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Curies: A Ruby library for parsing and creating CURIEs

2008-03-19T23:24:00Z

The Curies library implements the CURIE syntax for expressing Compact URIs.

In a nutshell, a CURIE is a compact way of representing a URI. For example, suppose you've got an XML document in which you'll be writing many attributes of the form "http://www.amazon.com/?isbn=123478753". With a CURIE, you can represent those as "[amazon:123478753]" where "amazon" is a registered prefix in your document.

This library is small, but useful if you're writing a parser for a language that uses CURIEs in its syntax. I wrote it because I'm implementing an RDF/JSON library and, as the RDF/JSON spec isn't finalized yet, I've taken the liberty of using CURIEs rather than QNAMEs.

See http://www.w3.org/TR/curie/ for more information on the CURIE specification.

Installation:

Git it here: http://github.com/pius/curies/tree/master
To install, just run "rake local_deploy" from the trunk.

Nonbelievers.

2008-02-13T23:35:00Z

Before I begin, please take a look at this relevant clip from one of my favorite shows, Mad Men. The show is about a fictional ad agency in the 1960's.

Go ahead, watch.

Beautiful. Would you have the guts to say that to your client? How about to your venture capitalist?

There are a few take-aways from that little scene, but the one I'd like to talk about is the "nonbeliever" phenomenon. If you are doing something innovative, you're going to run into a certain kind of person everywhere. You know who I'm talking about. Sometimes they're outright skeptics. Other times they feign excitement about your pitch, but want to wait until you've "closed an angel round" or "shown a little more traction" to join the team. Usually these folks have a resource (money, skills, reputation, or simply approval) that you are seeking for your business. Guess what? These people may otherwise make great friends or good contacts but they're terrible for your business. Avoid them. At all costs. If you absolutely need them, outsource a small piece to them as consultants but don't make them a core part of the effort.

Look, when it comes to your business there are fundamentally two kinds of people -- believers and nonbelievers. If you know your problem domain well, which I assume you do, you owe it to yourself not to pollute your business and your product with non-believers whether it's you, your idea, your implementation, or even the general idea of risk-taking that they don't believe in. Hiring non-believers, spending money to woo them as potential clients, or begging them for money is a big company game. If you are running a startup, you simply don't have the time or the energy to siphon off for the clueless or otherwise unimpassioned.

Why waste time on Kabuki?

The Three Must-Have Rails Books for Beginners

2008-02-07T21:36:00Z

I often hear people asking what Rails books they should start off with to learn the language. In the past, the most common recommendation was Agile Web Development With Rails (AWDWR). Since Rails 2.0 has come out, though, this book is no longer the best. Here are my recommendations:

<dl>

Practical Rails Projects by Eldon Alameda.

This is an excellent beginner book. Rather than dealing with a monolithic project for the entirety of the book, it uses one short, but reasonably feature-rich project per chapter and holds the reader's hand along the way. This book is up-to-date with Rails 2.0.

Ruby for Rails by David A. Black.

There are lots of "developers" who use Rails but never bother to learn Ruby. Don't do this. That approach will ensure that you stay mediocre. Written by the noted Rubyist and RubyCentral director David Black, Ruby for Rails uses Rails as a vehicle for helping the reader developer his or her pure Ruby skillset. This book does a fantastic job of teaching the "magic" behind Rails including advanced Ruby techniques like metaprogramming.

The Rails Way by Obie Fernandez.

This is the best reference book for Rails in publication for several reasons I will not repeat here. While not a beginners' book per se, it's useful to budding Rails coders as a solid reference text that goes beyond the extant API documentation to provide best practice guidance on idiomatic Rails. There were some typos in the first printing, but Obie told me a couple weeks ago that the second printing just shipped, so this is perfect time to go and get this tome.

</dl>

If you're trying to learn Rails quickly, I recommend working through Practical Rails Projects by coding while reading Ruby Through Rails, cover to cover so that you familiarize yourself with the topics and can drill-down if necessary. While coding, keep The Rails Way at your side. With these three books in your arsenal, you should be covered.

Blogswitch: Engage.

2008-02-07T21:03:00Z