RubyJax

Update 2009-06-15: Check out the video from pair programming night!

• when: Tuesday, May 26th, 7pm
• where: Hashrocket, 320 1st St. N., Suite 712, Jacksonville Beach, FL 32250

Pair up and code something, anything! The last time we did a pair programming meeting, it was a really great time.

Photo by Obie Fernandez

We hope to repeat that, but this time with huge 30” monitors…

Photo by Obie Fernandez

Come hack with us at the Hashrocket office. We’ll have topics to code on if you can’t think of anything.

Sorry for the late notice, trying to squeeze this meeting in before the end of the month.

Chad Bearden of Bear Den Designs has graciously offered up his space to host the April edition of our RubyJax monthly meeting. As usual Hashrocket will be sponsoring refreshments. Thanks to Bear Den Designs for providing refreshments this time out!

• where: 1532 Riverside Ave, Jacksonville, FL 32204
• when: Thursday, April 23rd, 2009 7:00PM – 9:00PM

If you have a topic you’d like to see discussed please let us know. In the event that nobody suggests a topic we’ll practice some Ruby-fu by collaborating on some Code Katas as a group.

• who: Carol McDonald, Bridget Hillyer
• where: Hashrocket Offices, 320 First ST N, Suite #712 Jacksonville Beach, FL 32250
• when: March 24, 2009, 7PM-9PM

Tell the doorman you are here for RubyJax at Hashrocket in suite #712

Groovy and Grails with Netbeans , Glassfish and MySQL Grails aims to bring the “coding by convention” paradigm to Groovy. It’s an open-source web application framework that leverages the Groovy language and complements Java Web development.

Groovy is an agile and dynamic language for the Java Virtual Machine, it compiles to Java bytecode, and it combines popular features from languages such as Smalltalk, Python, and Ruby.

Grails is a Model-View-Controller based framework that simplifies the development of web applications by reducing the need for configuration files and by generating a lot of the things needed in a database-backed Web application. However Grails is not just a web framework but rather a complete software stack including an advanced build system; an integrated object-relational mapping (ORM) layer built on Hibernate; and advanced domain-specific languages (DSLs) for performing common tasks such as validation, URL rewriting, and querying.

This session will help you get up to speed with the features offered by the Groovy language & Grails framework.

Content:

Grails Basics and Netbeans 6.5
Domain-driven development with Grails
Orchestrating requests with controllers
Groovy Views with GSP
configuring for MySQL
running on Glassfish  
Using JPA entities with Grails

We will go over code examples from these blog entries:

http://weblogs.java.net/blog/caroljmcdonald/archive/2009/02/building_a_grai_1.html

http://weblogs.java.net/blog/caroljmcdonald/archive/2007/10/sample_catalog.html

http://blogs.sun.com/enterprisetechtips/entry/combining_groovy_grails_mysql_and

Carol McDonald

As a Java Technology Evangelist at Sun Microsystems, Carol McDonald has spoken at various conferences including JavaOne, Java University, Sun Tech Days, Sun Network, Sun Code Camps, JDJEdge, and JUGs including Machester, Boston, Maine, Cologne, FAA, Richmond, Memphis, D.C… Carol blogs about the latest technologies that she is speaking about at http://weblogs.java.net/blog/caroljmcdonald/. Before returning to Sun in 2007, Carol worked 2 1/2 yrs as an Architect on massive OLTP Spring/hibernate application to manage > 10 mill loans for the consumer credit division of a leading automoblile manufacturer and a leading bank. Before joining Sun the first time in 1999 Carol worked on Pharmaceutical Intranet applications for Roche in Switzerland, a Telecom Network Management Application for Digital (now HP) in France, a X.400 Email Server for IBM in Germany, and as a student intern for the National Security Agency. Carol holds a M.S. in Computer Science from the University of Tennessee, a B.S. in Geology from Vanderbilt University, and is a Sun Certified Java Architect and Java Language Programmer. Carol is also Fluent in French and German.

Update 2009-03-26

• Bridget’s presentation
• Carol’s presentation

Tonight’s meeting will be moved to the Hashrocket offices.

320 1st St N, Suite 712 Jacksonville Beach FL

Tell the doorman you are here for RubyJax at Hashrocket in suite #712

Take the left elevator.

map

Same time. Same topic. Same fun. Please spread the word.

• who: Matt “Veez” Remsik
• where: Hashrocket Offices, 320 First ST N, Suite #712 Jacksonville Beach, FL 32250
• when: February 17, 7pm

Tell the doorman you are here for RubyJax at Hashrocket in suite #712

Ever wanted to write a web app in an hour? Get the chance to release a basic but functional Rails site developed in The Hashrocket Way with Veez. We’ll review some basic concepts of the Ruby on Rails framework before live-coding an app that will be test-driven and demonstrate accepted best practices. And best of all, the source codes will be available on github for your forking pleasure!

Update 2009-04-05: Here’s the video of the presentation…

Next meeting is tues, feb 17.

Veez is talking about rails.

• who: Big Tiger
• where: Navigator Coffee Squadron, 7643 Gate Pkwy, Jacksonville, FL 32256 (904) 928-0048
• when: Tuesday, January 20, 7-9pm
• what: ThinkingSphinx – Intro to Full-text and Geospatial Searching

Tired of rolling your own search? Want to define what data is indexed in your ActiveRecord models? What if you could get all of this AND be able to search by geographical information for next to nothing? Look no further, we will be covering basic ThinkingSphinx setup through a full location based search. You’ll see step by step how to set up and execute full-text searching while you drink beer and eat pizza courtesy of Hashrocket.

The next meeting is this Wed. 12/10. See this for the deets. (And yes I did just type “deets.”) (I know I’m a dufus.) (Yes, I am OK with it.)

Our next meeting will be a joint venture between RubyJax and RefreshJax.

Tom Rossi of The Mole Hill will be speaking about his business, success and the challenges they’ve faced and still face. How he and his partner Kevin Finn work together, make decisions and he will reveal the secrets you need to become an internet millionaire almost over night.

The meeting will take place on Wed. Dec. 10th at 7:00pm at Navigator Coffee Squadron, 7643 Gate Pkwy, Jacksonville, FL 32256 (904) 928-0048 map

Pizza and Beers will be generously donated by Hashrocket, so be sure to invite your homeless friends.

Go read this

• Who: General discussion
• What: RubyConf wrap up
• When: Wed 11/12 at 7:00 PM
• Where: Navigator Coffee Squadron, 7643 Gate Pkwy, Jacksonville, FL 32256 (904) 928-0048 map

Here are the slides from Will’s talk last night.

• Who: Will Reed
• What: Website Performance Tips and Tricks
• When: Wed 10/29 at 7:00 PM
• Where: Navigator Coffee Squadron, 7643 Gate Pkwy, Jacksonville, FL 32256 (904) 928-0048

We will be having a meeting in September. The meeting will be on Tues. 9/30 (the last possible date to have a September meeting). The meeting will be at Navigator Coffee Squadron on Gate (see the previous posts for map). The meeting will be at 7:00PM. The meeting will last for two hours (or so). The meeting will showcase a presentation by our own L4rk. He will talk about stuff. This stuff will likely include stuff about Selenium testing with Rails. Should be good stuff. If you do not attend the meeting you will miss the meeting.

See you there. And remember, l4rk loves you. _{(and so does Big Tiger)}

Testing as Communication, Real-World Techniques

• who: Jon “Lark” Larkowski
• where: Navigator Coffee Squadron, 7643 Gate Pkwy, Jacksonville, FL 32256 (904) 928-0048
• when: Tuesday, September 30, 7-9pm

This session covers how Hashrocket, an experienced Ruby on Rails consultancy, uses a wide range of real-world testing techniques and agile methodologies every day to satisfy client customer requirements. It will describe the life cycle of our testing workflow, from story capture to customer acceptance. This includes an overview of: fine-grained requirements gathering in “user story” form; how we manage stories and communicate transparently with the client using a web-based tracking tool; how story-driven development is expressed as test-driven development; and, how we enhance client/developer communication by writing plain-text tests in the vocabulary of the customer’s domain. In this session, you will learn how to turn natural-language requirements into running code that both customer and developer alike can communicate around; how to express customer requirements at the appropriate levels of abstraction, from high-level integration tests all the way down to granular unit tests; and, how to properly employ the latest tools, such as RSpec, StoryRunner, Selenium, Webrat, and fixture factories.

Brian Dainton of FiveRuns will be presenting at the next RubyJax. He will be talking about “Working with XMPP in Ruby.” He’ll also be talking a bit about working at FiveRuns, the tools they use, the problems they’ve overcome and scaling a big app.

Brian is a special guest star and is flying to Jax from Texas just to visit with us. He spoke at RailsConf and is one of the top Rails folks in the country. This is one meeting not to miss!

The meeting will take place on Thursday Aug 21 at the Navigator Coffee Squadron (which used to be called Sipper’s) at 7:00 PM.

7643 Gate Pkwy
Jacksonville, FL 32256
(904) 928-0048
map

• RubyJax is BYOB (even at Navigator).
• Coffee, Tea, Smoothies, pastries, bagels, muffins and stuff will be available for purchase. Please support Navigator, they are not charging us and are staying open just for us, so please buy something.