techniques with the group.

November 2008

Thu, 23 Oct 2008 00:20:14 GMT

November 13, 2008

6:00 - 7:30 PM

Speaker

David W. Body / Big Creek Software, LLC

Topic

Blocks and Closures in Ruby

People who are new to Ruby can usually learn the basics of the language and start getting work done in just a few hours. That's because most of Ruby's syntax and semantics are familiar to anyone who knows another object-oriented language such as Java, C#, PHP, or Delphi.

However, one of the more unique features of Ruby, and one that sometimes mystifies Ruby rookies, is the Ruby block. What's a Ruby block? Here's a simple example:

  5.times do
    puts "Hello, Iowa!"
  end

The block is the code between the do and end keywords. This could also be written as

  5.times { puts "Hello, Iowa!" }

This time the block is the code inside the {}.

David's presentation will be in three parts.

For Ruby beginners, David will introduce Ruby iterators and blocks, and will show how they work and how you can use them in your own programs. You'll see that it's simpler than you might first think.
For intermediate Rubyists, David will discuss the closely related subjects of closures, and Ruby procs and lambdas. We'll see that procs and lambdas are essentially objects representing chunks of code that operate in the context in which they were defined.
Finally, for all Ruby users, David will talk about the changes in Ruby 1.9 relating to blocks, procs, lambdas, etc.

Something for everyone!

October 2008

Sat, 13 Sep 2008 13:52:44 GMT

Thursday, October 9, 2008

6:00 - 7:30 PM

Speaker

Blaine Buxton

Topic

Advanced Ruby

Ruby is a wondrous language that can do more than just simply power Rails. In this talk, Blaine Buxton will show off his Lazy Enumeration project, which while not a large project shows off a lot of Ruby's most advanced features. Lazy Enumeration was implemented when Blaine read a paper on Higher Order Methods and wanted to play around with the idea. Along the way, the idea was expanded to lazily build collections as well (they calculate collect, select, etc only when necessary). Be prepared to see excellent use of polymorphism and functional programming. Blaine will show how you too can push your Ruby code to greater heights. Bring your thinking caps and curiosity.

Blaine leads the Omaha Dynamic Language User Group.

September 2008

Wed, 10 Sep 2008 12:42:21 GMT

Thursday, September 11, 2008

6:00 - 7:30 PM

Speaker

Cassie Schmitz / Iowa Interactive

Topic

RSpec

RSpec is a behavior-driven development framework for Ruby. Cassie will demonstrate the features of RSpec and describe her experience with using RSpec in her latest Ruby on Rails project.

Topics that will be covered:

Behavior-Driven Development vs. Test-Driven Development
Expressing the expected behavior of your code
Spec::Rails
Story Runner
Mock objects and method stubs
Generating specifications
RCov Coverage tool integration

August 2008

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 23:57:31 GMT

Thursday, August 14, 2008

6:00 - 7:30 PM

Speaker

Frank Luke / Big Creek Software, LLC

Topic

NetBeans

InfoWorld just published a review of nine Rails IDEs and editors, and rated NetBeans 6.1 the highest of the bunch. NetBeans, which is free and runs on Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, and Solaris, even beat TextMate, the editor of choice of the Rails core team.

Frank will demonstrate the Ruby and Rails features of the latest version of NetBeans and will describe his experience using NetBeans as a Ruby IDE on a daily basis for several weeks.

NetBeans Ruby features include:

Ruby project management
Ruby source code editor with code completion
Ruby refactoring support
Support for Test::Unit, AutoTest, and RSpec
Support for running Rails generators and Rake tasks within the IDE
Ruby and Rails Debugger

July 2008

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 12:14:00 GMT

Thursday, July 10, 2008

6:00 - 7:30 PM

Speaker

You

Topic

Tips & Tricks / Q&A / Hackfest

Bring your Ruby questions, puzzlers, tips, & tricks and join us for an open Q&A and coding session. Whether you're a newbie with questions, an intermediate Rubyist, or an advanced Ruby hacker, this meeting is for you. Get your questions answered, share your knowledge, and get to know your fellow programmers.

Please come with at least one question or tip.

June 2008

Tue, 03 Jun 2008 01:23:00 GMT

Thursday, June 19, 2008

6:00 - 7:30 PM

Speaker

David W. Body / Big Creek Software, LLC

Topic

What's New in Rails 2.1?

David will explain and demonstrate the new features of Ruby on Rails version 2.1, which was officially released June 1, 2008, at RailsConf. Rails 2.1 is the result of more than 1600 patches submitted by 1400 contributors in the 6 months or so since Rails 2.0 was released.

New features include:

Time zones
Partial updates
Gem dependencies
Named scope
UTC-based migrations
Better caching

May 2008

Sat, 03 May 2008 12:18:23 GMT

Thursday, May 15, 2008

6:00 - 7:30 PM

Speakers

Luke Amdor / Iowa Student Loan

Ryan Hanks

Topic

Git

Are you ready for an actual version control system that actually stays out of the way? A system that doesn't take umpteen million commands just to work on a branch? Something that doesn't force its workflow on you. Welcome to the world of Git. Git (http://git.or.cz/) is a distributed version control system focused on speed, effectivity and real-world usability. Git was born out of the need for a non-linear distributed workflow for Linux kernel development. Linus Torvald's design criteria were easy: "Take CVS as an example of what not to do. If in doubt, do the opposite."

April 2008

Mon, 07 Apr 2008 23:41:59 GMT

Thursday, April 17, 2008

6:00 - 7:30 PM

Speaker

David W. Body / Big Creek Software, LLC

Topic

Capistrano

Capistrano, a tool for automating tasks on remote servers, has become the de facto standard for deploying Rails applications. But it can be used for many other things, including deploying applications written in other languages and frameworks, as well as general system administration. David's presentation will cover the following topics:

Getting started with Capistrano
Capistrano's requirements and assumptions
Writing Capistrano recipes
Deploying Rails applications with Capistrano
Rolling back changes on remote servers
Using Capistrano for system administration and other tasks

March 2008

Mon, 03 Mar 2008 04:05:53 GMT

Thursday, March 27, 2008*

6:00 - 7:30 PM

Speaker

Luke Amdor / Iowa Student Loan

Topic

Alternative Ruby (JRuby / Rubinius / IronRuby)

*Note: This is a special meeting date. We will return to our normal third Thursday meeting date in April.

Lately there has been a plethora of news surrounding alternative Ruby interpreters: Sun hires the main JRuby developers, Oracle begins deploying JRuby on Rails applications, Engine Yard hires Rubinius developers to work full time on Rubinius, and Microsoft is currently developing it's own Ruby interpreter IronRuby to run on its CLR.

In this presentation, we'll talk about the motivation behind these interpreters, where they're headed, and what impact this is having on the Ruby community.

December 2007

Wed, 19 Dec 2007 01:01:44 GMT

Thursday, December 20, 2007

6:00 - 7:30 PM

Speaker

Josh More / Alliance Technologies

Topic

Web Application Security

Josh More presents an excerpt from SANS 504: Hacker Techniques, Exploits and Incident Handling. We will cover issues like Cross Site Scripting (XSS) and SQL Injection, with examples in a Ruby on Rails application.

Josh More has fourteen years of experience in IT, and seven years working in Security. He has designed, developed, and implemented distributed Linux-based secure products. He has also been the lead for all technical security matters -- ranging from incident handling to prevention -- in multiple companies. From a business perspective, he has consulted on security policy, vulnerability analysis, and strategy. He will be teaching a SANS security course in Des Moines in January 2008.

Meeting Location

Alliance Technologies
400 Locust Street, Suite 840
Des Moines, Iowa

Directions

Park at the ramp at 4th and Grand, or drive around and find a spot on the street. (ramp parking costs $, street parking is free after 6).
Come into the capital square building and take the escalator to the 2nd floor. (If you come in via the skywalk, you will already be on the second floor.)
Walk around to where the elevators are, sign in, and take an elevator to the 8th floor.
Walk towards the near wall, turn left and cross the little bridge. (The big bridge is the wrong way).
Take the first left after you exit the small bridge. Do not turn left until after you have crossed the bridge.

We are in a conference room on the left, after you pass several rooms and cubes. Generally, you can just follow the noise.

If you get lost, call Josh More at: 515-245-7701

Map (Alliance Technologies)

Dinner After the Meeting

If you can, please plan to join us for dinner at a local restaurant after the meeting.

November 2007

Wed, 14 Nov 2007 19:43:26 GMT

Thursday, November 15, 2007

6:00 - 7:30 PM

Speaker

David W. Body / Big Creek Software, LLC

Topic

Object-Oriented Ruby

The fundamentals of object-oriented programming in Ruby are straightforward and easy to learn. But there are some aspects of object-oriented programming in Ruby that are special and set Ruby apart.

Every data type in Ruby is an object, including data types that may be considered primitives in other languages. For example, integers, booleans, and nil are objects. Like other object-oriented languages, Ruby supports inheritance and dynamic dispatch of methods. Although Ruby does not support multiple inheritance, it does allow collections of methods called modules to be "mixed into" classes.

As in other object-oriented languages, Ruby objects are instances of classes. But Ruby classes are themselves objects (instances of the class Class). Yes, that means that Class is an instance of itself!

October 2007

Wed, 17 Oct 2007 15:26:16 GMT

Thursday, October 18, 2007

6:00 - 7:30 PM

Speakers

Mike Gorski, Lead Architect, Outsell, Inc.
Dan Buettner, IT Manager, Gannett Regional Toning Centers

Topic

Real Applications in Ruby on Rails: An Introduction

Ruby on Rails (RoR) is web application framework written in Ruby that implements a Model-View-Controller architecture for database-backed web sites. There are plenty of tutorials available on the web which will guide you through building a simple web application with Ruby on Rails. With this talk we hope to take that one step further by showing an RoR application in the real world.

September 2007

Sat, 28 Jul 2007 13:22:44 GMT

Thursday, September 20, 2007 - Organizational Meeting

6:00 - 7:30 PM

Please join us for our first meeting. We're just getting started, so please let us know how we can best serve the needs and interests of the Iowa Ruby community.

Speaker

David W. Body / Big Creek Software, LLC

Topics

Organizational Meeting
Getting Started with Ruby