Posts tagged Ruby
Daily Wrap: Ruby, PHP and Python Compared and More
Jan 26th
Ruby, PHP and Python are compared in an infographic by Udemy. This and more in today’s Daily Wrap.
Sometimes it’s difficult to catch every story that hits tech media in a day, so we wrap up some of the most talked about stories. We give you a daily recap of what you missed in the ReadWriteWeb Community, including a link to some of the most popular discussions in our offsite communities on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+ as well.
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![[Infographic] PHP vs. Python vs. Ruby](http://rww.readwriteweb.netdna-cdn.com/hack/udemy.png)
The Shift From Watching TV to Experiencing TV
Udemy says that Python is the “most-discussed” language, but if you are looking for a job, PHP is the language to know. The percentages vary across the different job channels, but PHP seems to be more popular among job listings and job titles.
More Must Read Stories:
Microsoft Will Pay Nokia “Billions” To Use Windows Phone
Microsoft paid Nokia $250 million in the fourth quarter to adopt the Windows Phone operating system, according to Nokia’s fourth-quarter earnings report released Thursday.
That was the first in a series of so-called “platform support” payments believed to eventually total billions of dollars. To date, Microsoft and Nokia have been quiet about the deal’s specifics, perhaps because it appears as if Microsoft is paying Nokia significantly less than its paying other cellphone manufacturers. (more)
SoundCloud Goes HTML5, Makes Non-Flash Audio Player Its Default
SoundCloud, the up-and-coming social audio publishing platform, is endorsing HTML5′s role in the future of the Web. Today, the Berlin-based startup is officially rolling out its HTML5 audio player as the service’s default, knocking the original, Flash-based player from that esteemed position. (more)
AT&T CEO Randall Stevenson Blasts FCC, Hints At Higher Prices and Data Restrictions
AT&T has a bone to pick with the Federal Communications Commission. In the mobile operator’s quarterly earnings call this morning, CEO Randall Stevenson blasted the FCC over its leadership in making additional spectrum available to carriers to handle the explosion of mobile data flowing through the operators’ pipes. Stevenson and AT&T are bitter after the FCC blew up its proposed acquisition of T-Mobile. Stevenson said that because of AT&T’s spectrum crunch it will be forced to raise prices and take additional actions against the highest data users. (more)
Why Does the Next Xbox Need Discs At All?
If the next generation of Microsoft’s Xbox gaming system will be designed to bring us well beyond 2020, why would it still rely on last century’s technology, spinning discs, for games?
Videogame blog Kotaku reported yesterday that the next Xbox – still not yet announced by Microsoft – will support Blu-ray discs, and may incorporate some sort of technology that prevents users from playing used games. (more)
Google+ Is Now Open To Teens, Offers New Safety Features
Google VP of Product Bradley Horowitz announced today that Google+ will now be available to teens. Previously, the social network was exclusively for adults over 18, but now anyone with a Google Account can use it (13+ in most countries). (more)
All of Planet Earth Is Now on Google+
Google Earth released version 6.2 today. It patches up some of the choppy textures it used to have, so it now looks like a smooth, realistic surface – no more “quilt effect.” The texture improvements are now in all versions of Google Earth, including the mobile versions. This update also adds Google+ integration. Screenshots from Google Earth can be shared with Google+ circles with a new “share” button. (more)
Twitter Will Censor Certain Tweets In Certain Countries
Twitter will censor tweets in certain countries while still publishing them throughout the rest of the world, the company said Thursday on its blog.
“As we continue to grow internationally, we will enter countries that have different ideas about the contours of freedom of expression. Some differ so much from our ideas that we will not be able to exist there,” the company said. “Others are similar but, for historical or cultural reasons, restrict certain types of content, such as France or Germany, which ban pro-Nazi content.” (more)
Legal Analysis: How the Megaupload Defense Could Proceed
There will be two battles fought simultaneously in defense of Megaupload, the cyberlocker site accused by the U.S. of hosting and publicizing illicit copyrighted material. One is in the public arena, where we can expect the defendant to portray itself as Robin Hood, not so much stealing content from the rich as repurposing it for the poor, the meek, the 99%. It may even get some traction in that arena, but those same tactics may not play so well to a jury. That will be a separate battle whose defense strategy may not be so populist. (more)
Buying a Donut Earns You Facebook Credits
Plink has just announced a Facebook Credits loyalty program in partnership with fast-food chains Dunkin’ Donuts, Quiznos, Red Robin and Taco Bell. Users earn Facebook Credits by joining Plink and logging on with their Facebook credentials and credit or debit cards. Like any loyalty program, the more people purchase, the more Facebook Credits they’ll rack up. (more)
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Infographic: PHP vs. Python vs. Ruby
Jan 26th
Udemy has put together an infographic that compares Ruby, PHP and Python. This looks (briefly) at the history, popularity, ease of use, demand for programmers, benchmarks, and more for each language. If you’re job-hunting, Udemy says that you probably want to know PHP above Ruby or Python.
According to Udemy, Python is the "most-discussed" language, followed by PHP and Ruby. The rankings come from IEEE Spectrum’s analysis of IRC discussions. Udemy also looks at the TIOBE Index, where PHP outranks Ruby and Python.
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For job data, Udemy polls several sources. On Craigslist Udemy finds PHP in the lead with 21% of the listings. Ruby slinks in at 3%, and Python isn’t even on the graphic. (JavaScript is listed at only 9%, but one suspects that it’s going to be in fairly high demand in 2012.) On Monster.com, Udemy finds 305 postings as of December 12, 2011. Ruby has 138 listings, and Python only 79. On LinkedIn, Udemy finds nearly 19,000 folks with "PHP developer" in their descriptions, 720 folks with "Ruby developer" and 1,316 people with "Python developer."
I do wish the Udemy graphic was a bit clearer in terms of what they mean by "lines of code" and what was being tested for the "average run time" results. They did lead me to the paper by Klaus Purer comparing PHP, Ruby and Python though. If you haven’t read it, it’s slightly dated now (released in 2009) but worth a read anyway.
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Free E-Book: Learn Ruby the Hard Way
Aug 5th
Learn Ruby the Hard Way is a free online book on the Ruby language for beginner programmers. It’s an adaptation of Zed Shaw’s Learn Python the Hard Way translated into Ruby by Rob Sobers.
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Learn C the Hard Way is also in progress, but only the first few exercises are up so far. I expect other versions will follow at learncodethehardway.com. Shaw updated the Python version earlier this year, so it sounds like he’s getting serious about bringing out more versions.
For more resources for learning Ruby, check out our list of Ruby books for beginners.
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Ruby Skye: Internet TV For Tweens
Aug 4th
According to research from McKinsey that we looked at yesterday, young people are using online media significantly more than older generations. When it comes to online video consumption, the difference is particularly stark: 84% of "Digital-media junkies" (whose average age is 28) consume online video, compared to 18% of "Traditionalists" (average age 48).
With those statistics in mind, it’s interesting to look at how the entertainment industry is utilizing online media channels more and more. A great example that we came across recently is a web video series called Ruby Skye P.I., aimed at the tweens age group. It’s like a television series, only it’s made specifically for the Web and utilizes "transmedia" channels for content delivery and viewer interaction.
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Ruby Skye P.I. is a detective story made up of 12 video "chapters," each 3-6 minutes long. The videos are hosted on YouTube. Why is each episode just 3-6 minutes long? The show’s creator, Jill Gollick, explained to Wired’s Geek Dad that "a 3-6 minute episode will port over to a mobile or tablet device easily. It can be a quick break between soccer and homework. Or you can sit down and watch all the episodes in a row."
The web series was shot over 15 days in August 2010 and launched in late October. The storyline is about a Nigerian email scam, which Ruby – a 15 year old girl – sets out to solve. The main website features all 12 videos, supplementary material about Internet scamming, recipes and games. Episode one is embedded below.
Ruby Skye has a strong social media profile, including a Twitter account (1,100 followers), a Facebook Page (948 likes) and a YouTube account (17,401 views).
The show’s creator Jill Gollick said in a promotional video that this isn’t just a web series, but a "transmedia franchise." She mentioned HaileyHacks.com (a sister site which appears to be offline currently), a book series and a planned iPad app.
So has Ruby Skye P.I. been a success? Statistics from the social media accounts suggest that it hasn’t.
The web content and transmedia features are solid, if not terribly innovative. However the video production is slick and the storyline educational. Also the lead actor, Madison Cheeatow, is excellent and has a promising future.
Ruby Skye P.I. is just one example of entertainment being delivered over the Web instead of traditional TV. A second series of Ruby Skye P.I. is on the way, called "The Haunted Library." Do you think this is a pointer to the future of Internet TV?
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Ruby Creator Yukihiro “Matz” Matsumoto Joins Heroku
Jul 12th
In 1993 Yukihiro “Matz” Matsumoto decided to a create a new programming language, one inspired by languages like Perl, Python, Smalltalk and Lisp but tuned towards Matsumoto’s own needs and preferences. Matsumoto’s preferences resonated with a lot of developers and today Ruby is one of the most popular development languages around.
Today Heroku, a Ruby platform-as-a-service provider owned by Salesforce.com, announced that Matsumoto is joining the company as the chief architect of Ruby.
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Matsumoto will remain a research fellow at the Network Applied Communication Laboratory and will also retain his position as a fellow at the Rakuten Institute of Technology. However, this is not an honorary position a representative from Heroku told ReadWriteWeb. “Matz will lead a Ruby development team with a mission is to further develop Ruby Core – making Ruby more even more functional and of even higher
quality.”
This seems like a nice break for the company which was hard hit by the Amazon Web Services outage and has faced skepticism from developers since being acquired by Salesforce.com. This hire should boost Heroku’s image in the Ruby community.
Heroku has started branching out into other programming languages, such as Clojure and Node.js, but the company is still, at its heart, a Ruby company.
Heroku competitor Engine Yard employs Ruby on Rails core developer Yehuda Katz and sponsors the JRuby project.
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Twitter Engineer Talks About the Company’s Migration from Ruby to Scala and Java
Jul 6th
Twitter is famous for its use of Ruby on Rails, but as it has scaled the service up it has migrated some of its code to other technologies. The company began by migrating its back-end message queue to Scala (which runs on the Java Virtual Machine), continued by rebuilding its back-end search in Java and most recently replaced its search front-end with a Java server.
InfoQ is running an interview with Twitter engineer Evan Weaver who explains more about the shift.
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Here are a few interesting points:
- The first class languages at Twitter are JavaScript, Ruby, Scala and Java. Soemtimes C is used as well.
- The usage of Ruby is shrinking at Twitter as JavaScript takes over the front-end and JVM-based languages take over the back-end.
- In general, developers at Twitter from a Ruby background prefer Scala, and those with a C/C++ background prefer Java.
- The search team uses Lucene and is experienced in Java. Java is more convenient for them than Scala or Ruby.
- Twitter uses a library called Finagle for building asynchronous RPC servers and clients in Java, Scala or any JVM langauge.
- The move to Scala and Java at Twitter is driven more by a need for encapsulation than for performance and scalability and much of the existing Ruby code is quite workable for the time being.
- Static typing has been a productivity boon as Twitter search has moved towards a service oriented architecture.
The interview also goes into more specific technical reasons for preferring Scala to Rails, such as better vertical integration. Weaver also talks about Twitter’s overall architecture, which was described in the talk we covered here.
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Goliath, a Non-Blocking Ruby Server
Jun 14th
Back in March, well before it was acquired by Google, PostRank released its asynchronous, Ruby-based Web server Goliath.
According to the project page, Goliath is built with the Ruby 1.9 runtime, an EventMachine reactor and this HTTP parser.
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PostRank claims that one of Goliath’s biggest advantages over other asynchronous servers is: “the fact that by leveraging Ruby fibers introduced in Ruby 1.9+, it can untangle the complicated callback-based code into a format we are all familiar and comfortable with: linear execution, which leads to more maintainable and readable code.”
For an explanation of why you might want to use an asynchronous Web server, see our post Wait, What’s Node.js Good for Again?.
(Hat tip Mike Loukides)
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Is Ruby on Rails Losing Its Focus on Simplicity?
Jun 13th
Steve Coast of OpenStreetMap wrote a blog post recently about his view that Ruby on Rails is moving away from its focus on simplicity. He complains that several new features in Rails have made it too complicated for beginners to get started quickly.
Part of Coast’s argument is about the rate of change in Rails, but it isn’t just a matter of wanting to stick to the old ways. “We’re making it perfect and keeping up the number of new things to learn per month for people writing rails for the last few years,” he writes. “But we’re making it harder and harder for anyone to join the club from scratch.”
What do you think? Is Rails going in the wrong direction?
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Picky: A Semantic Search Tool Built in Ruby
May 20th
Here’s another semantic search tool for Web application developers: Picky, a “a semantic text search engine for categorized data, such as varchar fields from a database.” It’s written in Ruby and you can grab the source here.
The developer, Florian Hanke, emphasizes that Picky is not a replacement for for full text search engines like Sphinx and Lucene. It’s just for searching small, structured data very quickly.
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The features include:
- Flexibly configure indexing
- Easily configure handling query text, e.g. splits_text_on: /[\s\/\-\"\&]/
- Multiple data sources (DB, CSV, …)
- Choice of in-memory or Redis indexes.
- Partial searching, pick*
- Phonetic similarity, pecky~
- Categorized searching, napoleon, title:war
- Weighing not only categories, but combinations! { [:title, :author] => +3, [:isbn, :author] => -5 }
- Range queries
- Comfortable routing, route %r{/books} => book_query
You can find out more on the features page.
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Poll: Which Ruby Platforms Will Be Victors Once the Mist Clears?
May 5th
You’d have to change your list almost weekly if you were to put together one of all the cloud computing platforms.
Andy Hu put together a list that includes more than 50 platforms across multiple programming languages and frameworks. It has been updated multiple times, as has Roch Delsalle’s list of PaaS.
For our purposes, we thought it would make sense to start with one category and in weeks following look at platforms across other programming languages and frameworks.
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Let’s start with Ruby, which has some of the deepest roots in the platform community.
What do you think?
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