Videos Now Available
We’re happy to announce that videos of all regular sessions from WindyCityRails 2009 are now available. If you missed a talk, want to see one again, or want to share WindyCityRails knowledge with your colleagues, check out the videos at:
(Link: WindyCityRails 2009 Videos)
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iPhone Apps for Students – define a word, learn the name of a bone, practice your French, or prep for the SAT, iPhone has the smartest apps around.
(Link: Apple – iPhone – Apps for Students)
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Tutorial
Scala Actors — A Short Tutorial
This tutorial is mainly designed as a walk-through of several complete example programs that can be readily compiled and run using Scala 2.4 or newer.
(Link: Scala Actors)
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Scalaz (Scar-lah-zed) is a library written in the Scala Programming Language. One mandate of the library is to depend only on the core Scala API and the core Java 2 Standard Edition API. The intention of Scalaz is to include general functions that are not currently available in the core Scala API. Scalaz is released under a BSD open source licence making it compatible with the licence of the Scala project.
(Link: scalaz – Project Hosting on Google Code)
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To test JRoR, Grails, and Helma, let’s build a music site from scratch with each framework. The sample site, PenguinMusic (shown), allows users to browse songs ordered by popularity, view details about an artist and album, and leave comments if logged in to the application. The application also handles user registration.
(Link: Rails vs. Grails vs. Helma: The JVM Web Framework Smackdown, Part 1 | Linux Magazine)
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Helma is a server-side Javascript environment and web application framework for fast and efficient scripting and serving of your websites and Internet applications.
Helma is written in Java and employs Javascript for its server-side scripting environment, removing the need for compilation cycles and reducing development costs while giving you instant access to leverage the whole wealth of Java libraries out there.
(Link: Helma is a server-side Javascript environment and web application framework)
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The three problems no-one talks about – almost noone, I had a good talk with the Infinispan lead [1] – are:
* adhoc data fixing – either no query language available or no skills
* adhoc reporting – either no query language available or no in-house skills
* data export – sometimes no API way to access all data
(Link: The dark side of NoSQL – Code Monkeyism)
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Scalability
GitHub states it growth as “400 new users and 1000 new repositories every day”. Post migration GitHub will be running on infrastructure spread across 15+ physical hosts/servers. It is essential that the infrastructure can grow with the user base, from 10’s to 100’s of servers, without the need to re-architect everything. Without a doubt, growing without the associated pain is a major objective for GitHub as it moves forward.
Interesting Note: GitHub’s new physical infrastructure (at migration) consists of:
* 15+ physical servers
* 10+ virtual servers
* 128 physical processor cores
* Over 288GBs RAM
* 1TB+ of storage
(Link: Github Migration Architecture)
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Building a Twitter client in Silverlight using Visual Studio 2008 and Expression Blend 3. You can download the source code at :
BESUG Silverlight Workshop @ Thibaut Van Spaandonck’s blog.
These iPhone/iPod touch looking notepads would be great for you iPhone app designers out there:
Laying out a site in simplest terms makes focusing on the usability intuitive. With gray boxes representing complex elements, you’re less likely to get distracted by a visual nuance that might not even be in the final product.
This document illustrates by example the process of building a Virtual Data Center to support a simple web application. Let’s assume that this application does storage and retrieval of large media files; the required infrastructure is:
* A firewall appliance for connecting to the Internet
* A private network connecting the firewall to other systems
* A Linux web server running a LAMP stack
* A Solaris database machine running MySQL for application persistence
* A WebDAV server for the media files
(Link: The APIs for the Sun Cloud: Wiki: HelloCloud — Project Kenai)
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If someone wants to see him, they are told to call and set up the meeting when they can see him tomorrow. So if you want to meet with him next Friday, you call on Thursday and say “Can I see Mr. Buffet tomorrow?”
(Link: Warren Buffet on scheduling meetings – (37signals))
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According to Stephen M.R. Covey, author of “The Speed of Trust,” trust is the confidence one instills in others based on character and competence. Mr. Covey says that a lack of it has a major impact on performance. “Everything slows down in a company with low trust. You see an increase in bureaucracy and redundancy, and excess policies and procedures. Organizations are becoming painfully aware of how expensive this is, and they are taking steps to become trusted players from the inside out,” he says.
(Link: At Work, Are You Trustworthy? – WSJ.com)
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Briefs is a framework for packaging concept screens & control schemes that run live on the iPhone and iPod Touch. This allows you to experience the feel of your concept without the expense of development.
(Link: Briefs: A Cocoa Touch Framework for Live Wireframes)
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