tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-177777622012-02-15T22:59:42.297-08:00Observations from a CIO lost somewhere in North Carolina...John Wellshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02781599057887051142noreply@blogger.comBlogger151100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17777762.post-81578279449303344702010-04-28T19:19:00.000-07:002010-04-28T19:23:24.191-07:00

Tonight, I ran across a post on RubyInside.com very cool project called DrX that allows you to visually inspect ruby objects. I ran into a few issues getting it running on Ubuntu (Lucid) and wanted to help others in case you run into them.Here's all you need to do to get DrX running (assuming you already have ruby installed):$ apt-get install libtk-ruby tk-tile graphvizThat should fix all your

John Wellshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02781599057887051142noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17777762.post-63284076670497875612010-02-02T20:26:00.000-08:002010-02-02T20:35:24.754-08:00

I'm trying to like RubyMine. I really am. But certain things are slow, features are broken, and JetBrains can't seem to get the forums or bug tracker to work reliably enough to discuss the problems. But that's for another post...I have just a quick moment to relay something I hope helps others.I've been using the IdeaVIM plugin provided along with RubyMine for weeks now, but one very irritating

John Wellshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02781599057887051142noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17777762.post-1490374419084331872007-05-04T06:09:00.000-07:002007-05-04T06:29:35.712-07:00

So I'm in a bit deeper into learning .NET and ASP.NET, and I have to admit I like a lot of the features I see. The platform in general seems very well-designed, and I feel somewhat compelled to give it a shot.However, I'm curious...for a small entrepreneur trying to bring a web application or a rich client to market, what sort of licensing fees can one expect? I realize that Microsoft has the ISV

John Wellshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02781599057887051142noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17777762.post-76680329961682912532007-03-23T06:37:00.000-07:002007-03-23T13:52:14.621-07:00

(update...I need to clarify as some have misunderstood me...Rails did indeed get much better by adding mongrels, but going from 10 mongrels to 20 had a slightly negative impact. I've added the comparison between 1 and 10 mongrels at the end of this post)After reading Graeme's benchmark of Rails versus Grails last night, I was troubled. Something didn't seem right, but I couldn't put my finger on

John Wellshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02781599057887051142noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17777762.post-36849064114732998612007-03-22T18:17:00.000-07:002007-03-23T03:12:51.154-07:00

Graeme Rocher of the Grails project has responded to my initial post and put his money where his mouth is. This performance comparison of Grails versus Rails was surprising to read...I plan on going back through it and running it myself, but in every test so far...Grails beat Rails handily. And this, according to Graeme, is an unoptimized version of Grails.I look forward to constructive criticism

John Wellshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02781599057887051142noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17777762.post-85795456731980804132007-03-22T11:16:00.000-07:002007-03-22T18:15:26.302-07:00

(update...damned blogger was blocking comments. I apologize if you tried. They should be enabled now) I'm getting old. Know how I can tell? Because I've been looking towards .NET in the last year or so with more and more curiosity. I've done a good job avoiding it up until now, but have to be honest regarding the reasons why. It all started around ten years ago at a graduate school far, far away.

John Wellshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02781599057887051142noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17777762.post-90034034706320643512007-03-19T19:14:00.000-07:002007-03-20T07:29:30.435-07:00

Ok, I've been dipping my toe into Groovy for the past week or so, including some Grails thrown in for good measure. I like what I see. In a previous life, I was a long-time Java developer, and even after a shift to management almost four years ago, I still code on an almost daily basis.I've been searching for awhile now for a dynamic language to use as our "standard" in-house "scripting" tool.

John Wellshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02781599057887051142noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17777762.post-24505022637149767592007-03-05T07:09:00.000-08:002007-03-05T08:03:59.798-08:00

I often find myself wanting to capture sections of my screen to an image. Since I'm on Linux, the typical thing I do is fire up the Gimp and use its capture tool to snapshot a window, and then crop the window to contain the content I'm after. It's as cumbersome as it is functional.I work with a few folks who use SnagIt for Windows. With it, they can do in one step what takes four in the Gimp, and

John Wellshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02781599057887051142noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17777762.post-12546069819735243832007-03-04T18:08:00.000-08:002007-03-05T07:42:32.204-08:00

(UPDATE: I was getting null pointer exceptions with the March 3 build. I downloaded the March 4 build at work this morning and those exceptions have gone away. The specific build I'm using is netbeans-6_0-daily-bin-200703041900...please use this to avoid the problems I was having)After a long time using RadRails for Ruby/Rails development, I've finally grown tired of waiting on updates. No knock

John Wellshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02781599057887051142noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17777762.post-78673420899082752322007-02-28T06:28:00.000-08:002007-02-28T06:37:12.803-08:00

Wow...applied a gift certificate at Amazon.com last night to buy Groovy in Action...suddenly, I'm $9,999,999,964.51 richer. An instant billionaire!(Wonder if they'll make me accept payout in books? Hmm...well, ok).

John Wellshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02781599057887051142noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17777762.post-1159543547380447292006-09-29T08:21:00.000-07:002006-11-19T19:44:37.690-08:00

Response from Charles O Nutter of the JRuby project:Not sure if you want replies on the blog or not, but the scenario you illustrate should be easily possible in the future.As you mention, we do have plans for a compiler...both AOT and JIT, so if you have a Rails app you want to compile ahead-of-time, you can.We're also not dependent on anything other than core Java 1.4 (potentially Java 5 in the

John Wellshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02781599057887051142noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17777762.post-1159292474494989382006-09-26T10:37:00.000-07:002006-09-26T11:30:58.286-07:00

I've been pushing one of our Java developers to give Ruby a try. He's resisted so far and we rib him quite a bit about it. As part of an email thread this morning, I responded with the following modified quote, which seemed to go over well and resulted in a request to post it to the web. Forgive me, Mr. Lucas:Ruby: There is no escape. Don't make me destroy you. Dave, you do not yet realize your

John Wellshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02781599057887051142noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17777762.post-1159288671988379622006-09-26T09:24:00.000-07:002006-09-26T12:16:15.903-07:00

I really enjoy Rails. I've worked with a few pet Rails projects here and there and trust me...as an old Perl/PHP/Java guy, there are some very nice benefits that you quickly take for granted when you implement an idea in Rails.However, I'd really like the ability to write a web application in Rails and distribute this to potential customers as an executable. Some ideas I have don't mesh very well

John Wellshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02781599057887051142noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17777762.post-1131038542830604052005-11-03T09:19:00.000-08:002007-02-18T09:25:10.686-08:00

Ah...the joys of configuration and release management...We've been having discussions of how best to manage releases in our group at work. Using the Pragmatic Version Control book's chapter on tags and branching as a starting point, we're working our way towards a more efficient process across all of our applications.I have long held the belief that you should check into version control early and

John Wellshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02781599057887051142noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17777762.post-1129146455765235512005-10-12T12:37:00.000-07:002005-10-13T13:02:33.933-07:00

Open source never ceases to amaze me. There is an endless supply of high quality code out there just waiting for someone to take advantage of it...no matter how hard you search, you'll likely never grasp how many good projects there really are.Case in point...Jacareto. Jacareto is a test tool for Java Swing-based applications. Soon, a quick introduction, but first, let me rewind and tell you what

John Wellshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02781599057887051142noreply@blogger.com2