Installing the Ruby driver for DB2 on Mac OS X Snow Leopard

Now that Mac OS X 10.6 is out, it’s time to leave the world of 32 bit computing behind. The pre-installed Ruby interpreter will run in 64 bit mode by default, so you may need to pay attention when installing some C-based gems. The ibm_db Ruby gem for DB2 can easily be installed or updated to the latest available version by following these simple steps: $ sudo -s $ export...

Recommended Ruby and Rails books (August 2009)

I finally got around to updating the Ruby and Rails book pages. The existing list was getting a bit obsolete and I didn’t like the idea of recommending old books to newcomers. I also had some interesting new entries. Without further ado: Recommended Ruby Books Recommended Rails Books A few people may disagree with the choices, but I think most experienced Ruby and Rails programmers, who’ve read those...

Do programmers still buy printed books?

Yesterday I published a post titled My latest order of programming books, which received a fair number of comments both here and elsewhere online. Aside from a few good suggestions for other must-read books for programmers, there were several comments about how buying hard copies of books in this day and age is stupid. A few advocated piracy as an alternative to buying books, printed or not. Aren’t we supposed...

My latest order of programming books

A few days ago it was my birthday. This year I decided to reward my aging self with some books I’d had my eyes on. My budget was roughly $250, nothing to snicker at, but programming and computer science books aren’t exactly famous for being inexpensive. The hardest part was shortlisting only a few titles, out of a substantial number of books that interest me. This ruthless streamlining was not solely...

How much faster is Ruby on Linux?

In a previous article I compared the performance of Ruby on Windows, built through Microsoft Visual C++ and GCC. The numbers for the MinGW version were very impressive. So the question now becomes, how does its performance compare to that of Ruby on Linux? To quote one person (Alex) who commented on the aforementioned post: With the new mingw32 substantial speed improvements, think it makes sense now to also test...

On Scala’s future

Kenneth McDonald posted the following question about Scala’s future in the Scala mailing list: I thought it would be interesting to find out people’s predictions for how much of the Java market Scala will eventually penetrate. It’s nice to see Scala doing reasonably well so far, so now’s your chance to make a prediction on the future of Scala: a) Scala will remain a niche language, competing...

The DB2 adapter now supports Django 1.1

This article is obsolete. Please refer to the following articles for up do date instructions: Ruby/Rails and DB2 | Python/Django and DB2. Thank you! I’m glad to announce that the API team has just released version 1.0.2 of the adapter for Django. And on my birthday to boot, what a nice present. This version extends its support to the recently released Django 1.1, as well as incorporating the feedback that was...

A faster Ruby on Windows is possible (benchmarks for 4 implementations inside)

In yesterday’s post I compared IronRuby 0.9, Ruby 1.8.6 (from the One-Click Installer) and Ruby 1.9.1 (downloaded from the official site) against one another. IronRuby did great, but the discussion in the comment section quickly veered towards what version of the One-Click Ruby Installer should have been used. I justified my choice of using the “old” One-Click Installer, by the fact that I...

Comparing the performance of IronRuby, Ruby 1.8 and Ruby 1.9 on Windows

In my latest article I discussed the importance of JRuby as a means of introducing Ruby to the Enterprise world. Most of the companies that belong to this ecosystem are Java based, but we cannot forget that a sizable portion of them are Microsoft-centric. Within these companies, Ruby will be far more welcome if a .NET implementation is available. The answer to this need is sufficiently fulfilled by IronRuby (version...

On JRuby’s importance for the future of Ruby

In a recent blog entry, Charles Nutter argues about the importance of JRuby for Ruby’s adoption within the Enterprise. Or, in his own words: The idea of “Enterprise Ruby” has become less repellant since Dave Thomas’s infamous keynote at RailsConf 2006. There are a lot of large, lumbering organizations out there that have yet to adopt any of the newer agile language/framework combinations, and...

Why technical marketing is important for programmers

Most programmers I know hate marketing. Their dislike stems from two root causes: the fact that they aren’t naturally good at it, and their misconception of what technical marketing actually is. “Naturally” is the keyword here, given that technical marketing takes a certain sort of conscious effort and is a skill (a social one) that can be learned, just like programming. I fully understand that...

Serving Django Static Files through Apache

Django’s development server is capable of serving static (media) files thanks to the view django.views.static.serve. Popular web servers like Apache, Lighttpd or NGINX are much faster though, and as such should be used in production mode. Our goal is to bypass Django and let Apache (or other valid alternatives) directly serve static files like images, videos, CSS, JavaScript files, and so on, for us. Generally...

DB2 Express-C 9.7 and the Django adapter released

This is a great day for those of us who love DB2, as DB2 Express-C 9.7 has just been released. As mentioned before, this is the best DB2 ever, and an extremely important release. To learn more about what’s new in this release, please check out the recording of our latest webinar: If you run Linux, Unix or Windows, download it while it’s hot. DB2 9.7 on the Cloud Another great aspect of this release...

Discussing code reading and testing with Dave Thomas, Cory Foy and Tim Bray

Pat Eyler just published an interview/discussion with Dave Thomas, Cory Foy, Tim Bray and I on the subject of code reading and testing legacy code. I think the resulting article is a very interesting read with a lot of insight (thanks to the other participants). It was a fun discussion which left me feeling honored to be among such distinguished people. If you’d like, you can read this interview on Pat’s...

Do Androids Count Electric Sheep with DB2 or MySQL?

Counting rows is an ubiquitous operation on the web, so much so that it’s often overused. Regardless of misuse, there is no denying that the performance of counting operations has an impact on most applications. In this post I’ll discuss my findings about the performance of DB2 9.5 and MySQL 5.1 regarding counting records. For those of you who are not into science fiction, let me clarify that the odd...

Of labels and limits

In an attempt to satisfy our need for identity and belonging, we desperately try to wear as many labels as possible, and to a certain extent labels are a necessity. When people ask you what you do for a living, it’s far easier to reply “I’m a computer programmer” than to try and explain the plurality and complexity of the exact criteria of your job. The problem with labels is that they can...

Announcing ThinkCode.TV’s new English newsletter

Ten days ago I mentioned ThinkCode.TV, my startup on the side, the aim of which will be to produce high quality screencasts about programming, both in English and Italian. My two co-founders and I are relatively well known in Italy, so I was expecting the announcement to generate some buzz in my home country. What surprised me though was finding out that my informal pre-announcement generated quite a bit of interest...

Memoization in Ruby and Python

Wikipedia defines memoization as “an optimization technique used primarily to speed up computer programs by having function calls avoid repeating the calculation of results for previously-processed inputs.”. This typically means caching the returning value of a function in a dictionary of sorts using the parameters passed to the function as a key. This is done in order to reuse that returning value...

Ruby 1.9 screencasts plus an announcement

Previously I mentioned the importance of migrating away from Ruby 1.8, in favor of 1.9. Before my business trip to Italy, I had a chance to watch David A. Black’s new videos for Envycast, in which he presents the essential concepts required to migrate from Ruby 1.8 to 1.9. This pair of videos totals roughly an hour and a quarter, and can be purchased in a package deal for $16. You probably won’t find...

Better Software 2009 and Pycon Italia Tre

In May I will be presenting at two conferences in Italy. The first is called Better Software 2009; it’s dedicated to the world of software development, Agile methodologies, Web 2.0 and a bunch of other buzzword compliant technologies. This conference will be held on May 6 and 7 in sunny Florence. If you speak Italian and happen to be in Europe, you can register here. Italian conferences tend to be fairly...