Danny’s Blog

When I first read (in Why’s (Poignant) Guide to Ruby) about Ruby having ‘destructive’ methods, I couldn’t think why such a redundancy would be necessary in a language. Destructive methods are those ending with an exclamation mark; they are called destructive because they may change the instance its operating on. Take for example the String#gsub [...]

Normally I prefer trying to write an original text of my own; but in this case I can’t help but pass the word. This post thought the words out loud right out of my mouth: Reuse is vastly overrated, by Rails creator David Heinemeier Hansson. Quote:
Reuse only works well when the particular instances are so [...]

I’m not so good at saying goodbyes, so the end of a long term project always brings me mixed feelings: I’m eager to take on something new, start afresh, meet new people, tackle new problems — but I hate saying goodbye to the team of people I’ve been working with so closely, people I’ve seen [...]

In a recent post, Stuart Halloway wrote that his company bids up to 50% lower for projects done with Rails, compared to similar Java projects. For applications ‘nowhere near the Rails sweet spot’ they still bid 10% lower. So the question arises: what is that sweet spot? For what projects would you rather choose Rails [...]

Someone on our (Java) project team has so fallen for Ruby that he is now trying to force the Java code into Rubyesque patterns. He has found an ally for this in the Commons Collections Closure interface. What he seems to want to do in Java is the equivalent of:
sum = 0
list.each { |item| sum [...]

BEA’s Bill Roth (vp of the BEA Workshop Business Unit) hinted at JavaPolis and later in his blog and a LogicCMG blog at the possibility of WebLogic server supporting other languages than Java, like PHP or Ruby. I think this is an interesting idea. If, for instance, Ruby or Rails applications could be deployed to [...]

Back from JavaPolis, and seeing the Rails book lying where I’ve left it last Tuesday, made me pick it up and continue reading — instead of looking into GlassFish, the new persistency API, JSF and all the other new stuff I’ve seen in Antwerpen. It’s all alpha, beta, preview releases; and even if it isn’t [...]

Lesson learned: a hotel which advertises with ‘WiFi’ as one of its rooms’ facilities may actually charge a substantial amount of money for that service; do not assume that it’s included in the room price. Not that I can’t afford 22 euros for a day of WiFi access, or that my employer wouldn’t pay it [...]

Like I wrote earlier, it’s frustrating to learn a new language when you don’t get to use it straight away. So I’ve come up with 10 creative ways that will get you started today with making big money (or fame) with your newly acquired Ruby skills.
1. Convince the company where you’re currently doing a Java [...]

The battle of Ruby vs. Java is breaking loose big time. You haven’t heard? Seriously? Well, I’m not going to add yet another blog entry with a summary of the whole discussion started by Martin Fowler; you’ll find an excellent summary on The Farm (but don’t stop there; you don’t want to miss, for example, [...]