This Week's Ruby News - Issue 120

Ruby Weekly - A Weekly Ruby Newsletter
Issue #120 - November 22, 2012
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From the Editor's Desk..
------------------------

Welcome to issue 120 of Ruby Weekly. If you're celebrating Thanksgiving
today, I hope you're having a good one. My thanks go to you for being
subscribed to this newsletter :-) If you do not celebrate, well.. back to
work we go. - Peter.


Featured
--------

Refining Ruby (or The Best Study of Ruby 2.0 Refinements Yet)
http://blog.headius.com/2012/11/refining-ruby.html


  I've editorialized the title somewhat but this article by Charles Nutter is
  a great look into the world of 'refinements' in Ruby 2.0, what they're
  intended for, and all of the challenges they throw up, both for developers
  and language implementers.

The British Ruby Conference.. Cancelled
http://2013.britruby.com/


  It's a pretty long story but the British Ruby Conference, which I was
  getting rather excited about.. is no more. There's a statement as to why
  but if you want to join the melee of conversation, try <a
  href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4803437">here</a> or <a
  href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4801226">here.</a> Luckily other
  attempts are now afoot - news coming soon.

DHH's Latest Project: Colt Heinemeier Hansson
https://twitter.com/dhh/status/271209790674464768


  It's DHH's latest release :-) Congratulations to him and his growing
  family. And before anyone complains about having a human interest story in
  the newsletter, have a heart - it's Thanksgiving.

Edge Rails Now Tested on Ruby 2.0 with Travis CI
https://github.com/rails/rails/pull/8249


  Little to read but Ruby 2.0 is now most clearly on the edge Rails
  developers' radar.


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----------------

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Reading
-------

Deploying Ruby Applications to AWS Elastic Beanstalk with Git
http://ruby.awsblog.com/post/Tx2AK2MFX0QHRIO/Deploying-Ru...

  Just last week, Amazon announced Ruby support for its AWS Elastic Beanstalk
  semi-automated deployment and scaling system. This tutorial by Loren Segal
  fills in all the blanks by walking us through using it from start to finish
  with a Rails app.

Zen and The Art of Speaking at RubyConf 2012 - The dRuby Way
http://blog.new-bamboo.co.uk/2012/11/30/drubyconf-2012


  An excellent story and walkthrough about both preparing a talk for RubyConf
  2012 and what happened while the speaker was there. More articles like this
  please.

The Cost of Ruby 1.9.3's GC::Profiler
http://jamesgolick.com/2012/11/19/the-cost-of-ruby-1.9.3-...

  James Golick presents an examination of the flaws in Ruby 1.9.3's included
  garbage collector instrumentation in his typically punchy style. Luckily he
  presents a potential solution too: GC::BasicProfiler.

Is Your Application Running with Ruby - Slow?
http://spin.atomicobject.com/2012/11/06/is-your-applicati...

  Two developers moved a large Ruby webapp between two machines and
  experienced a 50% drop in performance. Why? Clue: It was something to do
  with RVM.

A 2012 Mac Setup for Ruby development
http://blog.remarkablelabs.com/2012/11/2012-mac-setup-for...

  We see articles like this quite often but there are a lot of handy links
  here despite not being particularly Ruby focused.

A Lightweight 'CMS' Using Ruby and Google Drive
http://spin.atomicobject.com/2012/11/16/a-lightweight-cms...

  An interesting approach to content management. Let users enter text in a
  Google Drive spreadsheet, grab it with Ruby, and use the data to create
  your content or templates locally.

A 'yield' Gotcha Every Ruby Developer Should Be Aware of
http://railsware.com/blog/2012/11/20/yield-gotcha-in-ruby...

  It's not a true yield gotcha but is something you might trip over
  nonetheless regarding earlier than expected returns. Luckily, 'ensure'
  blocks help save the day.

Profiling Ruby (or How I Made Rails Start Up Faster)
http://blog.tddium.com/2012/11/20/profiling-ruby/


  Four steps: measure, find the problem, fix, and repeat.

Riding Rails: The People Behind Rails 4
http://weblog.rubyonrails.org/2012/11/21/the-people-behin...

Concurrency Patterns in Ruby: Futures
http://tx.pignata.com/2012/11/concurrency-patterns-in-rub...


Watching and Listening
----------------------

Guest User Records - RailsCasts
http://railscasts.com/episodes/393-guest-user-record


  Ryan Bates is back with another Rails Cast, this time demonstrating how to
  create a 'temporary guest record' in a Rails app so users can try out apps
  without filling in their information up front.

Matz Speaking at LinkedIn about Ruby
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&...

  Back in October, Matz spoke at LinkedIn about his background, Ruby's
  history, and his current work. I enjoyed this.

Writing Command Line Applications With Ruby: A Presentation
http://launchware.com/articles/writing-command-line-appli...

The Ruby Rogues on 'Practical Metaprogramming' with Steven Harms
http://rubyrogues.com/080-rr-practical-metaprogramming-wi...


Libraries and Code
------------------

Convert Syck to Psych YAML Format
http://darwinweb.net/articles/convert-syck-to-psych-yaml-...

  Change has been afoot with Ruby's attitude to YAML parsing for a while now
  but the shift from Syck to Psych can still cause issues. If you still have
  legacy Syck-produced YAML files around that are causing problems, this code
  might help.

Daybreak: A Simple Key/Value Store for Ruby
http://propublica.github.com/daybreak/


  Very lightweight and very Ruby (in the best possible way).

chruby: Changes The Current Ruby
https://github.com/postmodern/chruby


  An 'ultra-minimal' (around 80 lines) alternative to RVM and rbenv. chruby
  allows one to install rubies into /usr/local/$ruby, /opt/$ruby or
  ~/.rubies/$ruby but install gems into ~/.gem/$ruby/$version. chruby only
  modifies $PATH, $GEM_HOME and $GEM_PATH, and does not hook cd or rely on
  shims.


Jobs
----

Ruby on Rails Developer at Top Agent Network [San Francisco, California]
http://jobs.rubyinside.com/a/jbb/job-details/756017


RoR Developer, Platform at New Relic [Seattle, Washington]
http://jobs.rubyinside.com/a/jbb/job-details/756033


Ruby on Rails Developer at Liaison International [Watertown, Massachusetts]
http://jobs.rubyinside.com/a/jbb/job-details/756113


Software Engineer - Experienced/Senior at Intent Media [New York, New York]
http://jobs.rubyinside.com/a/jbb/job-details/757807



Last but not least..
--------------------

Giles Bowkett: 'I Wrote An eBook In A Week'
http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/i-wrote-ebook-...

  Being silly enough to not send me a copy for review or give me a title, all
  I can do is say Giles has written an interesting sounding book about how
  'DHH gets OOP wrong' but why that's OK. It costs money but hopefully we'll
  see some reviews soon. He does have a no-quibble refund policy, however,
  and his writing is always an eye opener.



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