Software Trenches

Pictures: driving to work…

Amazing Web Applications

Google Maps
Del.icio.us
Mappr!
Google Groups 2

SOAP is Comatose But Not Officially Dead!

Article of the day:
SOAP is Comatose But Not Officially Dead!

Google Maps XML

Map:
http://maps.google.com/?q=1%20King%20St.W,Toronto,ON

XML:
http://maps.google.com/?q=1%20King%20St.W,Toronto,ON&output=xml

RubyGems—how to find gem path

This is all you need to find the directory with the lastest version of the gem:

Gem.source_index.search("GEMNAME").last.full_gem_path

IT Conversations—New Ideas Through Your Headphones

Network of tech talk-radio interviews -- streaming audio, RSS feeds, MP3 downloads:
IT Conversations

Google Maps

Google Maps are now in beta: Google Maps

What’s Shiny and New in Ruby 1.8.0?

The best description of what's new in Ruby 1.8 by "why the lucky stiff":
.c( whytheluckystiff )o. -- What's Shiny and New in Ruby 1.8.0?

The changes include:
- new allocate method to create blank (uninitialized) objects
- to_str method
- anonymous modules and classes via blocks in Module.new and Class.new
- classes and constants can be declared using fully qualified names (Foo::Bar) instead of surrounding them with module declaration
- initialize_copy constructor is called on clone or dup
- New methods in Enumerable, Array, Hash, and Range
- REXML
- YAML
- WEBrick
- Ruby/DL
- StringIO
- open-uri
- PrettyPrint (pp)
- more

Rubyisms (#1)

You won't find C-like #ifdefs (conditional compilation) in Ruby. The following approach can be used instead.

if RUBY_PLATFORM =~ /linux/
  def method_name
  .... # linux-specific code
  end
elsif RUBY_PLATFORM =~ /win32/
  def method_name
  .... # win32-specific code
  end
else
  def method_name
  ....
  end
end

Based on code from The Ruby Way by Hal Fulton.