With so much buzz about Ruby and its killer app Rails, we're going to
follow up on last year's track with a Ruby (+ On Rails) track before
moving on to other topics we have planned (including the Functional
Language Track).

I'll post the formal announcement in short order, but I just wanted to
make sure it was clear that we are starting the Ruby (+ On Rails) Track
next Tuesday--11/15.

To prepare, I suggest spending some time between now and Tuesday coming
up to speed on the Ruby basics. We'll spend a short time on these in the
track, so participants who are coming in cold can follow Rails when we
get there.

I'm copying Wayne's suggestions again, below, for entry points into
Ruby. Please come to the meeting at least having familiarized yourself
with the Ruby syntax. I know Wayne, Bob and Dave have in mind that this
will be a fairly hands-on track, so you should also try writing a simple
program if you have no experience in Ruby. (If you have problems setting
up your environment or something, everyone will understand, but at least
give it a try).

Speaking of Hands-on, if you have a laptop, please bring it to the
meeting with Ruby and Eclipse/RDT installed.

Windows users should probably install Ruby with the "One-Click
Installer": http://rubyforge.org/projects/rubyinstaller/

- Russ

------- Suggestions From Wayne ------

Books and Software for the Rails Track

For Ruby, the best tutorial and reference is the 2nd Edition of
"Programming Ruby" available in paper and/or PDF from
http://www.pragmaticprogrammer.com/titles/ruby/index.html

Free information on Ruby:

"Programming Ruby" 1st Edition, available online in slightly different
formats at:
http://www.rubycentral.com/book/
http://www.whytheluckystiff.net/ruby/pickaxe/
Note that this covers Ruby 1.6, rather than the current 1.8. But in
general it's still applicable.

why's (poignant) guide to ruby
http://www.poignantguide.net/ruby/

The main text we'll be using in the track (supplemented with some
other free material) is "Agile Web Development with Rails" available
in paper and/or PDF from
http://www.pragmaticprogrammer.com/titles/rails/index.html

As this track focuses on Rails rather than on Ruby per se, if you're
buying only one book we'd suggest the "Agile Web Development with
Rails" book.

Software:

If we all install the same environment, we'll be able to work together
consistently. There aren't many cross-platform choices currently
available. The one we picked is RDT, the Ruby plugin for Eclipse.
http://rubyeclipse.sourceforge.net/

Don't install Rails 0.14.1. It has a bug that keeps a number of
the examples in the Agile Rails book from working. 0.13.1 works
fine, as does 0.14.2. It's probably best to get the latest available
version, currently 0.14.2 (aka Rails 1.0 RC3).
http://www.rubyonrails.com/

Two good choices for database are:

MySQL: I recently installed MySQL 4.1, because 5.0 was still beta at
the time. It went fairly smoothly, except the install failed (on
Win32) because I had an older version of the MySQL service installed.
Uninstalling the service resolved the problem. Rails comes with a
MySQL driver. For any other database you'll need to install a driver
(usually not a big deal). Another advantage to MySQL is that all the
examples in the Agile Rails book use MySQL. If you use another
database you'll probably have to change the table definitions.
I haven't tried MySQL 5.0. In the past I've had driver incompatibility
problems between different MySQL versions. I don't know if that's
an issue this time.
http://www.mysql.com/

SQLite: This is the easiest database to install. Just copy a dynamic
library to someplace the OS can find it, and you're done!
http://www.sqlite.org/

There's no reason you can't install both databases. Switching between
databases is easy in Rails, just a few simple changes to one file.