Ruby 1.9 released

Ruby version 1.9 has been released, as Matz had indicated earlier that he would do so on Christmas eve. Mind you, this is a development release and not to be put in production servers. However, one of the interesting things about this release is the speed compared to 1.8 series. I haven't run any comparision tests, but following the tests run from other folks it seems 1.9 release runs about 3 times faster than 1.8.6. That's an awesome improvement and the due credit must goto the core development team. The latest packages are available on the link above.

I am not aware of the Rails roadmap and hence not sure when Rails will be able to run ruby 1.9. But when it does, it will take away some of the speed issues that rails web applications have. And hopefully give the rails folks something to fight the django guys off w.r.t speed :)

Keep learning

How often don't we see people just suddenly ceasing to learn something new once they reach a certain stage? This is especially more applicable when one is involved in a knowledge based industry. The Indian technology industry has been spinning out more and more software engineers who are more concerned with the pay and less passionate about the work. Hence once the initial enthusiasm dies down within 4-5 years and other social and family responsibilities increase, we see ourselves less and less inclined to spend time on learning something new or putting that extra time and effort. The hunger is no more there. This I guess is one of the reasons why we have such a low percentage of involvement in the open source projects and entrepreneurial spirit.

Anyone who gets into the service industry is promoted to a managerial position within 5-6 years. When I mention about the service industry, I include the MNC centers in India as well and not just the local software companies. And this duration is not good enough for one to understand the length and breadth of the domain that they are currently working in. Leave alone the opportunity to grow laterally and understand other technology domains. I do understand that there are some people who go on to become really good managers. But they would have become so, no matter whether they were pushed into the role or not. That makes me envious of hackers, for they possess an unending and ever growing inclination to learn newer technologies and techniques.

On this note, here are couple of posts I found interesting related to this subject.

1. Mark Cooper recounts his journey at 40 years, when he had to make switch from COBOL to Java and OO. The link to original article is no longer working and hence this is from the google cache.
2. Sujai wonders why Bangalore has so many jobs and has tried to de-construct the functioning of the Indian service industry so far. One more of his interesting posts is related to the number of reportees a manager has.
   

That reminds me that I need to get back to learning. This post applies as much to me as anyone else.

As Steve Jobs puts it, "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish".

Django Book online

Django has been a worthy competitor to rails so far. For the folks who are new to django, it is a web framework written in python and incorporates much of the principles as rails. However, django has been comparitively lacking much of the developer involvement, documentation and publicity that rails boasts of. Django Book - an online free ebook has been released, which is written by the django authors Adrian Holovaty and Jacob Kaplan-Moss. Any pythonists out there with interest in web development, check it out.

Nokia's iPhone?

Nokia has taken notice of the consumer interest in Apple iphone, it's touch based interface and the UI. This video from Nokia has the iphone interface which we can expect from Nokia devices next year.

Rails 2.0 release

The much anticipated 2.0 release of rails is out. Its been almost an year in the making. DHH has a detailed post about the release and how one can upgrade to the same.

InstantRails discontinued, rubystack in

InstantRails has been a really nice and easy way for any novice to get started with RoR and web development. However its further development has been discontinued now and is no longer maintained. Another alternative for RoR complete solution is rubystack from Bitnami folks. Instantrails was packaged as a zip file whereas rubystack is an installable. Haven't tried it yet but will definitely give it a try.