There was a Script Bowl contest at JavaOne , pitting Groovy, JRuby, Jython and Scala against each other in a set of application challenges.

Long story short: JRuby ruled .

The client application entry was a Monkeybars Twitter app. It won, of course

Note: edited to correct for idiotic use of SunOne instead of JavaOne.

Happy Camper Studio’s own David Koontz will be part of an impressive Ruby panel at the upcoming Java CommunityOne

David will be joined by JRuby luminary Thomas Enebo (Sun Microsystems, Inc.), Rich Manalang (Oracle), Mark Driver (Gartner), and others.

All of us fellow Campers are damned proud of David’s pioneering work with Monkeybars, and if you’re at all interested in super-sweet cross-platform GUI application development you have to check it out.

David will be attending both CommunityOne and JavaOne, and if you’re also going be sure to catch the Ruby panel and then track him down to learn more about the future of Ruby desktop development

ruby, groovy Job Trends

ruby jobs – groovy jobs

Pretty groovy!

On this date in 1976, The Ramones released their self-titled debut album. 14 songs in less than 28 minutes. It contained the singles, “Blitzkrieg Bop” and “I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend”. The singles didn’t chart and the best the album could muster was a peak at the #111 spot on the U.S. albums chart. Nonetheless, legend was born. The legendary punk band from Queens, NY turned in their leather jackets for good in 1996.

From The Post Punk Progressive Pop Party

See also Bands That Changed Everything: The Ramones

This could seriously rule.

Though, of course, I have little expectation they would play in Phoenix.

Found via boing-boing

There are many people doing outstanding work in Rubyland. Some are doing it to scratch their own itch; some are doing it to give back to a great developer community, and some are just trying to make a buck. Few of them want or expect any awards for what they do. (Well, those looking to make a buck excepted.)

No matter. Chances are, whether you’re a Ruby Nuby or hard-core Ruby hacker, your life (or your code, at least) has been improved because of what these folks have done. And, chances are, while you may think highly of them, you probably have never taken the time to actually let them know.

Well, you should.

Be a Ruby hero. Drop an E-mail to someone whose blog post got you thinking a little more clearly or whose gem or patch maybe saved you hours of work. If, at a conference, you run into someone whose efforts have made things even just a little better for you, say thanks, and offer to buy a coffer or a beer.

Don’t take things for granted. Step up and say thanks. You don’t need a committee to tell you who the heroes are; you already know.

Think for yourself, act for yourself, take the initiative. say “Thanks”, and be a hero to them.

Warning: Do not watch this if you are wearing good pants.

You will wet yourself laughing.

Rockin’ Our Sales

Before.

After.

Soon to be shipped off to Locks of Love.

... with the Google App Engine SDK JumpBox.

Google recently announced a new cloud based application deployment system called Google App Engine. We found this to be a pretty interesting system and since the SDK they released is Open Source we decided to put together a JumpBox for it.

It’s a great solution if you want to play with the Google App Engine SDK without really installing it on your system. It’s also perfect as an integration point for a small team working together on a Google App Engine project.

Google made it possible to build applications for App Engine using several different mechanisms and the JumpBox comes with CGI, Google Webapp and Django environments setup and ready for development. It’s also a really great way to just kick the tires of the different frameworks before committing to development.

Also, since this is a JumpBox our backup system is included which allows you to backup your source code and development data to network shares or Amazon S3.

Land of Lisp, or, ‘Functional Programming is Beautiful’

Well worth your time. :)

Brian Shaler posted The Phoenix Tech Community over on his blog.

I posted a comment:

Thanks for an interesting post.

Some comments: ReadPhoenix may have 100+ listings, but not all are tech. Many are graphics design or marketing focused. The site does not make it easy to know what the various blogs are about. You pretty much have to look at each one to see for yourself. I’d guess there are about a dozen that are about tech (i.e., software/hardware development).

Thanks for the mention of Refactor Phoenix. Attendance at each meeting varies, but it seems to be tied to expectations of a formal presentation. Personal experience tells me that very few Valley geeks want to hang out in the evening for the sake of geek socializing. They will come if they think they will get a free lecture that might help them in their job, but otherwise it’s a tough draw. And even fewer geeks are willing to step up and offer to give a presentation.

I’m believing that a big difference between here and places such as Seattle or S.F. is that Phoenicians are far more passive, far more interested in being spectators than doers.

I’d love to be proven wrong. There’s some level of frequent socializing in the Web design/Web marketing crowd, but for pure tech geekery (that is, people who write actual software or build actual hardware) things are pretty glum.

Unless your event has a sales/marketing/entrepreneur spin (Refresh, Social Media Club), or an ass-load of free, job-related talks (CodeCamp), the geeks stay home.

I’ve reposted it here hoping to get some feedback. I’d like to hear opinions to the contrary, or hear how the situation can be changed.

I’ve spoken with people who run various local user groups (I run the Phoenix Ruby Group and Refactor Phoenix ). Most told me that meeting attendance is directly correlated with having formal technical talks, with particular topics drawing more than others. I understand that few people have the free time to be attending geek gathers multiple times a month, so there’s some selection pressure, but there’s also a heavy emphasis on job pragmatics. It seems few people are geeking for the fun of it.

If you look at the attendance for self-organized events, such as BarCamp Phoenix or Phoenix Happy Dev House, you’ll find (relatively) very few people, and generally the same people. Most folks just don’t care.

Plus there is a strong tribal element. Web designers tend to want to hang with Web designers; .Net folks will stick to net groups, and so on There are exceptions, but rare. People find some comfort level in their little community and prefer to stay isolated than broaden their horizons. Perhaps it a “big fish, little pond” thing.

I’ve been trying, with Refactor Phoenix, to create an agnostic geek commons, a gathering that tries to step away from one or another single-technology focus. I’m losing my enthusiasm, though. I’m increasingly of the mind that, despite the efforts of about a dozen or so outstanding Zonies who do put the effort into making things happen, Phoenix may just not be the place for this.

Prove me wrong.

Appears Cox has removed TCM from the basic cable tier and moved it to an over-priced digital package. TCM shows some great movies, commercial free.

Thanks, scumbags.

Curiously, although they reduced the service, my bill is not going down.

Thanks Cox, for once again being a real douche bag company.

A few years ago they used to carry Maricopa Community College TV; I got to watch German television rebroadcast in the wee hours on MCC. Cox then moved that to the digital cash-cow; when they republished their channel listings, they had 99 (the former home of MCC-TV) described as “educational programming.” And what were they showing? Round-the-clock infomercials.

They must be real proud of their commitment to education and quality service.

I tossed up 2 shots of the Ramaze gang from MountainWest RubyConf 2008

Videos have started to go online:

http://mtnwestrubyconf2008.confreaks.com

The one to keep an eye out for: Ruby Internals. One of the better ones, maybe the best (though Evan’s talk was quite good, too, so go watch that one now).

Note: This post incorrectly said that GitHub was an Engine Yard offering; GitHub is from Logical Awesome, with Engine Yard handling the hosting.

There are at least some Rubyists using git , and Engine Yard Logical Awesome has a site, github, that offers git project hosting. I’d heard interesting things, and requested a beta account.

Ordinarily, though, I use Mercurial, and when on ruby-talk someone asked about “hghub”, someone else replied that there was sharesource.org .

I requested an account there, too.

Here’s a simple, but perhaps telling, comparison of my brief experience with each:

Sign up: github was very simple, requesting minimal information. sharesource wanted a bit more, including by birthday. It was not clear to me just why that was needed, but it was required.

Access: Once registered on github I could start using the site right away. sharesource needed me to reply to a confirmation E-mail.

Project creation: I did not want to just toss a real project into an unfamiliar tool; I wanted something I could play with to decide if either of these services would be keepers. Sharesource asked me to fill out a project submission form, where I had to justify my project; I asked for testproj and explained that the purpose was to experiment and become familiar with the service. A few hours later I got an E-mail denying my request. Apparently such projects are considered “rubbish”; no toy or sandbox projects allowed.

Github had no pre-approval requirement. I was easily able to create a testproj repo, get it running locally, and start playing around right off the bat.