Vos Virtual Network

I have 4 exciting new books about JavaScript, that I’m reading and reviewing.

1. JavaScript: The Missing Manual, by David McFarland, published by O’Reilly Media, ISBN: 978-0-596-51589-8, 543 pages, US $39.99 ~ A great reference, and tutorial on JavaScript
2. JavaScript: The Good Parts, by Douglas Crockford, published by O’Reilly Media, ISBN: 978-0-596-51774-8, 153 pages, US $29.99 ~ A solid JavaScript reference and delightfully opinionated how-to manual for avoiding the bad parts of JavaScript and maximizing use of the good parts.
3. Dojo: The Definitive Guide, by Matthew A. Russell, published by O’Reilly Media, ISBN: 978-0-596-51648-2, 450 pages, US $39.99 ~ The definitive guide for powering up AJAX development techniques with the popular and powerful Dojo JavaScript library.
4. Mastering Dojo, subtitle - JavaScript and Ajax Tools for Great Web Experiences, by Rawld Gill, Craig Riecke, and Alex Russell, published by the Pragmatic Programmers, Pragmatic Bookshelf, ISBN:978-1-934356-11-1, 555 pages, US $38.95 ~ Dojo is a set of client-side  JavaScript tools that help you build better web applications.

Tags: Ajax, book review, books, Dojo, ECMAscript, javascript, web design

An example of code colorizing MySQL table creation.
This example shows creation of a simple contact list, or client list.

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CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `clients` (
 `id` MEDIUMINT(8) UNSIGNED NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
 `email_address` VARCHAR(72) character SET ASCII NOT NULL,
 `firstname` VARCHAR(16) character SET utf8 NOT NULL,
 `lastname` VARCHAR(20) character SET utf8 NOT NULL,
 `date_added` DATETIME NOT NULL,
 UNIQUE KEY `id` (`id`),
 UNIQUE KEY `email_address` (`email_address`)
) ENGINE=MyISAM DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1 AUTO_INCREMENT=1 ;

What’s up with IS?

I guess IN and IS are considered key words in MySQL and the Geshi Generic Syntax Highlighter colorizing library. Is that a bug in the parsing routine, or what?

Tags: Geshi, mySQL, SQL, syntax

Dr. Dobbs Journal published a great article, showing how to implement OpenID for Ruby on Rails.

The author, Jeremy Weiskotten, demonstrates how an OpenID consumer can be implemented using the Ruby on Rails framework. The article provides a short tutorial explaining how OpenID single sign on works, and why it’s important. Next it discusses several issues and complications. The final section provides a solid demonstration tutorial, with plenty of Ruby code examples and some screen shots.

Tags: OpenID, RoR, ruby on rails

Here’s a Jabber bot instant messaging Ruby coding buddy that dispenses free advice.

Tags: code, Jabber, Ruby

Scooby-Do’s way of saying “Ruby Lovers Roundup”…  A quick review of recent happenings (and writings) in the Ruby  development community… and what a fun round up it is! The ruby rock stars are pushing agile development in sunny Florida … and the sunny Java guy is resting from Java to talk about Ruby RSpec RESTing and testing..

Tim Bray took a break from his other stuff to run more RSpec tests. Is he RESTing or testing, or both at the same time? He’s misusing RSpec (like Andy McKee abuses the guitar) — and that kind of innovation could lead to a cool new invention — but only if he plays with it long enough to discover something new and interesting.

Obie Fernandez is pushing paired programming the HashRocket way. Looks like they are having fun with it, and getting some good results. True believers in agile programming methods are already doing this, and everyone else is watching it closely, or closing their eyes, and trying to ignore it with one pragmatic eye still open.

David H. Hansson was not really “thinking out loud”, but he recently twittered:

getdropbox.com is exactly what I need to complete the two computer conundrum. Great execution. Can’t wait to be able to pay for it.

DHH also released Rails 2.1.1 — with lots of little bug fixes.

Dave Thomas is having fun with procs in Ruby 1.9

Michael Galpin talked about rapid prototyping with Apache Derby and JRuby on Rails over on IBM developerworks.

Did I mention that JRuby 1.1.4 was released? –  with a 2-20x increase in speed for most features

John Lam (the Microsoft IronRuby guy) helps you connect the dots and solve the really big problems in this video captured at the last RubyFringe.

Nick Sieger talks about jazzing things up with JRuby in this InfoQ video interview.

… and from the awesome fresh news department … enjoy the awesome fresh rails documentation.

Tags: DHH, FOSS, IronRuby, JRuby, Obie Fernandez, REST, RoR, RSpec, Ruby, ruby on rails, Scooby Do, Tim Bray, video

Demonstration of a simple FBML tag (fb:user-agent), used to render special messages to various browsers.

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 <fb:user-agent includes="firefox">
    We love Firefox!
 </fb:user-agent>

A simple example, from the new book FBML Essentials.

Tags: facebook, facebook apps, FBML, FBML Essentials, FBML Examples, Firefox

Maybe you figured out that I love jazz. I enjoy many musical genres, and musical styles, but lately I’ve been really exploring jazz. In a recent article I described jazz as being full of  images, mirrors, and reflections.  Jazz is like a bridge — always going from someplace to another place. Jazz is always asking questions, bending notes, refactoring routines, revisiting and revising themes, and making analogies. Jazz energizes me with its innovative musical poetry of patterns, parallels and allegories.

Jazz Piano Art - found at Detroit River Days

Back in April, I started talking about creativity, innovation, improvisation … and how it relates to jazz and the blues… meditating on the mysteries of musical creativity  … compared to creativity , innovation, and risk taking in other domains (like art, architecture, design, entrepreneurship, computer programming, product design, web design, etc.) … pondering the amazing results that often happen when a skilled musician begins  to improvise with a good idea and the right attitude.

Surprising success and fantastic results can happen in your life (or your business) when you understand how it all works.  Innovation - It’s not a new idea, and I’m not the only one talking about this. I’m just improvising on a great theme.

Nick Sieger (no relation to the Detroit rocker Bob Seger) wrote a great article in July called Jazzers and Programmers. I found Nick’s article while researching some things about Ruby on Rails, and JRuby.  NIck describes the history and styles of jazz and compares it to the history and styles of programming. He talks about jazz fundamentals, and compares the rhythm section (piano, bass, and drums)  to programming libraries, frameworks, and patterns. He compares Bass-Drums-Piano to Model-View-Controller. It’s really great stuff — and even includes a musical score from one of the jazz standards, Blue Monk.

Nick spiced up the article with nifty quotes from famous jazz musicians like: “It’s taken me my whole life to know what not to play” - Dizzy Gillespie … “Anyone can make the simple complicated. Creativity is making the complicated simple” - Charles Mingus  …  I won’t steal anymore of Nick’s thunder. Go read the whole article.

Are you catching my drift? We’re not done with this jam session yet. I’m just taking a breather in between songs.

Tags: creative thinking, I love jazz, improv, improvisation, innovation, jazz, jazz musician, jazz standard, JRuby, Model View Controller, music, MVC, ruby on rails, scripting

PHP, JavaScript, Ruby, Perl, Python, and Tcl Today: The State of the Scripting Universe

Three years ago, Lynn Greiner at CIO Magazine, interviewed the big cheeses responsible for the popular scripting languages PHP, Perl, Tcl, Python, Ruby and JavaScript to find out where the languages were headed. In this follow-up discussion, she asks the dynamic language luminaries what has changed since then.

… and discussion of the article continues at Slashdot.

Tags: javascript, perl, php, Python, Ruby, scripting, Tcl

This is a test of PHP Script Syntax Highlighting with the GeSHi code colorizing and syntax parsing library, along with the WP-Syntax plugin.

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//
// Include the GeSHi library
//
include_once 'geshi.php';
//
// Define some source to highlight, a language to use
// and the path to the language files
//
$source = '$foo = 45;
for ( $i = 1; $i < $foo; $i++ ){
echo "$foon";  --$foo;
}';
 
$language = 'php';
 
// Create a GeSHi object
 
$geshi = new GeSHi($source, $language);
 
// And echo the result!//
echo $geshi->parse_code();

Tags: code colorizing, code documenting, code examples, colorizing, computer languages, parsing, php, script examples, scripting, syntax, syntax highlighting

I started a new knowledge category today called CompuScriptology. So what is CompuScriptology? It’s basically the analysis, research, study and observation of dynamic computer languages, sometimes known as dynamic scripting languages (as compared to static or compiled languages).  It involves the comparing and contrasting of various computer language functions and syntactical elements — for computer languages such as JavaScript, Perl, PHP, Python, Rebol, and Ruby (in my case).

I was thinking about using the word Scriptology, but a gentleman (Dr. Adam Blatner)  was already using the word Scriptology to talk about the Lore of Writing Systems and Alphabets. Not to mention, that the FileMaker people have a website for FileMaker templates called Scriptology also.

Since I’m very interested in multiple computer languages, some people might call me a polyglot. I was thinking about calling the new knowledge category PolyCompuScriptology, but that failed my terse test.

Tags: computer languages, javascript, perl, php, Python, rebol, Ruby