Revisiting Ruby on RailsI’ve blogged about Ruby on Rails quite a few times in the past 18 years. I’ve delivered lots of Rails apps, I’ve used it for my own company, and I have been a historic fan of Rails against all odds and against all opinions.
Back to MonolithsSo Amazon Prime Video (of all people!) published a blog post about how they’re returning to monoliths, relayed by DHH, generating lots of noise, to the point that even Dr. Werner Vogels himself, CTO at Amazon, had to pour some thoughts about the subject.
Killer AppsThe D programming language lacked a “killer app” to break through. Another brilliant language suffered from this situation, objectively deserving a much better fate than the one it had; Smalltalk.
Running akosma softwareAs I celebrate 25 years of work as a software developer, I look back at one of the most thrilling and frantic times in my professional life: those five years in which I worked as a freelance professional.
Elixir and Phoenix FrameworkI’ve been learning a bit about the Elixir programming language lately, and for that I created a small app using the Phoenix Framework.
Text Editors for WorkThere has been a particular text editor that defined each period of my career as a software developer. This article is a summary of that history, so far.
Senbei 1.3 hits the App Store!Our application Senbei has been updated to version 1.3! Senbei is the iPhone client of the popular Fat Free CRM application by Michael Dvorkin, written in Ruby on Rails.
A nicer cortito, courtesy of ZerofeeThose who follow me on Twitter are certainly aware of my endless sequence of shared links, some of them shortened using the akos.ma domain, itself powered by cortito, one of my most popular open source projects.
iPhone Apps without Objective-CYes, it’s possible. Even if Objective-C is one of my preferred programming languages, in any case I think it’s worth mentioning that, 2 years after the official iPhone SDK has been announced, the iPhone development landscape has really grown up, and many, many different options are available today. This article provides a very high-level enumeration of some options I’ve found on the web, but I’m sure there are even more alternatives around.
Interview sur IB com MagazineInterview by Marie-José Jones, published in the June 2008 issue of IB com magazine (download the PDF scan of the article).
My First Django ProjectSo here it is, my first Django project: the gazillionth blog engine on the planet!. As if there weren’t enough, right? :) Actually it was a practical and easy way to learn the Django project, and the result is pretty neat. Feel free to download it, play with it, and give me your feedback. Here’s a sample screenshot in Safari:
Deliver. Now.Every time I talk with people about Ruby on Rails in Switzerland, I almost always get the same comments, no matter what is the background of the person I’m talking to:
Riding the Rails AgainIt feels soooooo good to :) Let me introduce you to Parking Friend. This website, which I had the pleasure to design and develop, belongs to some friends of mine, currently starting their own valet parking service in Geneva.
Application FrameworksOne of the most pragmatically influential changes in software development, since the late eighties, was the introduction of several object-oriented frameworks, in different programming languages. This article will provide a short overview of their impact in the software engineering field.
About Corporate PoliticsPolitics are part of our daily life. Nevertheless, the word has got a bad reputation in the IT world (and elsewhere, too), thanks to famous failures and managed disasters, but the truth is that to succeed, projects need politics - and project managers should know it well.
Not Exactly What I MeantThis is a rant. When I decided to leave behind all my years as a Microsoft developer and embrace open source, I wasn’t exactly thinking about this.
Preferred Programming LanguagesThere are basically 5 languages that I really like. For several reasons. 2 of them are proprietary, while 3 are open-source. 2 are statically typed, and 3 are dynamically typed. All are fully object-oriented. 3 can be used for web development, 4 for desktop apps. And none is Java.
MigrationI came across this interesting posting on The .NET Addict’s Blog. It is interesting to read since it comes at a time when “traditional” Microsoft developers get interested in other technologies, such as Ruby on Rails, Cocoa or Linux. And the same can be said about Java, where lots of luminaries like James Duncan Davidson (the creator of Ant and Tomcat) started moving towards other technologies (in his case, this happened at the beginning of this decade even).
Quick Comparison of C# and RubyI have been working as a software developer since 1996, and as such I’ve used a variety of different languages, both compiled and interpreted. But the who languages that I know and use most today, are two somewhat different ones, C# and Ruby. I will begin my presentation with a short explanation of both, providing their major similarities and differences, and then providing some code samples of both.
Get the Facts - I Mean, Get ThemIf you enjoy Microsoft PR material, you may find this “Get the facts” page somewhat interesting. For those of us who really deal with MS and Open Source stuff day by day, please just don’t laugh too loud.
RadrailsAfter having received a comment from Steven Ross I saw in his website a reference to RadRails.
How to Install Ruby on Rails in Windows 2003Great day; my first full Ruby on Rails application is up and running in production environment. It is installed in an intranet server at my employer’s premises, so I will not be able to show it :(
Inversion of Control, Ruby and RailsNext week I will be in Belgium working with the Thales team in Brussels, building a new software solution (for a customer of the public sector that I cannot disclose here) using the following technologies: