Montreal on Rails was yesterday. It was the place to be for Rails and even web people in general. 3 great presentations with really useful stuff, you can actually use. How’s that ?
Ext on Rails
Chris Scott showed the Ext Javascript framework. Lots of cool stuff, really crowd pleaser and exciting. Fancy javascript dialog closing the gap between desktop and web apps. But man does the code reminds me of Swing. Bad, bad, bad memories! Chris strangely claimed that Ext was better then Prototype and that Prototype was the past… I think this is like comparing tomatoes and cream cheese and salmon bagel. Prototype is what Javascript should have been from the start, it’s a framework to write beautiful Javascript code that looks almost like Ruby. Form the demo and by looking at the doc, Ext is a UI toolkit framework. It sure has all the cool stuff Prototype and Scriptaculous has, but I didn’t like the API. With hash arguments like script, callback I sure miss the expressive evalScript and onXXX. Ext looked really verbose on many levels, from event management to layout setuping. Small details you tell me, but “This is all your app is: a collection of tiny details.”. Even though my reluctance here, that was an amazing presentation, though provoking! Nice work Chris!
Authentication with Rails
Chris Lamothe then coded live in front of us a Rails app from scratch using Acts as authenticated plugin. Chris said he’s not a Rails expert, even a beginner, so I think this is an exploit to be able to code a live app in front of a crowd like this. He covered pretty much all you need to know about this and after his talk we all had a brief discussion on other alternative plugins: Restful Auth and Salted password generator. A nice presentation for people starting with Rails, plugins and authentication.
Client side debugging with Firefox
Terje Tjervaag was last with a series of tips on how to debug your Javascript. He started off with a really brilliant quote: “Debugging your javascript should be the last thing you do”. Wow! He advocated unit testing and validating your code before even thinking about debugging. How brilliant and such a nice introduction. I never though about js debugging this way. How come you don’t have a blog Terje ? Living in 1994 ? Come on!
He presented tools like Firebug, HTML Validator, YSlow and Web Developer toolbar. He showed how to used them next, hacking some css and js live in Firebug console.
After his talk he proposed that we (Montreal on Railers) do a RRobots tournament, everyone jumped of joy!
After all this, some people, including Carl, Mat, Camillo, Mathieu, JF, Francois and me got together and grabbed a bite somewhere (I don’t remember where, I was drunk) we had mind blasting discussions and time passed faster then your last vacation.
If you didn’t come because there was no place left, you’ll be happy to know that the next Montreal on Rails is gonna be at our StandoutOffice (if everything goes well on that side). If you come, not only will you be among the most talent web developers in Montreal, you’ll also see where I work ! Oh, how exciting ! Maybe I’ll even let you sit on my chair, but don’t you touch my beautiful thin Apple keyboard or I’ll hit you on the head with my Mighty Mouse!
Thanks to all the people who make this happen!
Update: Heri wrote a better report then mine, (he was not drunk).
7 Comments
September 5, 2007 at 8:41 pm
Haha, I had the same thoughts about extjs, I thought I was back looking back at .Net, with the datasource thingy for the grid and two or three other classes needed. Sometimes, I think some programmers just like to write lots and lots of code, just for the sake of it.
September 5, 2007 at 8:41 pm
[...] for burger and beer. I had an awesome discussion with Marc-André Cournoyer (read his report), Carl Mercier and Francois Beausoleil (who will be doing a presentation on piston next time). We [...]
September 5, 2007 at 9:42 pm
Je seconde pour Ext, ca ressemble trop a Swing! Mais en même temps je peux voir les avantages a vouloir construire le GUI par JS lorsque tout doit être dynamique…
Désolé de m’être furtivement sauvé sans dire bye a tout le monde, la prochaine fois je vais être plus civil et rester pour quelques pichets!
September 5, 2007 at 10:27 pm
An even bigger thanks to the people that come out to, and present at, these events — that’s the only reason they’re any good!
September 6, 2007 at 9:23 am
@jf, hey I forgot about the datasource… ouch
@alain, si tu reste la prochaine fois je te laisse t’assoir sur ma chaise de bureau en premier!
@mat, thanks to all in fact, but you’re still the instigator of all this, the ultimate rockstar of MoR. We should have t-shirts and mug sold with your face on it at the next meeting. I’d buy 2!
Thanks for the comments all, and it was nice seeing you there!
September 6, 2007 at 9:55 pm
[...] Montreal on Rails 2, where I demoed the Acts As Authenticated and RoleRequirement plugins. I think Marc Andre Cournoyer’s review impressed me the most, mainly that “…[it] is an exploit to be able to code a live app [...]
September 11, 2007 at 4:26 pm
[...] Other Reports: 1. Djief 2. Heri 3. Marc-André [...]