Presenting Rack at Montreal Against Rails

I’ll be presenting Rack this Tuesday at the first Montreal Against Rails (the non-Rails meeting).
I’ll show how to use Rack and then I’d like to try something new (and probably crazy-stupid). Building a web framework with Rack is so easy, I’ll be doing pair programming with anyone from the audience to create our own custom [...]

Ruby on V8

Google Chrome looks cool, ok… But what is even cooler for me is V8, the super JavaScript VM.
JavaScript is a dynamic language, just like Ruby.
You can add stuff to objects at runtime, like Ruby.
It’s object oriented, like Ruby.
It has a GC, like Ruby.
…
What if we could run Ruby on V8?
Well, it’s a lot easier that [...]

You’re just in a giant Object.class_eval block

>> Object.methods.size
=> 85
>> def i_is_in_ur_Object; "kthxbai" end
=> nil
>> Object.methods.size
=> 86
>> String.new.i_is_in_ur_Object
=> "kthxbai"

Careful what you put in there!

The Class and Module love story

In Ruby, Class is a Module which, like any object, has a class.

>> Class.superclass
=> Module
>> Module.class
=> Class

But the crazy thing is, it’s the complete opposite in the implementation.
(Excerpt from ruby.h)

typedef struct {
VALUE super;
struct st_table *iv_tbl;
} rb_classext_t;

struct RClass {
struct RBasic basic;
[...]

You See the Invisible Block?

require "rubygems";require "thin";require"markaby"; class Invisible
HTTP_METHODS =[:get,:post,:head,:put,:delete];attr_reader :request,
:response, :params; def initialize(&block); @actions =[]; @with=[];
@layouts={};@views={};@helpers=Module.new;@app=self; instance_eval(
&block) if block end; def action(method, route, &block); @actions<<
[method.to_s, build_route(@with*"/"+route),block] end;HTTP_METHODS.
each{|m|class_eval "def #{m}(r=’/',&b); action(’#{m}’, r, &b) end"}
def with(route); @with.push(route);yield;@with.pop end; def render(
*args,&block);options=args.last.is_a?(Hash)?args.pop: {};@response.
status=options.delete(:status)||200;layout=@layouts[options.delete(
:layout)||:default];assigns={:request=>request,:response=>response,
:params=>params,:session=>session};content=args.last.is_a?(String)?
args.last : Markaby::Builder.new(assigns,@helpers, &(block||@views[
args.last] )).to_s ; content = Markaby::Builder.new( assigns.merge(
:content => content), @helpers, &layout).to_s if layout; @response.
headers.merge!(options);@response.body=content end;def layout(name=
:default, &block); [...]

RubyFringe == Awesome

Nick Sieger though us about Jazz, Giles Bowkett got a standing ovation, Zed Shaw sang “Matz can’t patch” and “Don’t fuck Chad’s community”, Geoffrey Grosenbach was wearing a kilt, Hampton Catlin presented Haml for Javascript, Damien Katz made me cry and Tom Preston-Werner is my new hero.
Better reviews

http://globalnerdy.com/2008/07/20/rubyfringe-day-1-notes-part-1/
http://globalnerdy.com/2008/07/20/rubyfringe-day-1-notes-part-2/
http://globalnerdy.com/2008/07/21/rubyfringe-day-2-notes-part-1/
http://www.seanr.ca/tech/?p=27
http://www.seanr.ca/tech/?p=30

MeshU slides and code

Code is at http://github.com/macournoyer/meshu

Ruby to C, a couple snippets

As you might already know, the Ruby interpreter you’re (probably) using (the one at ruby-lang.org) know as MRI, for Matz Ruby Interpreter, is written in C. The VM is entirely written in C and most of the standard libraries too. So it seems that the way to make code run faster is really to dive [...]

Staying Alive with Thin!

Thin was the first Ruby server to be able to connect to UNIX domain sockets, giving you a little more speed, so you could spend less time browsing and more time dancing and eating ice creams with the people you love. But only Nginx (that I know of) supports UNIX domain sockets. Non-Nginx users might [...]

MoR7 Presentation

Here’s the code and slides of my presentation : http://github.com/macournoyer/mor7/
Hope you liked it!