Tracks at Ruby Fools Oslo 2008

Tracks at Ruby Fools Oslo 2008 Thursday Advanced Web Application Development Beginning Ruby and Rails Ruby Interpreters Friday Advanced Ruby and Rails Alternative Web Frameworks Programming Tools

Advanced Ruby and Rails Ruby is a very dynamic language, and that leaves a lot of room for exploration. Weird and wonderful ideas have emerged from the creative world of Rubyists that would never be possible with statically-typed languages as C# and Java. In this track, we will have a look at some of these interesting technologies and how to use them. Advanced Web Application Development This track will explore the power of Ruby when it comes development of web applications. Various advanced topics in Rails development will be discussed, including the newest trends and technologies in designing restful applications and AJAX development. Alternative Web Frameworks It seems like everyone who knows Ruby knows Rails as well, and Rails has been given credit for the recent rise in popularity of the Ruby language - but who says that Rails will answer all of your prayers? And even if it does, knowing what is out there always makes your choice of tool or technology a more enlightened one. In this track we will give an introduction to some of the alternatives.	Beginning Ruby and Rails Ruby is no longer the "unknown" language. It has become known by developers around the world and is the preferred language by many. Ruby gets the best from the object-oriented, functional and imperative worlds, but most of all it is fun! However, Ruby is not a "beginners" language and this track will introduce the language in the best possible way. It is almost impossible not to have heard about Ruby on Rails! Ruby on Rails, or just 'Rails', is a framework for building web applications in Ruby. By convention over configuration Rails makes it fast to build functional database-backed web applications, but Rails is also a great way to get introduced to the Ruby language. We will get an overview of Rails and get you ready to build your first Rails application! Programming Tools Whichever language you prefer, having proper tools support is important for your productivity. Statically typed languages like Java or C# enjoy IDEs with lots of advanced features for helping the programmer type in the code. In a dynamically typed language like Ruby, creating such IDE features is a lot harder. However, advanced Ruby IDEs are finally becoming mainstream. We will have a look some of the most popular IDEs. When you cannot get your IDE to automatically create working code for you, test-driven development becomes a more natural choice for the development process. Thus, the Ruby world has been very keen on test-driven development, and the dynamic nature of Ruby allows for some interesting approaches to testing. We will be guided through a couple of frameworks that ease the testing process. Ruby Interpreters When Ruby was designed, performance was not a first priority. Instead, we got a great, dynamic language that everyone can use, but Ruby is often criticized for having bad performance. However, performance in today's solutions is crucial, and new Ruby virtual machines are popping up with greater performance than the standard implementation. In addition, these new VMs offer new possibilities in regards to interoperability with e.g. the Java and .NET platforms. We will run through the most important new, exciting developments in the Ruby VM world.