Tue 06 January, 2009

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Bringing Rails and Merb together is about more than just merging the respective code. We’re also picking up the best ideas from both communities beyond the code. Following on Merb’s success in offering a strong evangelism effort, we’re pleased to announce the creation of the Rails activists:
The mission of the Rails activists is to empower and support the worldwide network of Ruby on Rails users. We do this by publicizing Rails, making adoption easier, and enhancing developer support.
At launch, we’ve identified seven areas where the Rails activists can contribute to the Rails ecosystem:
- Public Relations with media of all sizes
- Ombudsman work to ensure good user-to-user support
- Community Leadership at events and conferences
- Media Organization to help create good promotional opportunities
- Website maintenance
- Documentation efforts
- Developer support
The initial members of the Rails activists are Gregg Pollack, Matt Aimonetti, Ryan Bates, and Mike Gunderloy. But we can’t do all this alone, nor do we want to! Our vision includes a large and vibrant Rails network composed of other activists, bloggers, event hosts, authors, and developers. Our intent is to provide connections, resources, and support to help the entire ecosystem to grow. To start things off, we’re bringing in a lot of our own projects, including videos, screencasts, case studies, Rails documentation, and more – we’re a working group, and we hope you’ll work with us.
If you have ideas about improving the Rails community, projects you want to participate in, or are just looking for ways to get involved, get in touch with us! There are a lot of ways to do that:
- Through the new Rails activism Google group.
- Through the Rails feedback site, where you can vote on which projects you’d like to see us devote resources to in the Rails 3 timeframe and beyond.
- Through our Twitter accounts (linked above)
- Through IRC to Matt (mattetti) or Mike (mikeg1a)
- Through email to Mike Gunderloy, Matt Aimonetti, Gregg Pollack, or Ryan Bates.
We look forward to hearing from you!
For additional perspectives from the activists, see the posts by Gregg Pollack, Matt Aimonetti, and Mike Gunderloy.
Photo by Flickr user caravinagre
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add to furlMon 05 January, 2009

程序员是一群很有想法的人,即便如编码风格之类的问题,一旦允许讨论,那也会引发无穷无尽的争论,括号究竟是放在行后,还是另起一行,每个人都能说出一堆让人听起来很有道理的论据。不过,事实上,这对于项目的目标本身,并没有直接的贡献。所以,有识之士们把编程轨范敲定下来,大家也别争了,照着做就好。经过最初的一段时间,大家便都会按照着这个规范行事,少了无谓的争论,大家便会把精力放在项目本身上。
如果你用过Rails,你多半会热爱上Convention over Configuration,因为它不让你动脑为那些Model、Controller和View挨个起名字了,要知道,想写好程序的话,名字就是第一个需要头疼的关隘。随着你对Rails开发了解的增多,你会发现,除了CoC的概念,Rails还包含了很多的实践,比如目录组织、比如开发脚本等等,而我们所需要做的,只是遵循这些已有的东西。或许,作为一个有想法的程序员,你会跳出来说,这种做法限制了程序员的创造力。可事实是,真正使用Rails开发的人对这种做法甘之若饴,因为有更多的地方等着他们发挥创造力。
好吧!我想说的是,我们把太多的精力浪费在无谓的争论上了。让我们把更多的精力放在那些值得思考的东西上吧!
如果我们可以把一些东西固化下来,无论是规范,还是脚本,抑或是框架,只要有一个一致的东西,大家遵循就好了。写程序,确实需要创造力,但真的不是每个点都需要。而且,不是每个人都可以真正的争到点子上,最差劲的结果是,讨论变成了攻击,N败俱伤。
《守、破、离》是一种做事方式。或许,对于一个程序员来说,离是我们追求的境界,但守是我们应该先做好的。相信你可以对应的上,这里的守,便是前面提到的那些要固化下来的内容。守不仅仅是一个简单的简化编码的方法,我们甚至可以把一些设计上的理念守下来,这样,做类似的应用,我们就不必从头再来。守的范围越大,离的层次也就可以越高。
软件开发的发展,就是一个守的范围不端扩张的过程,操作寄存器的模式用高级程序设计语言的方式守了下来,一些良好的设计方法用设计模式的概念守了下来,一些好的编程习惯用最佳实践的方式守了下来……
不妨偶尔停下来,想想什么可以守住。
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add to furlSun 04 January, 2009

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