Look who’s talking about PHP :)

David, creator of Ruby on Rails recently made a post on his blog related to PHP. He did have some good things to say about PHP and as he rightly pointed out that it deserves some more respect from the community in general.

From his blog post:

I've been writing a little bit of PHP again today. That platform has really received an unfair reputation. For the small things I've been used it for lately, it's absolutely perfect.

I love the fact that it's all just self-contained. That the language includes so many helpful functions in the box. And that it managed to get distributed with just about every instance of Apache out there.

For the small chores, being quick and effective matters far more than long-term maintenance concerns. Or how pretty the code is. PHP scales down like no other package for the web and it deserves more credit for tackling that scope.

I have always respected and utilized them for tasks which leverage their inherent strengths 🙂

anonimit.net is live!

anonimity.net is live!

anonimity.net is an ideal get away from social networking apps. its a one of its kind testbed for anonimity on the web with comments, tagcloud and postflood.

features:

* anonimity at all times

* celebrate anonimity: confess, ask, poll, comment

* track:if you create a login you can track everything. though any which ways we make no distinction between a person who has created the post or is just tracking a post. so at all times we never know who created a post.

* no profile, no friendlist, no community, no followers, no apps, no networking, no poke, no wall posts (thanks, i can hear the applause!)

reasons to pursue this idea:

* people (atleast i,) find social networking today annoying at times. i must thank it for finding my old friends and helping me connect with them but it ends there. now-a-days i find it becoming too intrusive.

* ideal platform for people to share, confess, poll and discuss away from their social network. there is no "me" and along with it there are no inhibitions. One can reach out to this whole world anonymously.

* it would be interesting to see how people interact,react,contribute by being anonymous.

read announcement here:anonimity.net is live !

Pre-monsoon showers hit Mumbai

The pre-monsoon showers have hit the suburbs in Mumbai today. In the afternoon it felt like a furnace outside and now its raining later in the evening. Thats Mumbai for you in all its glory.

Now I take your leave and stand witness to this phenomenon.

Oh! Are you attending the workshop, "From Software Engineering To Engineering Software". I will be taking a session on "Software Engineering and Ruby on a Rails Journey". Meet you there!

Pretty GNU Emacs with XFT goodness

I have been using Emacs for most of my ruby and rails programming. I tend to like it and now I can say that I am an Emacs addict. A week back I stumbled upon this article Pretty Emacs while search for some popular themes for Emacs. I tried installing Emacs from the repositories but the installation was never successful. Later I also followed posts GNU Emacs with XFT goodness and Emacs font joy.

Finally, I have it working(most probably) and here is my screenshot:

emacs

Looks Yummy! isn't it?

Pune Ruby Hackathon !

To start with I said to myself, “I have tried the Half Marathon! Why not try the Hackathon too !! - 22nd July”

I was not sure of taking part in the hackathon as i had never treid RoR, there was still a week to go and not many participants had signed up on their wiki. Even then I just happend to put my name there in the list of participants. There was a faint chance of me going for the hackathon if Shweta (intern at my office) would join in as she has been trying out Ruby on Rails (RoR) for over a month now. I asked her and she was going to leave for Hyderabad a day before the hackathon. I had almost left the idea of joining the hackathon as i had to work a lil harder the same week to meet project deadlines. To cut things short I was surely going to miss the hackathon. Later in the day (I guess Tuesday) something happened (I am not sure wat) but I decided I would give it a try. So, here I was having no clue of RoR but wanting to attend the hackathon a core no-frills geek meet. I took a 15 minute tutorial (LoL) from Shweta on RoR and also got the Agile Web Programming with Rails book (thnks to my office). I would read the book while travelling in the bus and late at night. I could only read it for 3 days.

It was around 11am on 29th July and I typed the first command to start a project in RoR… $ rails mars

If I do not discuss the positives from the event then I won’t do justice to the thought behind organising such an event.

To keep things short

People !

- I met quite a few interesting, friendly and like minded people around.

- Vaibhav Domkundwar from Better Labs who was one of the organisers, was really interested in the proceedings and made everyone feel comfortable. One of the things he stressed on was taking this initiative forward. He also discussed the future potential of the applications with each one personally. He even discussed about his latest initiatives like dealplumber.com and how he wanted the Tech community in India to develop and grow.

- Satish Mishra again from Better Labs made sure that everything was in place. Later after the hackathon he also shared his views on what Better Labs was all about and their india2.0 initiative.

- Pratik who also happened to come down for BarCampMumbai was participating. I had read his blog and even commented on the BarCamp posts. Never happened to to know/speak him (didnt happen to start a conversation with him at the BarCamp). He has been actively involed wtih RoR for around 3 months now. BTW he won the hackathon !
Learning !

- Yup, being there was a learning experience. Though I was not sure of how I would fair at the hackathon but I was sure that I would try to experiment with RoR for 24 hours. Everyone present was helpful and alway ready to share what they knew.
IDeas !

- Everyone was working on their own ideas. The positive vibes around were contagious. Being there was really encouraing.

Future !

- I am sure something like this will catch up soon in other cities too like the BarCamp. Looking forward for more of such geeky encounters.

Deliverables !

- I would surely be realeasing Mars soon to the open source community. This is going to be my second initiative after Qikblogger and I am excited.

Thnks !

Yup, thnks to the organisers and congratulations for a super-successful event.

The MaRaThoN has just begun 😉

HaCKaThoN OveR bUt MaRaThoN bEgiNs

Have been following Ruby and Ruby on Rails(RoR) for some time now. Today (in the last 24 hours) I finally treid it out live at the hackathon. Ruby is coOL and Ruby on Rails is even coOLer! Like there is no smoke without fire… RoR really stands up to the hype (wateva) around it.

I also liked the whole concept of a hackathon. Cheers to Better Labs for initiating it and hearty congratulations for its success.
More about it later…

Hey I was selected as the SiLver Hacker at the hackathon after the evaluations ! Cheers !!! I built a planet application using Ruby on Rails in 36 hours and named it Mars (any guesses y ?). You can know more about it here.

I guess I was waiting for a excuse (?) to start using RoR. Now I am sure its going to be a MaRaThoN run with ruby for company.