bgror

When Rails 3 is Due »

Created at: 05.04.2010 05:51, source: The Life Of A Radar, tagged: Uncategorized

As a person who hangs out in #rubyonrails on Freenode a little too much of his spare time, I eventually come across repeated questions. This is why I made the channel bot which runs on Summer.

One of the hardest frequently asked question is “When is Rails 3 due?”

To be honest I don’t know, and I’m pretty sure not even Rails Core knows precisely when it’s due. Sure, they’ll have some kind of idea of when they’d like it to be released but it’s a very similar idea to mine of wanting to be rich (i.e. right now). Ideas and realities are two entirely separate worlds.

On the 1st of April, Rails 3.0.0beta2 was announced by DHH. This announcement came very nearly two whole months after first Rails 3 beta announcement.

So why so long between releases? Well, lets go time traveling.

We travel back, back through time and its murk. We land spot bang in the middle of March 28, 2006. It’s on this day that a slightly-younger version of DHH announces Rails 1.1. Oh look it has RJS. How young and foolish we all were. By we, I mean you guys of course, this was at least 3 months before I even begun getting into Rails. So Rails 1.1 was born into the world on March 28th, 2006. Right then. What about the next significant version?

The next version would be Rails 1.2, let’s jump forward to the first Rails 1.2 Release Candidate on November 23rd, 2006. This is a distance of ~20,735,982 seconds (or in more sensible terms: 7 months and 27 days) between a major release (1.1) and a the next major release’s (1.2) release candidate. Ok, so when was the next release candidate?

That would be the second Rails 1.2 release candidate. Somewhere between these two releases I joined the Rails fray. The distance between releases? ~3,715,200 (or in more sensible terms: 1 month and 13 days). They really didn’t waste much time getting this out the door, and with so many changes too! Next!

So with the release candidates out of the way DHH announces Rails 1.2. This was a mere 17 days (~1,468,800 seconds in the “old money”) between release candidate and major release. 17 days (not a pattern) later, Rails 1.2.2 is announced. On Pi day in 2007, 36 days after Rails 1.2.2 is released, Rails 1.2.3 is released. Then nothing happens for a while.

During the 30th September, 2007 A Rails 2.0.0 Preview Release is announced. Surely the 2.0 release has to be close, right?

Between the 2.0 release postings, on the 5th of October, 2007, 6 months and 19 days after Rails 1.2.3 is released, Rails 1.2.4 comes out. Then a mere week later, Rails 1.2.5 is announced and released. Rails 2 work continued through these releases, as indicated by a Rails 2 release candidate announcement in the midst of November 2007. Rails 1.2.6 was announced 1 month and 12 days after Rails 1.2.5 was. This was to be the final version 1 release before Rails 2.

On December 7th, 2007, Rails 2.0 was released much to the joy of the Rails world. 10 days later Rails 2.0.2 comes out with “some new defaults and a few fixes”. Then nothing happens for a while, again.

Then Rails 2.1 came out, on the 1st of June, 2008, 5 months and 23 days later.

Some more patch releases were made after the Rails 2.1 release. The 3rd of September is when Rails 2.0.4, the first patch release is announced, 3 months and 2 days later. On the 19th October, 2008, another patch release Rails 2.0.5 is released. This is 1 month and 16 days since the previous patch release.

Rails 2.1.1 was released 3 months and 4 days after the Rails 2.1.0 announcement with “lots of bug fixes”. It seems they didn’t quite fix all the bugs as Rails 2.1.2 was released 1 month and 18 days later. The next minor release wasn’t far off, only 28 days, and that one was Rails 2.2.

It is important to note that it is around this point in time that the Merb + Rails merger is announced on the 23rd December, 2008. This merge would grow into what we will soon know as Rails 3.

The next minor release after that was the Rails 2.3 announcement, 3 months and 24 days later on the 16th March, 2009, the first release of 2009. The next announced release occurred on the 20th July, 2009: Rails 2.3.3. Some security fixes are announced, making Rails 2.3.4 a reality 1 month and 15 days after the Rails 2.3.3 announcement.

Then we get to the most recent stable version of Rails: Rails 2.3.5. This was released a total of 2 months and 26 days after Rails 2.3.4.

Now most recently, the Rails 3 betas. The first was announced on the 5th Feburary 2010, 2 months and 5 days after Rails 2.3.5 was released, which doesn’t mean much. What’s a more relevant statistic would be that it was released 1 year, 1 month and 14 days after the Rails + Merb merge was announced. The beta was a very large and sweeping change of just about everything in Rails, afterall, this is a major release. There is going to be some major differences.

Finally, Rails 3 beta 2, announced on April fools day, 1 month and 25 days after the first beta release. DHH says that this release is “hopefully our last stop before a release candidate” but again: nobody knows. There may be another beta released.

Once you know the release candidate goes out you’ll know there’ll be a huge hubbub of how momentous the ocassion is. I say everyone deserves a “huge round of applause”. Or the internet equivalent. The amount of work put in Rails 3 over the last year and a bit is tremendous. Then people can finally start (or continue, in some cases) migrating their plugins and gems over to Rails. Personally, I look forward to the day where I can begin a new Rails application using compatible versions of Cucumber and RSpec and the latest and greatest Rails 3 code.

God speed, gentlemen.

Edit

It’s rare that I edit posts after they’ve been written but I feel I need to clarify here. This post is not intended to give a solid or even a vague guess at what the Rails 3 release date is going to be. If you want my personal opinion it’s going to be another 2 to 4 weeks before a release candidate. Pure, utter, guesswork based on observation. The regression tickets themselves do not seem overly complex and if they are the only thing in the way of a release candidate then I cannot see there being any major delay.

Not staying in Scotland »

Created at: 01.04.2010 13:44, source: The Life Of A Radar, tagged: Uncategorized

So I posted earlier that I got offered a job in Scotland and was staying for a couple of weeks. (Un?)fortunately this is not the case. As of this writing I’m sitting very close to Changi Airport’s C23 in the “Laptop Access” area they have here getting my internet fix after a 12-and-a-half hour flight. Sitting in a middle seat. Scotland is a fantastic country and one day I may go back to visit it but for now my home is Sydney, closely followed by Brisbane. If something comes up that is irresistible then perhaps I will move elsewhere, but there are still plenty of opportunities in Australia for me and moving is such a ginormous pain in the ass. If I did move out of the country it’s more than likely I would have to sell everything I own and start afresh, a prospect I do not look forward to. I simply have too much crap, and I’m only 22.

So in summary: Staying in Sydney, not Scotland. Catch up with you all when I get the chance :)

Staying in Scotland »

Created at: 31.03.2010 16:59, source: The Life Of A Radar, tagged: Uncategorized

This past week I attended the Scottish Ruby Conference and for the week prior I was experiencing the joy that is Scotland. I have made a decision to stay on a couple of weeks and I apologise for those who I haven’t yet discussed this with.

Since the conference, I have been discussions with one of the local companies who wish to hire me to teach Ruby after my contract with GetUp has expired. I’m going to their offices in Edinburgh today for a meeting to discuss this. I think they’re fantastic people and it would be almost as much joy to work with them as it has been to work with GetUp and I would name them if it wasn’t for a damn NDA. GetUp’s going to be exceptionally hard to beat.

I may return to Australia to collect some things and put my affairs in order eventually, but Scotland just feels like the right place to be at the moment. It’s much closer to a larger number of countries than Australia with greater opportunities in the Ruby & Rails sectors and I love everything here.

Later on today I will contact GetUp and let them know that I’m still willing to do work for them, albeit remotely, and I hope they will understand.

More on this later. See you then!

$100k Raised in Three Days—Way to Go, Ruby! »

Created at: 30.03.2010 00:55, source: Engine Yard Blog, tagged: Uncategorized

Last week, we announced the Ruby Summer of Code campaign; we were working with the folks over at Ruby Central and the Ruby on Rails core team to raise money to fund student open source projects. We had high hopes for the program, and for the support the community would provide, but this one just blew our minds!

The campaign began Wednesday morning, and by Friday night, we’d hit our ambitious goal of raising $100,000. With support from numerous Ruby and Rails companies as sponsors, as well as individual donations from Rubyists all over the world, we’re now able to fund an astonishing twenty open source Ruby and Rails projects this summer.

The project is currently accepting mentor applications through April 2nd, and the student application period will be open from April 5th to April 23rd. With so many slots, this summer is sure to be one of tremendous progress.

Thanks to all those who joined us in funding this great open source cause; there’s nothing else quite like the Ruby community.

Starsigns & Dreams »

Created at: 07.03.2010 12:28, source: The Life Of A Radar, tagged: Uncategorized

Now I know that you guys expect this to be like… pure technological content since I’m a technological kind of guy, but sometimes I do break the rules. This is one of those more of a “blog” and less of a “tutorial” or “code” post. Sorry. Just something strange has been going on. Oh, and it contains profanity. Sorry.

I’m not one who believes in fortune-telling, I think it’s a complete and utter scam. These people will tell you precisely what you want to hear so they and their brethren can get precisely what they want: your money. They tell you all these good things and to pay attention to your horoscopes and star signs and so on and so forth, so you’ll go out and buy all these books about it and effectively dedicate your entire life to knowing about what’s going to happen in your future.

Fuck you.

No, really. Do you think that you’re such “a beautiful or unique snowflake” that the stars, balls of burning Helium, Hydrogen and whatever the fuck else are actually representing your fate? That they are able to correctly predict what will happen to you in terms of life (love and not), money and well-being? Jesus H. Christ you people are fucked in the head. You are not “a beautiful or unique snowflake”. Your fate is entirely dependent on your actions. If you want something positive to happen: work the fuck towards it.

Do not get me started on Numerology, either.

My (read: your) God.

Now that I’ve got that whole little blurb out of the way I can go on telling a story of two exceptionally strange coincidences that have happened within the past week. Yes, I view them as “coincidences”, not as “messages from the stars” or whatever you loonies want to call them. Although occasionally I feel that something is causing these to happen but then I have a nice hard-dose of a little thing us sane-folk like to call “Reality” and I’m right as rain.

Coincidence #1.

A girl at work asked me if my Paypal account had any money in it, I thought it didn’t but I checked anyway. There was some in there and she asked if I could use $1 for it to test some of the site’s donation functionality as it was misbehaving. I did, and it was. Then I thought that the money would be best out of the hands of Paypal and better in the hands of my bank so I “wrote” a mental note to transfer it when I got home. I didn’t.

That night I dreamed of a person or people putting money into my Paypal account. I quite often dream of things related to the previous day, almost like it’s a consequence of them being committed to my long term memory or something. So in the dream as I receive the money and go to transfer it, naturally I wake up. I always wake up from dreams when it gets to the good part.

So I get out of bed and onto my computer and as soon as I open up IRC I receive a IRC private message from Zarathu who says that he appreciates all my help that I give him and others and would like to show his respect in monetary format. He sends me $100.

Go figure.

Coincidence #2.

I have flu-like symptoms and to help me sleep through them I’m taking Codral day & night tablets. When I take the night tablets I have really, really vivid and sometimes whack(er than usual) dreams. Last night’s major consisted of myself and an unknown person really agreeing on something, we were having a discussion about something but there were no details. But we shared a common idea.

Tonight Marcelo & his girlfriend cooked dinner for us all and Marcelo’s mother came over. We talk about what I do and Marcelo’s girlfriend asks if I do iPhone development. I say that I tried to get into it but I needed an app idea in order to learn the language. She says she has an idea but she won’t tell me it because she fears I will steal it. There’s this one application I’ve been looking for (and I won’t say it because YOU will steal it :)) since the iPhone came out and I ask “Is it something to do with …?”

Silence.

“How’d you do that?”, she asks.
“Do what?”
“Read my mind.”

We spend the next hour talking about how awesome this idea is.

So, I still view these as coincidences, but for something like this to happen twice in a week is kind of freaky.